Hi, this is Lee, Anne Wong, director of design, content and
learning here at aiga and producer of our podcasts while
we're still on a break from producing.
New content, will continue to cross post podcast episodes from
across the design Community as well as some other surprise
audio content last month of the aiga design conference in
Seattle. I had the chance to hang out
with Sean Schumacher and record an episode for his podcast
called. Did I do that?
Did I do that is a conversation. In style podcast with
professionals working in graphic, design, talking through
mistakes that we've made along the way how we've struggled at
various points in our careers and how we've come to overcome
those mistakes and even go to laugh about them.
I certainly had a lot of fun recording this episode with
Sean. You'll get to hear some
embarrassing anecdotes for my adolescence, some of my story
starting a design studio and you'll even get to hear my best
attempt at a Steve Urkel impression.
Now here's the surreal World episode of did I do Do that.
That's like the new Billy Eichner movie Bros with his that
line, you know. It's like we had AIDS and they
had Glee, we didn't have Glee. So we had, we had the real world
that we could be vampires. These are cyborgs and zahl
allegory, Hello and welcome to did I do that.
It's a podcast about making graphic design and making
mistakes. Because it's all part of the
process. I'm Sean Schumacher and joining
me today a very special guest. He's the co-founder and creative
director of fusa, a community centered design consultancy.
He also hosts and produces podcasts and podcast adjacent
things for the aaga, where he currently serves as the Director
of design content and learning its leash on Wang.
Hi, I Xiang. It's very easy to remember your
name. Yes, we've got.
We're doing double duty on the Sean's and we're same spelling
to indeed. This is actually not a
comfortable. That's what I'm learning.
Feel free to move to the sofa. Or I mean, I don't know if the
rolling chair is really the best out of there, but there's also
the dining chairs or can move. No, no.
This, this should be. All right.
It's just a little odd. It's, it is odd.
I think it's, I mean, it's like the killed grimace All right P.
Grimace, oh, oh, he just wanted that Shamrock.
Shared a little too early. Really have to blame it on
Hamburg. Not just a thief, but a violent
criminal and deeply deranged. Yeah, stealing hamburgers is
just kind of the gateway drug in that in that Universe.
Yeah, this is a very, very silly show.
So we're here in Seattle, Washington.
This is part of the AIG a National Conference which is
happening like next door and it's, you know, I'm a big Fraser
Fran. I don't know if you are all so
fond of the Fraser program. My husband introduced me to it
recently but I did not actually watch it in the 90s.
Oh, so this is that you haven't been checking into it in prep
for for your visit out here. I have not.
Oh, well, from where I am sitting right now, we're in your
hotel room. I Actually looks like I am in
Frasier's apartment right now. It's very fancy.
There's the full Skyline out there although there's a lot
more construction cranes than I remember in the Fraser program,
I believe Fraser was the only crane, really depicted
primarily? Well, no, that's not true.
There were several other members of that family but yeah, you
know, in a lot of ways. This is a nicer place than
Frasier's apartment for one. There's no battle chair or
angry, dad or dog, that is sort of passive aggressive towards.
You and like Frasier, I've spun out of Boston.
Yeah, you did a couple seasons in Boston's.
Yeah, I've done my time in Boston.
Yeah, I live in Providence. It's I guess it's still kind of
within commuting range of Boston.
I meet Rhode Island is so very, very small.
It may as well. Have been absorbed into one of
the adjacent spaces. Yeah, but that's the whole
thing, right? Because it was like it was
started by the folks who were like, okay.
Puritans, let's like tone it down just a little bit.
Just be like a little bit less fundamentalist for a bit.
Let's start around state that appear Isles.
Are not going to be into that. They love puritanical things,
it's in the name. Yeah, so you've sort of popped
round between a couple different locations on the East Coast, New
York. And yeah, well, I'm originally
from Taiwan and then my parents went to Grad School in Phoenix
Arizona. So, I grew up in the Phoenix
area and then I went to Harvard. So that's my first stint.
Just outside of Boston, your cheers years.
I'm just going to start by dropping the h-bomb instead of
talking around. It took me.
I went to school in Boston. Oh, just outside of just gonna
cry and across the river. Actually, it's a big school.
I don't know if you'd know it. So yeah, I did that.
And then I lived in Japan for three years after undergrad.
Wow. And then moved to New York and
was in New York, for most of my adult life until covid and then
moved out of the city to Long Island.
Eastern Long Island to escape the plague, and hang out with
deer and turkeys. And when things reopened moved
to Boston, where my husband is doing his studies up at MIT.
Oh, wow, so you've kind of as a marriage.
Got some very fancy Boston Schools in the mix.
Yeah. And he's also a Harvard man.
So it's Harvard and MIT. I'm only Harvard and NYU its own
sort of prestige. Age.
Yeah, you're in the city, you know, in the city.
I don't know where NYU is in the city, but it's somewhere there.
It's like in Greenwich Village, but it's also in Brooklyn.
Now, it's really everywhere. I mean, they would take over
everywhere if they could universities have a way of
investing their neighborhoods and, you know, slowly creeping
out. It's a real branding problem as
a designer because they're also like in Abu Dhabi.
That was their first big there's like spinning out.
Can't do in that now. Yeah.
And so you like have the New York branch?
But then it's also in Abu Dhabi. It's like I don't know.
