On this episode of This is Design School, we talked with Senior Visual Designer Megan Ruhlach and Director of Innovation Quba Michalski from Blink, a research and design firm in Seattle, Washington. At the Seattle Interactive Conference, we sat down and talked with Megan and Quba about their uncommon career paths, their work with NASA, and their experiences in today’s fast changing industry.

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Chad:

We’re excited to be here live at the Seattle Interactive Conference! (applause)

Jp:

Quba and Megan, thank you so much for joining us on This is Design School.

Quba:

Thank you for having us.

Megan:

Yes, thanks.

Jp:

We’re so excited to do this live podcast in front of a full audience. And, besides that, we’re also excited to have this opportunity to interview you two amazing creatives.

I’d like to maybe get started by getting a little bit of your backstory. Where is it that you came from? How did you end up here today?

Megan:

Yeah, I’ll go first.

I am from the Midwest. And, from a young age I just got into art, into crafts… Anything I could make, I wanted to learn all of it. And, I got a lot of attention for it, which only fueled my fire. I think anytime I’m getting affirmation, I’m all in. So, I kept going with that, kept going through school and started, you know, really interested in my art classes. And, as a senior, I got enrolled in this AP art class. I was like, “This is going to be how I figure out what I’m going to do with my life.” And, I failed miserably. It was this self led, you decide your own path, art class, and I just couldn’t do it. I realized I needed assignments. I needed parameters. I needed something to hone my brain in, otherwise it was like the world had too many options and I just couldn’t do anything.

Fast forward through that, my art teacher is trying to help me along. She’s like, “Why don’t you really get into digital art?” Like, “We’ve got the computers here, you should like learn Photoshop, do the whole Adobe thing.” And I wanted nothing to do with it. I was like, “Computers? I want to be making stuff with my hands.” Like, “I want nothing to do with the computer.” And so, pushed back on her. And in my effort to figure out what I should do as a career, I thought, “Maybe I should do interior design. Then I’ll be in the space and I’ll like be able to…” I think I just thought it was like HGTV where you’re like painting walls in 48 hours…

Chad:

Yeah, where it’s all material based.

Megan:

Yes, exactly. I thought as a contractor just, like, hammering things down.

So, fast forward to school, and I’m on the computer all day long. And, not even the cool computer. I’m on an HP, just like doing CAD. And, I didn’t love it. But, what I did love about it was the renderings. I loved making the presentations that showed that type of work. What I realized, the third year in, was I just didn’t love the interior design part of it. I went to the senior show to see all the other disciplines and I’m looking at the graphic designers and I’m like, “Holy crap, I should have done that.” Like, “That looks so cool.” Now I know how to use the computer and I would want to use it in that way.

So, I did grew up in a really frugal home and my parents were being so generous paying for all of my school. And, I was like, “Well, I can’t change now.” Like, “I’m three years in, this will be an extra year. I won’t be with my friends anymore.”

Jp:

Sure. Sure.

Megan:

So, I just got the degree in Interior Design and figured I’d figure out what happens from here.

So, my best friend and I decided to move out to Seattle. I had reached out to a few architecture firms trying to figure out, you know, what I could do with my love for the renderings, the graphics, and everything. And, I found this architect working out of her basement and she was starting to grow her own business. And, she said, “You know, I need another person. I can’t commit to a full time. But, I could commit to 12 hours a week.” And, I was like, “Yeah, I’ll do it! $25 an hour!”

Chad:

Wait. So, you moved across the country for a 12 hour week job?

Listen on

Megan:

I did. And, my best friend moved without any jobs. So, we were miserable.

Jp:

Whoa!

Chad:

You are so brave.

Megan:

We lived in a one bedroom apartment in lower Queen, for $1,200 dollars a month. And, I lived in the kitchen and living room. So, that’s how you can make it work. There’s definitely…

Jp:

That sounds like junior designers.

Megan:

Yup. Yeah! We’ll figure it out.

So, fast forward through that job. I worked with her. We weren’t in the basement for too long. We actually made it to a studio in Capitol Hill, and I nannied her kids on the side because she felt so guilty about only giving me 12 hours a week. So, I’d do some design work, go watch her kids… And, it ended up being that I wasn’t helpful at all with interiors. I was like, “Do not put Megan in CAD. You’re going to hate it.” So, I just helped her with her marketing, the renderings. Anything that was going out to clients, I was the final touch on it to make sure that it all looked good. And then, also helped with her website. So, that was my first stab at trying to figure out visual design or UX design, was like, “How can we make this website great?

