CAPTN OffScript

Rebeka Arce on growing up in a steel town, sharing doubt as a creative director at Collins, and the "aesthetics of fear" in design. "I feel like LLMs are built to please us, not to contradict us. And I think contradiction is a big part of a creative process." Rebeka Arce grew up in Barakaldo, near Bilbao, a town shaped by the steel industry. Her mother wanted her to become a doctor and her father...

Designer Erik Herrström on why starting a project on Pinterest leads every designer to the same work, and the research his studio uses instead. "If you start your project by going to those sites, you are gonna end up designing what all the other designers in the world are doing right now because it's fed to you by algorithms." In this bonus from his Creative Figures conversation, Erik answers what...

llustrator and artist MURUGIAH on whether artists should reinvent themselves, and why he follows the fun instead. "Don't let what you did last get in the way of what you want to do in the future." In this bonus from his Creative Figures conversation, MURUGIAH answers whether artists should reinvent themselves every few years, the way Madonna does. He describes how he moved from digital work to ana...

Illustrator Nick Liefhebber on paper cuts, woodcut printmaking, going independent one day at a time, and why limitations shape his work. "When you just start making things you like, it doesn't feel like work." Nick Liefhebber is an illustrator, designer and printmaker based in the Netherlands. He started as a graphic designer, and his turning point came when he decided to make work he didn't have...

Designer Erik Herrström on his book The Echo, why his studio never shows clients a mood board, and designing identities for Whitney Houston and Elvis Presley. "We never show mood boards to our clients, ever." Erik Herrström grew up in a small village in the south of Sweden and built his first website at twelve. He interned at R/GA in New York on the redesign of Nike.com, later joined the team of a...

Illustrator and artist MURUGIAH on leaving architecture, finding his own style, and opening the Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration with his first solo museum show. "Everything you've done, it doesn't have to just end. It can be fuel for what you do next." MURUGIAH trained as an architect for seven years before turning to illustration. Born in Burton upon Trent and raised in South Wales with Sri...

Kieron Anthony Lewis opens this one by saying he cannot do the project justice by describing it. That you almost have to see it. He is right, which is awkward for a podcast. So here it is: a 456-page hardback with gold foiling along the edges, sealed inside a case made of concrete, cast in the shape of Tafawa Balewa Square in Lagos. Around seven kilos all in. The book features 161 artists connecte...

I asked Andy how long it took him to start liking himself the way he is. He did not give me a number. He said it is something he has to constantly return to and refresh. This is Second Take, a short format on the show. One idea, one guest, lifted out of a longer conversation. You do not need to have heard the original. Around 25, Andy started to realise he probably has ADHD. His first reaction was...

Gemma O'Brien describes flow as a forgetting of yourself. Fully absorbed, at one with the work, no sense of time passing. Then the conversation turns to boredom, and that half is the sharper one. This is Second Take, a short format on the show. One idea, one guest, lifted out of a longer conversation. You do not need to have heard the original. Gemma talks about why flow arrives by surprise rather...

Mat Voyce makes motion work for Nike, Pepsi and Disney+. He also tried animation at university, hated it, and decided he would never do it again. This is Second Take, a new short format on the show. One idea, one guest, lifted out of a longer conversation. You do not need to have heard the original. Mat got one A across eleven GCSEs. It was graphic design. He dropped out of AS levels because the s...

This is the seventh Captn OffScript bonus, and the last one of Season 2. After a main episode spent in the trenches, I asked Simon Flöter one question that flips it all upside down: if you woke up tomorrow with complete financial stability, never worrying about money again, what would you work on? It went to newsletter subscribers first as a private YouTube link. Today it's available here too. His...

For the final episode of Season 2, I didn't want a victory lap. Simon Flöter is a German illustrator, designer and developer living in Amsterdam, and he told me early on: this is not a success story. This is from the trenches. His commercial illustration work vanished this year, and he suspects AI swallowed it. Money got extremely tight. He just landed a job that should carry him through the rest...

This is the sixth bonus episode of Captn OffScript. In Halli Thorleifsson's main episode we covered everything he's built: the agency he sold to Twitter and rebuilt, the almost 2,000 wheelchair ramps, the tax he chose to pay. This is the conversation about what he's been rebuilding underneath it all, himself, in his words, brick by brick. It went to newsletter subscribers first as a private YouTub...