I mean it's like not my problem as a brand system.
Yeah I feel like it is more of a problem when your school is
named after a specific location. It's hard to make the argument
that New York University, Abu Dhabi branch makes a lot of
sense that they are two fundamentally different
locations, right? It's different from like Parsons
Paris. Parsons New York with different.
It's a name, but it's not like named after the city Parsons
could be anywhere it. Lives in our hearts primarily
right? And in parsonage has, which is I
think where monks live I could be wrong about that.
Don't write in if you know because I will have forgotten
that I said it, it is an interesting problem.
So you grew up primarily in Arizona like what sort of turned
you on to design. Initially I would say print shop
and dot matrix printer has which is also a way of dating myself.
Did you have like an apple too? Parents on the computer store
actually, oh wow, but they were like a sort of PC clone kind of
store or as mostly like be to be.
So they sold to like companies and to like school systems and
government offices and stuff like that, but there was a staff
around. Yeah, we didn't really convert
to Mac until my parents were tired and then they all got Macs
and iPhones, and obviously I work in design.
So I'm also like indentured to Apple but I grew up with these
sort of like DIY PC. Clones where it's like, oh, if
you wanted a computer, you can have whatever you wanted but you
have to go to the warehouse and like put it together yourself.
Oh wow. But I mean, I bet you get a lot
of extra horsepower out of one of those.
We always had the latest things are actually our very first
computer before my parents started, the store was a
Commodore 64, hmm, where you plugged it?
Into your TV, at that was such a special time in Computing.
When we just didn't think the way that things display was very
important. My very first, Peter was a
Commodore Amiga, which I think was like, essentially the
generation after that. It was one Amiga in my school's,
computer lab and it was like the special computer that had like,
a color monitor. Oh yeah.
It wasn't just like green and black.
And I just remember like there was all sorts of like demos on
that and it was like the equivalent of Photoshop.
I don't even remember the name of this Earth where they had
like a demo image. That was like a pharaoh like a
oh yeah. Chaparro.
And I was like, wow. The colors are like so.
Vibrant and realistic. Yeah, and that was the whole big
thing with the Amiga is like at least early.
Digital broadcast Graphics were almost always sort of a piece of
software in a peripheral attached to an Amiga because the
Amiga was like fancy for graphics.
You have to call those like toasters, right?
Yeah. Well Video Toaster, yeah.
Oh toast some video I Don't Mind If I Do.
Is this podcast really going to? It's going to turn this like old
guys. Top Tech.
That's what the kids love, you know.
They love the past and how wacky it was.
It's why everything from 1998 is popular again.
Yeah, I was explaining last semester.
I was somehow got into some conversation explaining how VHS
tapes work, you have to like, edit with two VHS, decks to like
so like to a grad students it wasn't even like a kid.
Yeah. Somebody in their 20s early,
early mid 20s who's like a photo and video guy and he was just
like shocked as like. How did you guys make anything?
Well yeah, it's Kind of astonishing, how how linear
everything used to be? Like, before we started
recording, I was telling you about, like, my dad, when he was
doing audio production back in the day, he would literally cut
and taped together tape, right? Like, the fanciest stuff was
that, and it's effort to, because it's not to make a mix
tape for someone. You had to, like, listen to the
radio. Make sure that the DJ didn't
talk over the intro of the song. Good Luck record, right?
And put that together and I guess it's still an active love
to like burn. Number CD or something like
that. Like that's still some effort
versus like I made you a playlist on Spotify.
Yeah, that impose that's disappointing like the object.
Miss is very special there like you lose that you lose a lot you
know? And you can like doodle on the
little sticker that you put on the cassette tape.
Yeah. And personalize it that way I
guess you could put a lot of love into like the printed out
card with the QR code on it that you if you want to go out here.
There's a little heart. In the middle.
I hope that didn't affect. Oh, it did.
Okay, so now you can't scan it. Whoops.
Well, you think the message is what counts, it's funny.
How much things change it? So where were you using, like,
print shop Pro and all that? Like I said home and at school,
I think there was something just really great about, like, the
sound of it. Oh, and you would like, I think
that's something I miss about those dot matrix printers
because it had like all the sheets of paper were connected
with a kind of perforations. You could just like her.
Out like big old banners and then stick them on the wall.
The Banners at that was the big selling feature of print shop
Pro, wasn't it? Yeah.
Yeah, no, they came birthday banners.
Are you could just like make anything really welcome home.
Dad, dad went on a business trip or something.
I just like, things like that. Yeah.
Which I don't think we have an equivalent to that know, like
you'd have to go too fast signs and I'm sure they'd charge you
90 bucks or something, right? Or like, it's not the same to
just like, geez, sheets of eight and a half by 11, It was a
speaker at this conference Libby, roast Regal from the
first day who I got to introduce and then interview.
And she runs this like Museum basically at the University of
Colorado Boulder which is like full of obsolete Tak, like
another one laptop per child and apple to ease and all sorts of
things and it's Unique because it's open to people like you can
actually like play with the computers and touch them and do
stuff rather than just like seeing them and display cases.
Like I saw at the design Museum and I was in London last month
it's still surreal to see your childhood like objects in the
museum roof, roof. But anyway, like Libby's, what I
was talking to Libby about and our Q&A afterwards was like not
just the obsolete hardware and software, but these behaviors
that have become like, obsolete, or retro or even sounds.