Her nephew, at the same time, was learning how to code. So, it was this great, like, two people who have no clue what they’re doing. Let’s do a bunch of weird things. And, we did some parallax that made no sense. It was definitely a moment of exploration that, when I look back on it now, was pretty strange.

All:

(laugh)

Megan:

But, it at least gave me like the confidence to try and figure it out. But, it also made me feel like a fraud, right? There’s that feeling of, I went to school for interior design and I have no clue about what actual type, like, how to use a type ramp, how to pick a good font. I just felt like every decision I was making wasn’t rooted in any formal training, so it must be wrong.

Chad:

Yeah, it was like imposter syndrome.

Megan:

Yeah. And, I hear that a lot of people feel that way. It’s like, until you’ve done it enough or have gotten enough affirmation, you truly feel like, you don’t know what you’re doing. Or, why is someone paying me to do that? I think I felt like that a lot.

So, in the end with that job, I think I was there for around three years. And, at some point, that feeling just was so persistent. I had architects who just thought everything I did was amazing. And, that was great at first. But, at some point, I was like, “You only think this is amazing because you don’t know what I’m doing.” (laughs)

So, I was going in for this annual review with them. And, I had that… I think we’ve all felt that pit in your stomach where you just know that you should probably move on but you don’t quite know when or how. And, it just hit me that morning. Literally 30 minutes before this meeting, like, you gotta quit today. Today’s the day! You’ve got no plans.

So, I think I’ve also talked to others where you need that, like, I’ve got nothing else, like in the plan, in the queue. But, I need to have nothing to be able to figure it out. I need that pressure.

Chad:

Yeah.

Megan:

And, if anything that I’ve realized from my story, that’s a reoccurring theme. Like, I need the pressure to actually make me make a decision or do something.

Chad:

So, you just like, walked into a performance review, and we’re like, “I’m quitting!”

Megan:

Well, in a few more words than that. But, yeah!

Jp:

Surprise!

Megan:

Basically, I was, like, dancing around the fact that it wasn’t working as well as I wanted it to, and maybe I should not be there anymore. And they… I mean, the architect, the basement architect, that we can call her… She truly was like my mother out here. So, I think she felt like it was, she was so supportive in my career moving forward. I knew that she wouldn’t take that offensively and she was actually very helpful in getting me jobs, or, like, freelance from there.

Chad:

Yeah. It was time.

Megan:

Yeah, yeah. She supported it.

So, from there I freelanced for a bit. And, that company that I left was now a partner, she partnered with her best friend. And, her best friend said, “I’ve got this friend who has her own company with her husband, and they do this thing called UX. And they’re looking for a visual designer.” Like, “I think you should meet with them.”

And, here I am with my print portfolio, then this hacked website, and I was like, “Who would want to meet with me?” I was considering going to a General Assembly, or getting education somewhere else. And she’s like, “Well, just meet with her. I seriously had no expectations for this. I was like, “I’m gonna show them my portfolio, walk out the door and say, ‘Thanks for your time.'” And, just expected nothing from it.

Well, they called me that afternoon to say that they wanted to hire me—which was one of the greater shocks of my life, actually. (laughs)

And, they took me—she’s actually right here, Laura Blanchard everybody—took me in, in this small, it was great, to be at a small company, right? Because you get your hand held in a lot of ways. But, you also have the ability to touch way more than a small part of the project. So, I learned everything at that small company. And, from there, we were there for two years. And now, she had worked at Blink previously, and she brought me and my other co-worker to Blink. So, the three of us are now in this bigger company together. And, I think that, maybe, was the time that the fraud feeling went away. Like, I was learning the whole process with them and feeling great about it. But, also because it was so small, I was like, we’re not actually doing it. Like we’re just still making it up. And, it wasn’t until I went to Blink, and everyone’s like, “Wow, you guys like really know the process!” And, I feel like I got the affirmation, and the clients, that made me feel like I might actually know what I’m doing now.

Jp:

You found your fit.