This is the fifth bonus episode of Captn OffScript. When Teresa Ferreira and I recorded her main episode, we got into imposter syndrome and self-worth, and it was honest enough that I kept it back for this. It went to newsletter subscribers first as a private YouTube link. Today it's available here too. Teresa's first point is the most reassuring one: imposter syndrome doesn't go away. Not with su...

Haraldur "Halli" Thorleifsson built the design agency Ueno from nothing, sold it to Twitter in 2021, and made a decision almost nobody makes: he structured the sale so he'd pay as much tax as possible, in Iceland, on purpose. Because Iceland is the country that gave a kid from a poor family with muscular dystrophy the chance to build something in the first place. Then he started Ramp Up, which has...

Some people walk a straight line into design. Teresa Ferreira dug her way in, through archaeology. She was born in Lisbon, spent part of her childhood in Macau, has lived in London for nineteen years, ran design at the Financial Times, and now runs her own studio, Ferrgood. When I said she felt like the whole world in one person, I wasn't exaggerating. What I didn't expect was how much of this con...

This is the fourth bonus episode of Captn OffScript. When Gemma O'Brien and I recorded her main episode, we got into burnout and flow, and I held that part back for this. It went to newsletter subscribers first as a private YouTube link. Today it's available here too. Gemma has talked about burnout in a lot of other interviews, so I didn't want to rehash it. What I wanted, as someone who leans tow...

This is the third bonus episode of Captn OffScript. When Radim Malinic and I recorded his main episode, the conversation about fear came near the end, and it was good enough that I kept it back for this. It went to newsletter subscribers first as a private YouTube link. Today it's available here too. It's short, and it's the most reassuring thing I've put out in a while. Radim used to think you co...

Gemma O'Brien is a lettering artist, a fine artist, a muralist, and most recently a student of neuroaesthetics. She's painted a billboard in Times Square, had work acquired by a museum, and she has a public Strava profile on her website, because running is as much a part of her as the lettering is. I'd been trying to get her on the show for a long time, and the hardest part was knowing where to st...

This is the second bonus episode of Captn OffScript. When Martyna Wędzicka and I recorded her main episode, we spent most of it on the past and the present. But right at the end, I asked her where she's heading next, and the answer was so warm and so hopeful that I held it back for this. It went to newsletter subscribers first as a private YouTube link. Today it's available here too. It's a short...

Radim Malinic has been a role model of mine for years. He's a designer, a writer, a speaker, he runs the agency Brand Nu, he hosts his own podcast, and he's built a whole philosophy around the idea of daring creativity. I expected this conversation to be about all of that output. Instead it became one of the most honest talks I've had on the show, about the cost of the work and the years he spent...

his is the first-ever bonus episode of Captn OffScript. CJ Cawley and I recorded the main S02/E32 conversation for over an hour and twenty minutes, and somewhere around the hour mark it took a turn that didn't belong in the main episode and didn't deserve to be cut either. So we held it back. It went to newsletter subscribers first as a private YouTube link. Today it's available here too. This is...

Martyna Wędzicka is a Polish graphic designer from Gdańsk with one of the most distinctive styles working today. She's a member of Alliance Graphique Internationale, a two-time winner of the Polish Graphic Design Awards, and she built her entire body of work on something most designers are taught to avoid: mistakes. "I really wanted to destroy something," she told me. "That was my main goal." We t...

CJ Cawley is having the strangest year of his career. Someone built a pixel-for-pixel clone of his website and replaced his face with theirs. A parody video of him triggered a wave of hate inside the design community. He's getting married this weekend. And through all of it, he keeps showing up on camera. This is one of the episodes I've been most looking forward to publishing all season. We recor...

Kristof Devos answered the call from his studio in a small town in rural Belgium, with a cat wandering in and out and his daughter's eighth birthday party happening that same afternoon. It felt like the right way to start a conversation about slowing down. Kristof Devos is an illustrator, a children's book author, a watch designer for the cult London brand Mr Jones Watches, and an art teacher in B...