Yeah. Sound of a modem or the sound of
a dot matrix M. And these things that are just
kind of like endangered in our 2022.
Well yes, I think I maybe maybe it was Libby but I seem to
remember there was some sort of institution that was trying to
collect, you know, examples of those sounds to preserve them
because especially like a modem, like I'll never be able to dial
in to AOL. Again it felt like our family
really made it in the world like it's like, oh we got a second
line. So you know if you would like
logged in using the modem to get onto like prodigy or America
online like somebody could actually Receive a call or
receive a fax. Did you get online?
Pretty early, considering you? You had all that Hardware?
Yeah, we got online pretty early like my parents because they
were small business owners, working hard, all the time like
they had a babysitter. So we weren't totally like, you
know, latchkey kids or anything like that but it was pretty like
hands off of like here are some books and here's some technology
and like, you know, don't kill yourself.
I'm like I did well in school. Also, it was like pretty like
hands off that can be a gift and a curse.
Both both at once when was that and what was your first service
that you were on? Was it like AOL or must have
been like early 90s? I think I might've been Prodigy
and then I think we were on CompuServe for a hot minute but
that one wasn't super user-friendly AOL.
I think that was like it was like the ascendancy of AOL and
was like, ooh like a user interface Yeah.
Yeah, it will it will really took over for a minute.
Like it's so hard to forget like, when AOL keywords were the
thing that everyone had in their ads and they mailed out those
installation discs, right? Yeah, basically, like giving
away the installation discs and then it's like, okay, 500 free
hours. How can I say?
No yeah why not? And then there's that like
triangle logo. Yeah, all sorts of like
conspiracy theories, right? It's like the pure made on the
one dollar bill, right? It's like some sort of me Sonic.
Eric Claude or whatever it is, reminder, these there's
conspiracy theories about the AOL logo being like some sort
of, like, Illuminati stuffers. I feel like Suburban Phoenix in
the 80s and 90s were a kind of a paranoid time and place.
I think it's still a current urban legends about like people
putting drugs in your kids and he's, which is Also thing that's
still happening today, but I feel like that sort of like,
satanic Panic stuff is happening.
That's like the cultural myth of the how it grew up, like
Stepford Wives Suburbia. But like, with like a
tumbleweed, you know, because it's still like at the edge of
the desert and then, like, the digital Dimension.
Oh yeah. And it's so many things fell
into that. That like, I remember being
afraid of the idea of Dungeons and Dragons when I was a kid
because that was like the most satanic thing out there and to I
think of that today yeah knowing what it is that's why it was
like such a great like blast to the past with the latest
stranger things. Oh yeah yeah.
Right I've just had a few friends like come out to me as I
go. Yeah I'm a dungeon master like
not in the DSM way but in the dungeons dragons where it's
like, oh I got into being a dungeon master during the
pandemic, like you're framing of it.
As coming out, it's a core part of their identity was a real
like ascendancy of. Nerds, I stay alight, true.
I mean that's the difference. I think between growing up in
the 80s and 90s and clearly being a nerd where you were
still kind of like marginalized. Yeah, yeah.
I was even thinking about like I had to be like 2006 or something
like that when TV was obsessed with the idea of the nerd which
I think the timing makes sense because I'm pretty sure that's
around when Big Bang Theory started but like this idea all
the nerd is actually great. We actually love the nerd.
But you know, like 90% of the time it was about making fun of
right or Goonies. Yeah sort of thing Revenge of
the Nerds but I mean your podcast is like clearly a no Maj
to Steve Urkel, right? It did.
I think that's what it's really Deschanel doing.
Steve Urkel, it's like very much.
I mean, it's essentially a scheme by which I can get many
professional designers takes on a Steve Urkel impression and
then I'll compile them all together and put out a mixtape
of. Yeah.
Or Tick Tock? That's I think that's what Kids
are doing these days. I'll be I'll be racking up the
views that that right, kids definitely know who Steve Urkel
is. I could just imagine like the,
the sort of like, Chinese agent, you know, at the data far, what
is happening and what is happening in America, I don't,
what, how do we weaponize this could this be beneficial to us
in any way? No, let's just give up.
Yeah, Where did you start to get into design?
Kind of more generally. Like, I was like making stuff
with computers. Yeah, and also growing up in the
80s and 90s in Phoenix. This is actually one cool thing
despite growing up a new like a super Republican state was that
there's still the tail end of like a lot of good public
investment in education for kids.
And so the public university near us were like my whole
family went, they had these programs.
Orchids and you could go and they would teach you like
programming. So we learned like wow Lego logo
which was like an early form of basically you could like make
animations using Code. Yeah.
It was that the little turtle that.
Yeah. So logo was like the turtle that
you can move around and draw stuff and then Lego logo was
like a spin-off of that. We could also like plug-in and
do basically what's called physical Computing today.
So like you could control Electronics, like wow, gears and
things like that, I didn't even know that existed.
I stood back then. Yeah.
It was like very like ahead of its time.
Yeah. And so that was like available
at the public university for. I don't know.
I've no idea how much it costs but it's like low cost for kids.
And then we also like as we got older that same program, which
is called CAP, I don't think it exists anymore was the center
for academic precocity sort of a spin-off for like it was sort of
like like the gifted kids program, but it happened on like
nights and weekends and over the summer precocity.