Megan:

Yeah. There’s still plenty more to learn. But, it’s definitely validating to realize, in a bigger company, that you do understand the process.

Chad:

There’s like comfort in the scale of it. Like there’s lots of people doing it.

Megan:

Yeah, I guess I just needed more affirmation, you know. We’ve come full circle!

Jp:

Quba, how about your story?

Quba:

Yeah, first of all, I just gotta acknowledge, you know, we rehearsed that and there was no timer. There was no bright lights shining. This is terrifying.

Jp:

Don’t worry, just think of like just you and me talking.

All:

(laugh)

Quba:

Yeah. So, listening to Megan, you know, it looks like this natural progression of step after step, everything being a linear story. And, it’s always just a collision of different events. That’s only in hindsight, you know, create a solid narrative. And, when I look back at my story, I think I’ve been lucky enough to be at a number of really important historical, geopolitical, and technological intersections—when big changes were happening.

So, I was born in Poland in mid-70s. I was on the other side of the iron curtain. I had, you know, very different upbringing than most of the people that I work with right now. And, and my relationship to technology was diametrically different from from what Megan just talked about. My stepfather was a poster designer. My mother was a fashion designer. My uncle was a photographer. Another uncle was a painter. There was a constant parade of artists throughout the house and design was this thing that was just happening every day on the kitchen table or, you know, half of my bedroom would be requisitioned because we’re building some sort of poster that we need to photograph.

Chad:

Sounds like every designer’s childhood dream.

Quba:

Sounds like it, doesn’t it?

All:

(laugh)

Quba:

Meanwhile, technology, we had no access to nothing. The first computer that I had, I built myself out of a shoe box, cardboard that I painted a keyboard on, and a little screen where I would put my notebook and hand write software in and, you know, draw the graphs off what I imagined that software to execute.

Chad:

Say you were a legitimate hand coder.

Unknown Speaker
Yes, I was extremely smug about it.

All:

(laugh)

Quba:

Especially when I had the chance to validate that some of that code actually even worked.

Chad:

Oh, wow!

Quba:

Some of it didn’t. But, nice try.

Chad:

Yeah.

Quba:

So, you know that was the early beginning. And then, suddenly, pretty much overnight, Poland went from a communist state to a democratic one. From a heavy, kind of, communism inspired socialism to capitalism. This literally happened a few blocks from where I was born and raised. I mean, I’ve seen tanks on the streets. I’ve seen, you know, people demonstrating and liberating the country. And, suddenly we were open to the world.

A year or two later, I liked it. I just decided, “Hey, you know, I’ve lived enough in in this place. It’s fascinating. But, there’s so much more world to see.”

So, I started traveling, and very quickly I realized how much my perspective and understanding of everyday life started changing as I was encountering different cultures, you know. So, it was encountering the Western culture in Germany, France, and Belgium. Then, living for a few months in Egypt, and then ending up studying Design in Turkey, of all places. You know, understanding how people in Middle East perceive the world and the same things. It was just a completely eye opening experience.

At the same time, I was really lucky that when I entered university, those were the last days of traditional analog design. So, I still learned how to set type with actual, you know, metal pieces and carvings, or do it with Letraset. And, that’s what we did on the first year. By the time I reach the fourth year of undergrad, it was all done on the computers. By the time I finished my master’s degree the internet came around, and I started teaching myself how to do interactive. So, I studied traditional graphic design, or “desktop publishing” as it was called those days. And, for those of you who are not as old as me, it’s called publishing these days.

All:

(laugh)

Quba:

So, I studied that. It was fun for a short while. Then I got bored, I discovered internet, and that was the next amazing thing. So, I learned how to switch from CMYK into RGB and how to make things move and how to do hyperlinks. I taught myself again how to code and how to create HTML web pages. I did that for some years.

Then, I discovered motion design. And that was the next big shift. I was like, “Okay, interactive pages. Bad. Motion design. Good.” Let’s do a complete one-eighty, try something else. For a decade, I ran a motion design studio, started moving more into visual effects, into film, into live action, etc. And, at that time, another sort of revolution started happening. In Turkey, from very Western country started going, quite radicalized, and changing direction that was influencing the way design was consumed. So, as the society was becoming more radical, people were becoming less and less open to innovation in design and cool, hip stuff. And they, you know, things that were being pushed forward were traditional family values, and very kind of, you know, family around the kitchen table discussing a product. That’s a typical commercial. So, I realized, “Okay, not a good place to be. This is not what I want to do in my life.”

