Revision Path

Denise Jacobs is a woman who needs no introduction. Her work as a speaker, author, and creativity evangelist has her spreading the gospel of creativity at conferences and tech companies around the world, and has definitely made her a household name in the industry. We started off talking about how Denise first got started in the industry and later broke into the speaker circuit, as well as her career transition from CSS to creativity...

Rich Hollant's body of work is just...amazing. As the principal, strategist, and design director at CO:LAB (a firm he started in 1988), he has done work with everyone from Fortune 500 corporations to cities and municipalities with enriching social value projects. He's won awards from AIGA, CADC, Print, HOW, and many other organizations. Rich is also going to be a new national board member for AIGA.....

"Regardless of your dreams, don't let anyone stop you." When Harrison Wheeler, told me this before our interview, I knew that we were going to have a good conversation on our hands. Harrison is the design manager at Base, a customer relationship management tool used by entrepreneurs to help track clients and set up a sales process so your business runs more efficiently. We started off by going through a typical day for Harrison, and he shared what he thinks makes someone a good design manager...

When Asia and I spoke before recording, she told me that one thing she wanted people to take away from our talk was that it doesn't matter what your path is, there's a way into technology. I think that's super important for people to hear, especially when there's so much talk about college programs, hackathons, and the like. There's more than one way to be a part of this industry, and Asia's story definitely illustrates that...

It's May, and we're beginning the month by talking with Dr. Vukosi Marivate. Dr. Marivate is a data scientist at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in South Africa. His work primarily deals with machine learning, so I had to ask one question -- how do machines learn? From there, Dr. Marivate walked me through a typical day, answered some great questions from our Slack community, and shared what people who are interested in data science should learn...

We're back to New York City this week -- Brooklyn, to be exact -- and talking with Digital Ocean product designer Earl Carlson. Earl is proof that you can move around and try different things as long as you have the drive to succeed. We started off talking about Earl's college days at the University of Michigan, and then Earl guided me through where his design skills have taken him -- New Orleans and San Francisco...

We have a lot of students that listen to Revision Path, but I haven't actually had a student on as a guest in a long time! Enter Eniola Odetunde: a visual designer and current grad student at the Savannah College Art of Design. She shared some great insights into the life of a student designer that I think you'll enjoy. Eniola's specialty as a designer deals with movement, so we talked about how she got into dynamic typography and stop motion work...

Designer and web video producer Satchell Drakes is someone I've wanted to have on the show for quite a while. Satchell is probably best known for his YouTube channel Satchbag's Goods -- a collection of gorgeously produced and insightful videos on gaming, movies, music, and culture. We started off talking about the independent Internet space and how he got started with design and video and he walked me through his workflow and what a typical day is like for him as a designer...

"If there's one thing I want people to know, it's that computer science is accessible by everyone." When Dr. James H. Hill told me that, I had a feeling this was going to be a pretty interesting interview. Dr. Hill is currently an associate professor of computer science at Indiana University - Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) where he teaches undergraduate and graduate courses and serves as co-director of their Software Engineering and Distributed Systems research group...

March is ending with a great interview with product designer Kat Vellos. Kat's unique approach to user experience design comes from her past work in visual design, education, and facilitation. Very cool! We talked about some of her current projects, including #EndSmallTalk and the popular Bay Area Black Designers meetup. We also discussed mentorship and how people can use design in their communities...