Hassan dies. The goal to get everyone in the
program beat up because that's the only reason that word.
I'm still like in touch online with some like, alumni of that
program. And we were like, you know, a
lot of us ended up in Creative Industries.
And we're like relatively well, adjusted or like, you know, our
meds work enough, that keep balanced.
But we also learned that there was a class where we got to
learn how to use a TV studio. The university has like the
Walter Cronkite School of Journalism so they had to blow
fully functioning TV studio but they let these Junior High kids
like run for a few weeks while summertime that's a terrible
mistake. But yeah we good opportunity
videos. So we think this is like seventh
or eighth grade summer. We made like a student film
called The Surreal World which was the spoof of the real world.
The MTV show. That's a now celebrated like 30
years or whatever. Yeah.
And it was something surreal happened on the set.
Where Rachel Campos Rachel Campos, who was like from the
San Francisco Season showed up on set, and we had no idea and
she didn't know that you are doing a spoof of the show, but
she was like the friend of somebody's older brother who was
visiting. And so we interviewed her in
character and the mister real world was like, you know, one
roommate was a vampire. One roommate was like a weird.
I was like, a weird hippie person.
One roommate was a cyborg. So these kids, I I have the
footage somewhere. Like digitized, I would love to
see that. Can you, can you give us a
little take on your on your weird hippie character?
Can you Channel them for me? What was their name?
I don't remember my character's name.
I definitely have like a crunchy granola part of myself still but
I just really feel like these vibrations are you doing?
It's not really vibing with me and I feel like my plants are
sad. And half of Seattle, just let
out a cry and we like 13 14, you know.
We weren't even like stoned, ready.
You just you have the inherent Stone - of 14 year olds where
everything just seems possible no matter how little sense it
makes right. And, you know, not surprisingly,
a lot of us turned out to be queer and, you know, that was a
bit. So I think it's like, you know,
like Hippie or vampire was like, you know, this is the early 90s.
So, you know, I mean, I guess Anne Rice had already done her
thing with Interview with the Vampire, but it was like, you
know, you had to use like metaphor and allegory.
Yes, it's not like gen Z or younger Millennials where they
had like Glee. Right.
That's like the new Billy Eichner, movie Bros.
With is that line, you know? It's like we had AIDS and they
had Glee. We didn't have pleased that we
had. We had the real world that we
could be vampire, hippies are cyborgs and Zahl allegory.
Makes perfect sense. Yes.
All right, I bet that broke me and I'm not sure why.
So, you're messing around at this University campus.
Like, what, where do you go from there?
I was also interested in music. So having two computers at home,
I was also making music on computers, like programming,
like, midi synthesizers and like, making beats and all of
that sort of thing. And I also grew up playing,
like, piano and stuff. So kind of fast forward to later
by like college Yura and post College.
In my early 20s, I like various This band and musical projects,
I was involved in. And that's when I got more into
graphic design like how we have to make our own stickers out,
flyers and album covers, and all of those sort of thing.
But like truly essentially the utilitarian path where it's like
I want to do this other thing but if I learn design then it
can serve that need right. Yeah.
I don't think design was really like my primary kind of interest
at that time. It was more like, okay into
music stuff and it's making like Weird movies on VHS tapes.
And so it's like, okay, if you want like a title sequence,
you're going to have to make that or you're going to have to
make your album cover so you can burn some CDs and try to sell
those. I mean what sort of Music were
you playing other than I mean it sounds like you're playing
around with like Electronics doing some like electronic
music. I was also in like a band that
was kind of like heavily influenced by like britpop or
Bjork. I mean the 90s were a great era
for music and now it's turned into like open to talking about
Music after like, old people talking about tech, we haven't
transitioned to old people yelling at cloud and I think
that's where that all falls apart.
And since we're in Seattle, you know, I will also shout out like
the whole grunge see and like, I was listening to Nirvana and
Pearl Jam and Soundgarden and all that sort of stuff back then
site pretty. Eclectic tastes and so Random
bands I've been in, like it. When I lived in Japan, I played
in a cover band, with these two Japanese girls, who did like Ani
DiFranco, Oh and cranberries covers, oh really?
And they like they sing in perfect English and then they
would like afterwards or backstage to be like I don't
English no good you know, stop it and then also played in like
a salsa band in Japan because there was this Mexican guy who
owned a bar in our town where I was I was an English teacher as
my day job in Japan after right after college.
So I did that for a little bit. What made you want to do that?
Like That's a big transition. Yeah, I originally wanted to be
like a film major. Yeah, I started freshman year at
Arizona State, but then I transferred to Harvard and an
Arizona State, you could being a film major, really meant like a
film of studies Majors. You could watch movies and like
right about them but there really wasn't much of a
production program, but then I was also, like, just interested
in political stuff and so when I went to Harvard, I ended up
being a political science major, I thought, oh, I could maybe be
a Or something, a pretty nice word.
Yeah, especially being Taiwanese Taiwanese American but like
being from a country. That's not really recognized as
a country by a lot of other countries.
And and all of that is psycho. Could I do something like that?
Yeah. And so I was also like learning
languages, like foreign languages in college and before
that. And so I was like, oh, I took
Japanese, why don't I go to Japan?
And, like, improve my Japanese and there was a Japanese
government program. That's called the jet program.
Um, Japan exchange and teaching. Oh, yes, I've heard of that.