And, I got a job offer from the studio in San Francisco called Bot & Dolly. And, that was another just huge moment in my life. So, what Bot & Dolly did, is we would buy decommissioned robots from Detroit’s car factories, hack them so that you didn’t need to be a roboticist, didn’t need a PhD to operate them. All you needed to know is how to animate camera in Autodesk Maya. And, with that knowledge, you could move this 20 ton machine, you know, and film impossible shots. I mean, I think one of our claims to fame was filming the movie Gravity. All the live action shots where shots using our equipment and methods developed in the studio. I did this for a while, went into, you know, all the new tech. Motion capture drones, lasers, all that crazy stuff. Then, Google noticed our company and bought us out. And, when we became a part of Google, we were offered to transfer to other departments. And, I was already experimenting with virtual reality at the time. Said “Okay, let’s do VR.” Moved to the department that was, at that point, just debuted Google Cardboard. I don’t know if you remember this little thing. We developed a 360 stereoscopic camera together. It was another amazing time in my life. Ah. And then, three years later, I had enough. Again, because…

Chad:

You got bored with VR? (laughs)

Quba:

Nah. You can’t get bored with VR. Yeah, I got bored with with corporate culture of Google, I think.

Chad:

Ahh, yeah.

Quba:

Moved up to Seattle, freelanced for a short while, and then in pretty similar fashion to you, got introduced to some people that were then another company, now are a part of Blink, started freelancing together. And, three months ago we made it official.

Chad:

Wow.

Jp:

That’s so cool.

Quba:

Yeah, it’s been quite a journey.

Chad:

And, now you’re the Director of Innovation, which seems very fitting as you’ve kind of been through the whole cycle of all these different mediums.

Quba:

Yeah, they give me all the latest toys, and say, “Quba, figure out what can we do with them?” It’s pretty amazing.

Chad:

Yeah.

Jp:

There seems to be so many similarities between the two of you creatively-wise, and somewhat different with technology, you know, like, a rejection of technology and an embrace of technology when there was no technology. I’m wondering if there has been an opportunity for collaboration at Blink for the two of you.

Megan:

Yeah, we actually just… Wow! We didn’t expect this question.

All:

(laugh)

Megan:

We just finished up a project with NASA. There were a couple other key people on it, most specifically, Heidi was the UX designer on it. But, this was a great chance for Quba and I to, kind of, mesh those two worlds, right? Like, he’s coming at it able to execute all the, like, artistic vision that we had in this motion space, and he knows all the tech to do it. And, I kind of came at it from the artistic perspective, like, “How do we need these things to move?” And, just the the gel of that relationship was a great project for us to first have together.

So, this is a project for NASA. Obviously, they have the entire solar system modeled to scale. And I… They’ve been, I mean, I saw a TED talk of it in 2011, where the UI looks the exact same as it does right now. (laughs) And, I mean, it’s amazing how much is in it. Every rover, every satellite that they’ve launched is in there and modeled to scale. But, the only people that can use it are the few that designed it, and the few that are showing others how to use it. But, from there, you just can’t access all of the great information that’s in there.

So, it was an exercise of, you know, updating the controls and UI, updating the navigation, how you find everything. And then, what you’re seeing here, is this idea of scrollytelling, where if you’re a person who doesn’t know anything about how to navigate around, or where playing in space would be, you can start these stories that allow you to scroll and it moves the satellite and it moves from planet to planet in a really laid back experience. That was something that we knew if this were going to be accessible to anyone other than scientists and enthusiasts and those who already are interested in space, it needs to be something that’s easy to consume and enjoy from a, like, really low effort.

Jp:

There’s this visual that you have up here. That looks amazing. I just want to play with it.

Megan:

Oh, yeah. Maybe in a couple years. (laughs)

Chad:

So, what was it like working together? I mean, you’re bringing not only very different skills and mindsets, but also technology together. You had the brief of making this thing really accessible. And then, like, thinking about, you know, the strengths you were bringing, obviously, you’re bringing the visuals and you’re bringing the animation but like, what was that sense of play you were able to achieve together?