Yeah, yeah. So I applied but I was actually
waitlisted. And since this was an early
2000s by the time I was out of college, I don't know if they
even emailed or had her email addresses then, but I had
graduated from Harvard and my parents like came to my
graduation and then we did like a family road trip for like a
week or oh, the East Coast before, we went back to Arizona
and I didn't have a job and have anything.
And when we got back to my parents house, there was a mess.
Sage on my parents answering machine.
Saying, if you want to go to Japan, like call the Embassy
now, because we have a space for you, which is great because I
like, I could be employed. And so, few months later, I was
on a plane to Tokyo. And then, to my small town in
the south of Japan, where I taught English by day and then
played music at night and did some freelance writing as well
about like, Japanese culture and food and stuff like that.
Wow. Have you done any like freelance
writing before that? Or was that kind of The Genesis
of that, I was like, worked on the student paper in junior
high. And then in high school, the
Arizona Republic, which is like the newspaper of record in
Arizona, this isn't a big deal like, yeah, they had a like, a
teen page. And they would basically, like
recruit teenagers like high school kids to like, write
articles and like so I was like a music reviewer for the Arizona
Republic, like a teen music reviewer.
And they would just like to give you CDs or give you concert.
A new like what makes them and write for that.
So that was kind of cool so that was also another potential
things like okay major in political science and then maybe
be like a journalist, it was still like kind of
communications or connecting with people in different ways
but I still kind of figuring it out.
Yeah. I mean you had a teen dream job
demands like totally free music to do is write about how cool it
is. This is bat before, like the
collapse of Journalism as a business model and music and
music and all of those things. I mean we we grew up having the
paper like the actual newspaper every morning.
Yeah. Which I you know like it's so
rare that you even see them around now, so you're you're in
Japan. Now, where do you go from there?
Like what's your next step? So I do the Japan thing for
three years which is great. This is around the time that
Facebook launched has ever heard of it.
Yeah, I didn't know Zuckerberg or any of those guys.
There are a couple of years younger than me at Harvard but
they launched it. Like the year after I graduate.
So at first, it's like only Harvard students and alumni.
So I was like, I'm like user, my Facebook user numbers like in
the hundred. So I'm well, within the first
like couple thousand people who joined Facebook, that's wild,
but I was also on like Myspace and and all that sort of stuff.
I don't know what the point of this was based on this show,
don't have to have a point. I think it's just like this.
Social media angle, right? I think is became like another
canvas for making stuff so like learning some CSS.
So you could like freak out your Myspace page at was a lot of
people's entryway and to web design.
Yes, I feel like I need there to be a horrible song.
That plays every time you visit your Myspace page, right?
Or like how do I do that? Yeah looking for like weird
gifts and things like that make it as unreadable as possible.
Yeah, there's really like a golden age.
Out west of social media, and the internet, or like Geo
cities. Right?
I feel like there was a real sort of like weirdness to it.
All ya, folks were still figuring out the medium and it
was very experimental and obviously accessibility did not
matter know yet. I think a lot of those websites
were more accessible than current websites and runaways
and then there was also like that flash era which I learned a
lot of people have passion for that so I shouldn't say it but I
I mean, I started in web design right at the tail end of The
Flash era and a lot of that design era was sort of reacting
to how broke. I guess, some of those websites
had gotten buttons all we you don't need to know where those
are. Yeah.
Just maybe it's helpful to kind of connect the dots on my life
and career and we'll come back to flash is basically so after
Japan, I land in New York City because I didn't want to go back
to Arizona and this is 2006. So this is For the financial
crisis are so it was still a lot of tech money and stuff floating
around. I ended up getting a job off of
Craigslist, basically doing like campaigns and content for like a
non-profit. As a worked at a couple
different nonprofits in New York City doing like essentially like
email marketing stuff and like you know, graphics for stuff
like that and trying to combine my like political science degree
into that. Yeah, it works for like a human
rights organization for a year. And then after that I was like,
okay, I don't Necessarily want to be a diplomat because I was a
little too buttoned up and it was a little too artsy for that
but I like the comms and the design aspect of that.
So I went to NYU for grad school at this interdisciplinary.
Master's program called ITP the interactive telecommunications
program, which was like spun out of the film school back in the
late 70s, when video was like The Innovation from its since
like been basically about like the recently possible.
So when I was there in like 08 to 2010, when I graduated it was
kind of like Some creative coding stuff and I learned
flash, you know, and like after grafting script every this will
never get old. And I like, I mean, I knew it
enough to actually teach a flash class at the College of Staten
Island. And now I couldn't like write a
line of action script to save my life.
No, no idea how anybody made anything.
Yeah, it's not like riding a bicycle.
You can't just hop right on and make yourself a Homestar Runner.
Cartoon it. Yeah.
I mean, looking back, you know, given my background with my
parents running, the computer store in all of that.
I should have just learned like Fortran or something, like, for
Fortran or like, COBOL or whatever, they could have made a
fortune, like, remember during the pandemic, when, like New
Jersey or a few other states were like, oh yeah, we need
Fortran and COBOL. Yeah, for those of you who don't
know, those are ancient programming language.
It's like, it's like even book or by from the 50s, right?
Yeah, I mean they were literally for programming Mainframe
computer. Yeah.