Quba:

I mean, it was actually the first time we’ve worked together. And, so far, unfortunately, the last. We haven’t been assigned to the same project yet again.

But, first of all, I mean, this project was was a gigantic exercise in information architecture. So, you know, once once again, huge shout out to Heidi for for just wrangling immense amount of data and figuring out how to put it together so that it makes sense and it becomes accessible. Megan, I mean, everything you’re seeing on the screen is you know, visually her work and and she just fed me such beautiful layouts and designs. I didn’t have to think at all about, you know, what it needs to look like. My task was to make sure we don’t fumble. Because I come from advertising background. I did, you know, TV commercials and stuff like that for many years. And, it is not unheard of in the TV world to to make the earth spin in the wrong direction and make that actually broadcast live on TV and then receive a call to the station saying, “Hey guys, this is not how our planet works.”

All:

(laugh)

Quba:

You know, when you work for NASA, you can’t really do that. Because they’re gonna spot if their satellite is in the wrong place.

Chad:

Yeah. Well, when you were making things that were scientifically accurate, were you actually paired with folks at NASA where they were actually looking at being able to go back and forth? Or, were you doing research on your own?

Quba:

So, it’s a combination of two. And, I’m gonna roll back to those old Polish days for for just a second for you here. So, that everybody here realizes just what kind of messed up brain this is. So, when I was in elementary school, I discovered heavy metal. And, Metallica just released some new album that came to Poland and I was really like, “YEAAA, METAL!!” You know? So, I wanted to draw myself a t-shirt with a pentagram on it. And, I had no idea how to properly draw a pentagram. So, I did what any school boy would do, is I devised a mathematical formula that you feed the number of points on a star and the diameter of a circle and it spits out the angles and the length of the lines you need to draw. So, yeah…

Jp:

Of course, like any any school child would. Sure. (laughs)

Quba:

Yeah.

Similarly, you know, with this project, I used code and data that was supplied by NASA, and of course, fantastic 3D textures that were given to me by the very same guys who captured them. I mean, this is, like, nerd heaven. So, everything that you’re seeing in here is actually completely automated. It’s done in After Effects and animation software, but it’s driven by code. So, all I need to do is input a date and time, and advance or rewind time and all the planets are going to spin and align where they need to be. And, I don’t know, that was for me the only right way of doing this thing rather than than trying to wing it and, you know, fake it, because I would get caught.

Chad:

Wouldn’t have been easier just to, like, find specific screens and stuff that you needed to make and animate those or…

Megan:

That’s what we thought he was gonna do. We were like, either he’s gonna use the cameras they already have and show them how they should angle them. Or he’ll just fake it. And he’s like, “I’ll just build the whole thing.”

All:

(laugh)

Megan:

Just an entire solar system…

Quba:

Yeah, I think my method is always, if I’m given a week for the task, I can either spend seven days or let’s call it a work week, five days animating it by hand. Or, four days building a system that then lets me animate it in one day. But, if the project ever comes back, I don’t have to repeat that work. And, you know, I do it very frequently in in my personal work, I programmatically solve color theory problems. And actually, I once won an award for for art direction on the project that was art directed by a script that I wrote and chose the colors for me because I was too lazy to do it myself. (laughs) Or, recently on the team about projects, rather than going around photographing people, I use neural network to generate faces of people that don’t exist and populated our library of users this way. So you know, it’s a fantastic tool that lets you play instead of work. I guess I hope my boss is not listening to this.

All:

(laugh)

Jp:

It’s an interesting comment, the way that you’re talking about technology. You know, Megan, you were talking about technology as something that in school, you were reluctant to have it, you know, like, I want to be with my hands. I want to want to be engaged. Quba, you were talking about technology as something that you were you’re thriving for, you were hungry for it. And now, both of you using technology to build these amazing models and all sorts of other things. What’s next? what’s on the horizon? With technology? Either one of you if you want to…

Megan:

That’s his… (points finger at Quba)

Quba:

Actually, you should have attended a talk by Kelly Franznick, which happened several hours ago. And, that was all about what’s next on the horizon. At Blink, I mean, there’s a lot of things that we can’t really talk about. But, we’re experimenting, definitely, with augmented and virtual reality, with haptic feedback, with tactility of experiences. And, most of it is, basically figuring out how to make tech more humane. Right? I mean, technology has the tendency to take over.

I mean, I experienced that in my home country seeing Polish school of poster kind of destroyed by the introduction of Photoshop where all the artists who who are just amazing went completely bonkers on layers and, you know, started created monstrosities that look nothing like what their previous work was. And it took years for them to realize, “No. Photoshop is a tool and it’s there to serve them.” And, I used to be an extreme technological enthusiast. I would, you know, jump into everything new and kind of let it lead me by the nose. And, I think, now with help of people like Megan and other designers that are at our studio, I’m learning that, you know, this is something that is here to do my bidding.

Jp:

Yeah. Very cool. I was actually at that talk this morning. And, there was so many fascinating uses of technology for applications outside of building models, of thinking about the way that we engage in the world. It was really fascinating.

Quba:

Fascinating and a little bit scary.

Jp:

Just a little. The Boston Dynamics demos are always like, “Oh! Oh. Oh?”

Megan:

Do I like it? I don’t know.

Jp:

I have mixed feelings about this!

Jp:

So, this is an awesome project. Is there any chance of seeing this for those of for those that are listening to the podcas later on?

Quba:

Oh, that’s right. Yeah, I completely forgot that you guys can’t see the screens, that most people will experience it as audio only.

So at the moment, you know, what’s playing on the screens is the internal prototype that we created as a part of our engagement with NASA. And, we are not sure when it’s going to go live—what’s the timeline on this. We handed it off to NASA engineers, and they’re moving forward at their own pace. However, we are planning to put a detailed case study about it on our website, BlinkUX.com. So, I definitely welcome everyone to come and visit and check it out. I’m, again, I don’t have the precise timing on it. I think…

Megan:

You can go see the super outdated one, NASA Eyes on the Solar System. And then, you’ll understand the before and after.

Quba:

Yeah, or you can come visit the website and I think we have at least five other case studies of you equally interesting projects that had their own set of challenges. Maybe not necessarily something that we were involved with. But, I know Blink is a big studio and and there’s always something brewing.

Jp:

Awesome. Well, we usually we’re almost out of our time here, but we usually like to end with something we call the recommendation list, getting some recommendations from our guests. So, if you’re up for it, we’ve got maybe one or two questions for you. Is that okay?

Megan:

Yeah.

Jp:

So, do you want me to start? I’ll give it a go here. My question is for Quba.

You’ve spent a life of being in the forefront of technology and from the 80s to now. By the way, I also was a child of the 80s. So, I totally feel this as well. What would you recommend, as a risk that a young designer should take when dealing with technology? Or, dealing with the cutting edge right now?

Quba:

Yes. So you know this, this may sounds a bit cliché, the whole idea of, you know, “Take risks! Try something new.” But, I always try to encourage people to to go one step beyond what they consider their comfort zone. So, when I recommend people to take a risk, I don’t mean, you know, use a different color palette or use a typeface that you normally wouldn’t or, you know, make your research on Pinterest instead of Behance today. I think it’s really important to gather as many unexpected experiences as possible. And, I would say, you know, randomize your next activity and build a model submarine. Travel to a city you’ve never been to and trying to avoid using your native tongue for a day. I don’t know. Learn to play an instrument, or at least to make noise using instrument. Try something that you normally wouldn’t. Personally, I’m trying to learn how to cook at the moment and just just the the science and the chemistry of cooking is absolutely fascinating. And, in some weird way it is translating into my endeavors in design. So yeah, I mean, expose yourself to as many new experiences as possible. That would be my advice.

Jp:

Stepping out of your comfort zone. Nice. Cool.

Chad:

Megan, for you, I was curious, is there a skill or a particular knowledge set that that you would recommend for other designers to help them be more creative?

Megan:

Well, I feel like the thing that I struggled with most was probably coming up with a bunch of ideas. I was like, yeah, I’m gonna… Once I find the thing, ship it, and send it out.