And so much of our infrastructure in the United
States, is so out of date, like the IRS is still using COBOL
extensively, right? Or a friend of mine, is like, a
pro was a product manager at Ticketmaster.
And I think Ticketmaster only switched over off of those
mainframes like a few years ago, it was like a relatively recent
thing. Well, I'm glad that they finally
decided to start investing their fees and something beneficial.
Right? What were they doing with them
before? Just throwing them into a
Scrooge? McDuck Vault and swimming around
it. I mean, I don't think the
artists were seeing - no, no, I mean, you know, when you're the
Ticketmaster, then you're in charge of the ticket, right?
So, I mean, it was like, the 90s you had the webmaster and then
there was like the ticket. Yeah, and there's like multiple
webmasters, right? But only one Ticketmaster I
Delight in sometimes seeing that on LinkedIn profiles.
People who were properly webmasters than the 90s.
It's such a weird era. I wasn't webmaster well into the
2000s because when I moved back to the States from Japan, I got
involved in the Alumni Association for the jet program,
and there's a pretty like title of my community because it's
were sponsored by the Japanese government, but we're also like
our own independent chapters and we try to Foster like cultural
understanding between like the u.s. and Japan or whatever
country that you attended the jet program from in Japan.
When I first moved to New York, that was like one of the first
communities I got involved in with Jet.
And so, they roped me in like, they knew.
I knew some enough web stuff and like you are webmasters.
I was, I was webmaster for like, over a decade and we are handing
you the special sacred laid? Yeah.
Decade like way after it was like a thing.
You're kind of getting into the design game in New York.
You're bouncing around between different nonprofits.
What sort of is your trajectory from there?
When I went back to school I actually was At Human Rights
Watch part-time until like money, dried up.
I think like, I think Bernie Madoff was one of their big
donors or or something like that, or they had invent, I
don't know. Like, do you know, don't quote
me on that one, but a lot of their funders and donors were
like involved in finance somehow whether or not directly with
Bernie Madoff or, you know, whatever.
So there was like no longer any funding for my part-time
position. While I was in school and I was
like, hmmm, just maybe just focus on being in grad school
for a while and then after a while, it's like, okay, really
have to Work to live in New York City.
And so ended up reconnecting with somebody had worked with
before who's starting a creative agency.
So my second year of grad school, I landed at an agency
called purpose. They're still around, but there
are like owned by a larger conglomerate now and was like,
the first designer. I was like the intern but also
the only in-house designer who in a five-person company.
It was like a to Ikea table company at the time now.
They're like legit have like, Alfred Avenue office and Oberman
Miller tables. Yeah, there's yeah, Aeron
chairs. I think we really made it when
we have like Aeron chairs, although it was like, in a
former chinatown's Sweatshop to be honest.
Good. That was like, huge rate,
energy, huge but only one bathroom.
So yeah, worked at purpose for a while.
Actually it like had some great opportunities that they were
expanding rapidly, working with nonprofits, but also companies
on like social initiatives. So, I've got to work like an
India for like a week. That's a good.
A Germany, all over Europe helps, open up the Brazil
office. So if the Rio for like six
months, wow, well, that's learning something in
Portuguese. Yeah, so did some of that, what
was it like going from being the only designer?
And I imagine having quite a workload to like, managing
people. And yeah, I mean, I was more
involved in like the recruitment because there was just like,
like trying to hire designers but also tech people.
Yeah. And that was like not something.
I had any background in was just like, But I was like kind of a
like social butterfly in a way and also like knew how to post
on lists and things like that. So they trusted me with that and
yeah it was kind of a weird like identity crisis to because there
was it was an agency run by a lot of X McKinsey folks.
So is it started out as like strategy and communication
strategy and then like branched out to its own like creative
department. So brought on some folks don't
like I was like still in school and so I graduated and they gave
me a full-time position, but I also got to learn more about
like the strategy side on the dealing with client side.
It was so small for the first couple years that like everybody
did a little bit of everything, but then I think I was being
pulled more and more away from the design and the creative side
to be like, oh, do you want to be a middle manager?
No, but I'd rather like just make things and so that's how,
like, fusa started that. And my now, husband who's my
business partner and co-founder at Musa, I was laid off.
He was also working in Consulting and trying to get.
He got a job offer to work in fintech, but then that company
was literally acquired while he was like, loading, the U-Haul to
move, o for that job. And then it sort of fell
through. So he was unemployed
unexpectedly. I had a friend who needed me to
fill in, for his teaching job because he was working on his
startup or something. I was like, okay, I'll take a
teaching gig part-time for a semester that was enough to,
like, pay the basic Bills and then we like started our design
studio. So we could be more Hands-On and
not like be middle, managers, or work for McKinsey people.
I imagine that must be still quite an undertaking, especially
unexpectedly to be starting your own Studio.
This is about 2013, okay. And the real impetus was
actually Hurricane Sandy. That's a problem.
It was a problem. I was we hadn't.
We were dating and started this company together but We weren't
living together yet and my apartment was down in the
financial district. And the building flooded, oh, a
block and a half from the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel for
people who know New York City. But it's basically it's the
tunnel that connects the bottom of Manhattan to Brooklyn.
And what happened was even though it's like far enough away
from the rivers, it filled up with, like, rainwater and stuff
like that, and there was so much water that it backed out, and
the water came out and flooded a bunch of buildings and my former
apartment building It was like a 1920, something building used to
be the headquarters of a shipping company cuz at the
bottom of the island and it was also like, all sorts of
grandfathered things, that weren't up to code, like the
electrical was in the basement. So all of that flooded at first,
they were like a, you're not going home for like six months.
Yeah. And so, that's like up in the
East Village, with my boy, friend, and business partner and
then it was like just some surreal stuff.
Like there was a conference that I had been asked to attend as
part of my position at Purpose that other agency that was in
Italy and it was scheduled literally like a week after
Hurricane Sandy, hit New York City's.
I went from like sitting in the East Village with no electricity
and no hot water to, you know, the airport still works and it's
like, I'm not going to stay here.
I'm going to, I'm going to Italy.
So it's like here at this conference, with all of these,
like, Urban Design, people talking about like Urban
resilience at like, you know, Lago di Como Lake Como which, if
you're, if you're a Our Wars fan.
That is where like Anakin and padmé have their wedding secret
weapon. Oh like sort of we're in love.
See, and that's Lake Como in Italy and it's also where like
George Clooney has his house. Wow.
So it's yeah, so it's like all sorts of like first world
problems and this like when your life is that surreal for a
month, you're like starting your own Design Studio.
Seems like not a big deal. Yeah.
Why. The world is that got another
five like people want to invite me to Italy to talk about Urban
Design. Resilience.
Like so I guess I can do things. I would say that.
That's a pretty good indicator. You're kind of off to a jump
start here with fusa. Like, I mean, how did you
position yourselves early on? Like, it was really
experimental. So, my partner doesn't come from
a traditional design background, either, he studied psychology at
Harvard and then also studied public policy at NYU.
Now he's back at school at MIT, doing all sorts of space
futurism stuff. You actually spoke, he spoke at
the IGA conference as well for professional qualified reasons,
not for new participating, but he's a like, a design futurist
systems designer at the MIT media lab.
That's so cool. But he also liked in high
school. He worked for like a lawyer.
He was like a paralegal in high school and over the Summers and
for a while. So he actually actually knew how
to like, run a Business, which was super helpful.
Can see I went to Art School like my degree was, you know, at
NYU Tisch and so I didn't know how to do any of that sort of
stuff. So he was able to do that, as
well as some of like the strategy and the client facing
stuff. And I was kind of the design
generalist in that sense because I had my fingers and all sorts
of different things. So we did like some branding
work and some like UI ux work for like mostly startups and
some nonprofits things like that and over the years, we Kind of
evolved a bit. Both of us were teaching at the
parts of the school of design for a bit.
I'm still affiliated with Parsons and we got involved with
designing for city government, like some service design and
design research work on like public services in New York.
We were invited to do some work in Rwanda as well.
Okay, the Rwandan government but also for the genocide Memorial
there about like Museum, experience and storytelling kind
of stuff. Those got kind of varied the
kinds of stuff we were doing and then The most recent Incarnation
before grad school really took my husband away from the
day-to-day stuff of the practice and covid kind of shut
everything down. The last few years before that
we were doing a lot of corporate training and facilitation
basically like, teaching corporate leaders, like design
thinking, or design, centered methods of creativity.
So, it's kind of like adult daycare day, like, some
boondoggle e stuff but also some Like strategic planning session
but like designer as facilitator, I'm just trying to
help business people think a little bit more creatively.
And yeah, not just about rectangles or whatever business,
right? And you know, spreadsheets and
all of that. Yeah.
And also a, I need the numbers. Yeah.
The ROI and all of that and that's where like working with
the ex Mackenzie people kind of came in handy.
It's all your God. Yes it can like is there a more
number e please and do this sort of like business stuff?
Can like communicate and PowerPoint and do all of that
sort of stuff. But we also did this kind of
work with communities that facilitation we in Rwanda.
Like we got to work with genocide survivors, to really
like turn their ideas into the concepts.
For like we designing parts of the museum experience.
We worked with the Highline for a project where they have this
network of people that they've convened all across North
America who want to do like not like copycats of The High Line,
but other projects were, there's some sort of like Like old
infrastructure that they want to turn into something else.
Like there's a LA River Project which yes, that's a big thing.
Which for folks who don't know, like the LA River is a real
thing, but it's like covered. It's been paved in concrete.
Yeah. Seen it in like action movie.
Chase scenes as well as like some like, you know, 90s hip-hop
video. It looks like someone took a
gutter and made it really big really big.
It's mostly like a trickle for most of the year, but because
Allah is the desert like, if it Aims at like floods and goes all
the way to the Pacific Ocean. So it's one of those things
where it's like you know people do stuff down there unofficially
but how can you make that a park but also get people the hell out
of there. If it like rains and floods.
Yeah, it's such a hard problem because I mean those things can
be I mean we have that in Vegas to where I grew up.
Yeah I think in Arizona they're called like a Roy OS, right?
Yes yes, yes look. She's like you know, it sounds
like a they would like name a lot of these fancy Asians for
like Arroyo Vista. Yeah, so decorative Spanish.
But if you like flood will actually like floodplain because
it looks like Dry River. Yeah.
That God if you live in a place that is named after one of those
and the translation is something that is truly ridiculous.
Please do email me. I tell people not to do that,
but I would love to hear about that one because I think those
Very, very fun. So, how did you get into the the
podcasting game to begin with? That was really more like, my
music background. So I like knew how to do some of
this audio stuff. Yeah.