Chad:

One and done. (chuckles)

Megan:

Yeah. I was getting a lot of feedback from my bosses. Like, “How about a couple other ideas? Like, “We want to see more.” And so, I think the reason I didn’t want to do that was I hated showing things that weren’t complete, or polished, or perfect, or things I didn’t believe were, like, final. And so, something I did this past year in January, I started—I don’t know if any of you have heard of the hundred day project? But, typically I’ve seen digital versions of it. So, there were some people in the studio who are going to do it. And, one of my colleagues had done it last year, and he came up with a version of it where he was only using like a very limited color palette. It was black, white, and pink. And it was had to be a square because he’s going to do it on Instagram.

Chad:

Sounds like Ben.

Megan:

That’s Ben. Shout out to Ben. Ben Shown.

Jp:

Season two! (laughs)

Chad:

Yeah, what is the hundred day project?

Megan:

So, it’s basically make something and post it—or not post it—but, make something every single day for 100 days.

Chad:

Okay.

Megan:

And so, hearing his version of it, it brought me back to that AP Art class where I was like, “That is how I could achieve that. I need parameters, I need something to, like, constrain me. Otherwise, I’ll just, every day, have way too many options that I could do.” So, I really wanted to get better at painting and I had never done oil painting. So, I decided I’m going to do 100 days of oil paints. Everyone else in the office did something that took like 15 minutes a day and here I am, two hours every night, like, “Alright…”

When doing this painting, I decided that I was going to do a painting of an egg. It had to have an egg or a nod to an egg in some way. And, I wish I could say there was some like bigger picture reason for the egg, like chickens rights… But, it was basically, I knew, you know, there’s many forms of an egg there’s like, I can abstract it with a yellow dot. Like there were ways around spending hours and hours every night. And, that taught me, because one, I needed to post it to my friends every day. I think that there became an average of my work. I think I was afraid to show bad paintings or bad design, because I felt like that made me a bad painter, or a bad designer. Anytime someone saw something that wasn’t great, that must mean I was bad. And, there was something about that project that totally freed me from that perfectionist in me where I realized like, “They just saw a good painting yesterday. If I do a bad one today, there’ll be one tomorrow. And, maybe that’ll be bad too. But like, it came in waves.” And, I think forcing myself to iterate on that same thing every day showed me that I just have a natural up and down and that’s the reality of it. And so, I think that taught me iteration, and taught me to ditch the perfectionist in me—at least when I’m getting feedback, right. Like, you don’t have to show things only when they’re ready and perfect. There’s a great point for feedback when it’s not ready and perfect. And, that’s when you should show it. So…

Chad:

Yeah, it seems kind of like coming to peace with the natural cycle of, kind of, the creative process and output. It gets good and it’s bad and not everything you make is amazing.

Megan:

Totally. I’d convinced myself that you were a bad designer if you weren’t good every single day. And now, I’m like, “Ugh. I’m having a bad day. That’s just okay.”

Chad:

Yeah. What was the kind of response you get from the project?

Megan:

It was great, actually. I, at some point, you know, at the beginning, everyone’s like, “What’s up with Megan and these eggs?” And then, everyone was like, “I’m so invested in these eggs.” Like, if it were 11 o’clock, and I hadn’t posted anything yet. They were like, “Where? Where’s the egg at?”

And in the end, I actually… Enough people had said that they wanted to buy them—and I didn’t want to separate the set of 100. I currently have them like clothesline hanging in my studio. So, I made prints of them. And now, all of my friends have a bunch of little eggs in their kitchens and houses and I just love that. They’ve made their way around. So they’re… Yeah, I sold them, prints of them at least.

Jp:

How egg-celent.

Megan:

Right? Oh. Boo! The amount of egg puns I’ve heard after this.

Chad:

Yeah, can you tell he’s a dad now.

Megan:

(laugh)

Jp:

Exactly.

Well, we want to thank you both for sharing your story today and your time. It was much appreciated and such an interesting opportunity to hear about projects like this. Where can we go to get more information if we want to know more about stuff?

Quba:

BlinkUX.com is the address. Yeah. Blink has has pretty cool Instagram presence as well. And what was our Instagram handle? Blink_UX. So, the website doesn’t have underscore, the Instagram does. Come and see what we do every day.

Chad:

Well, thank you, Megan and Cuba for joining us today on This is Design School. It was so wonderful talking with you today.

Megan:

Yeah, thanks for having us.

Quba:

Yeah, this was a fun experience.

Jp:

Let’s give them a big round shall we?

Audience:

(applauses)