Editing. And Mike's, and all of that
boosted had a short-lived podcast.
I was like an interview podcast about creativity community in
the things that matter most called fusa cast, and we just
interviewed people and hung out. It was a great way to like
Network. Yeah.
And me people, which is fun but it was just like a lot of work.
Work. And then at AIG I was not
actually initially hired to produce podcasts.
Really, I responded to an AI GA email where they were
advertising? What was then a part time
position to be the design education manager.
I attended aiga design Educators conferences before.
Like I got to go to one in Hawaii, back in the day.
I presented a paper there. Wow.
And some of the branding work I did in Brazil at purpose.
So that was my one of my first like aiga.
Experiences. And so I was on the email list
and basically, they were looking for somebody to come in part
time to be like a liaison to other design Educators, which is
like, okay, I'm doing that. And David had gone back to
school at that point. So it's like I could use some
extra like regular work and not have to be drumming up like
freelance stuff all the times I'll do that.
This is during the time when AIG had an interim executive
director and so we were like experimenting with a lot of
things. Or like, I don't even remember
the exact chronology, but I think we were, like, waiting for
some things to happen. And I was like, I have capacity
in my, like, weekly hours. Why don't we just do something
else? You know, the other part of my
position was to basically be an ambassador for AI GA s design
Futures. Yeah, research, which was
published back in 2018. It was research led by Meredith
Davis. All the research was done and
published by the time, they hired me, but they just needed
somebody to like get it out there in different.
Arms and make it like, less academic.
And even though I do teach, you know, design, I'm not like an
academic in that sense. And so part of the response was
to do the first AIG a podcast which was called design feature.
Now which was like also interview based but talking
about some of these themes of where our profession is headed.
Yeah. And then covid happened and they
asked me to come on full-time to host webinars and produce online
content and stuff like that. So now again, It's a mix like my
design education background with like my content background and
take a break from having to live off of client work this, my main
gig it's a big role because I mean you also now have in-person
events to deal with to. Yeah.
Like this whole thing which is huge.
I am shocked at how big this is even.
Yeah, it's so surreal. Yeah.
And like to just even Beyond a program with like Debbie Millman
and Brian like so surreal, that's an impressive thing to do
like, And I think people are hungry for it, you know.
Yeah. Designers like Community, they
like Community. It's not just content, right?
That's the whole. Like I think content has become
so banal, right? Especially that like a driven,
big Tech talks about, you know, yeah.
And there's that side of it or the, you know, teens doing
pranks which both sides are quite bad.
Yeah, it's like I mean content I guess is part of my job title
but really it is about like connecting with Community
whether it's online or now in person again and the kinds of
experiences we have around that content, right?
Yeah. If people want to find your
podcasts and your work, where would they go?
I am infinitely Google Google for being a boy and that that's
an easier to say a word but nobody's uses being as a verb.
Sorry it was all really try. He tried so hard you know, it's
and I right here to yeah the right here I could be yahud
bills out there. In the in the adjacent building,
looking at us just crying. It's like being could also
sponsor this podcast, I think they've given up on Bing but
yeah just look for you can actually just search for me as
leash on likely like Bruce Lee Sean like Sean Connery or Wang
Hua and G is my last name and you can find me although now I
have to like update my personal website because that's woefully
out of date. As all designers personal
websites 10. Yeah or just look for aiga
design wherever you get Podcast for our aiga stuff.
We're wrapping up the season and I think we're going to take the
rest of the year off and we'll in figure out some things and
maybe new formats for 2023. And there's there's a couple
different podcast that go in that fee so you can get a lot of
different stuff sort of mixed in.
Well thank you, thank you so much for agreeing to be on this
very dumb show and taking some time out of your very, very busy
schedule at this. Friends.
Yeah, thank you Sean. This is like the most fun I've
had in a while. Like obviously there are a lot
of very serious and important conversations.
We need to have about design which we had on the main stage,
but it's good to just like have some conversations about the
laws as well. I'm trying to find where the
hell I put my stuff that oh, hey, I found it if you like this
show, why not? Subscribe to it, and The player
that you use for podcast playing, there's so many options
for that and this shows on all of them, you can just search for
the words. Did I do that on those?
But if you really want to have a good time, may I suggest
visiting our website, did I do that design, which was designed
by yours truly, and is chock full of wonderful things,
including some good good images that go along with each and
every episode of the show. Manny.
Now, if you want those images, delivered less and less
frequently to you on various social media Services.
You can So get to those from that website.
This is, did I do that? I'm Sean Schumacher.
And as we always say at the end of every episode did I do that?
Thank you so much. Okay.
Bye. Very good.
Very good article. If you want to edit though, you
can do. So on the Fly by saying the word
rutabaga, there is very little chance that we'll talk about
riotous rutabaga is the safe word.
Yeah, thank you for phrasing, it that way.
I'm always reluctant to do that. This is a kink friendly podcast.
I have a friend from an acquaintance from grad school,
who used to work as a professional dominatrix?
Really? Like one of her clients.
Safe words, Chaka Khan. Conversation.
Oh my God, Chaka Khan. That's a really good one.
But then you lose out on all the important Chaka, Khan
conversations that you can have read during.
And how do you even say, Chaka, calm, like a ball gag in your
mouth. I have no idea.
Yeah, that doesn't quite work.