Jey Austen, Brand Designer

Thanks for listening to Bezier. Bezier is sponsored by Super High. Online courses for code, design, and product management. Super High's courses can be done in your own home at your own pace. I've been a Super High student since 2017, and have gone from being a designer feeling alienated by the should-designers code discourse to building my own sites and now even selling web design services. My favorite part of Super High is the community of learners. As a Super High student, you're added to this huge community of all the other Super High students. It's filled with inspiring people from all over the world and all different places in their careers. I've gotten work there, I've found podcast guests there, and even made in-person friends all because of Super High. It's easy to get started. There's an online code editor. You can do it on your own schedule. There's built-in community of learners. It's got everything you need. Start learning the code, design, or product management today at super high.com. I'd like to have guests introduce themselves. Could you share a bit about yourself? - Hi, I'm Jay Austin. My pronouns are they/them, and I'm a brand designer. Right now, I work for a company called Nimbus. I do marketing websites for baking apps, and then when I'm not working, I do a lot of rock climbing. I've been getting into acrobatics lately, draw, do different stuff, and I'm in Austin, I'm sorry, based. - Nice. How long have you been rock climbing? - Since college, I've not got it at. Let's not think about it about me, but I really enjoy it. I love going outside and stuff, and I also think rock climbing is a video game because there's different levels to it. - It's a good motivating factor. - Yeah. I like exercising when I don't feel like I'm exercising. So acrobatics and stuff like that, it's great, because you're working out and getting really fit, but you don't feel it. - You know, that's really inspiring to me because I always struggle to work out, and it's definitely because it feels a little bit like a chore to me, so I like the turning it into a game or something like that. - I'm 100% the only way I can work out in a gym is if I like call people and I'm like, hey, you want to go with me? And we just encourage each other the whole time and laugh about how terrible we are, and then I can work out. I love it. I want to hear about ambits and brand marketing, but maybe before that, you could tell us a little bit about how you got there. It's far back in your career journey as you want to talk about. I'd love to hear a little bit of background that way. - Good. Yeah, I went to school, surf film, and theater. Graphic design was always something that I knew about because my dad worked as a web design professor back in the day at a tech school. So I'd like known about design and I'd have Photoshop and stuff and taught myself from that. But when I got to college, I started working, doing work study jobs for their marketing department for athletics. So I got experience of that and then freelance and did different stuff as I was working in theater and working as a tech or as a makeup artist. I was still also all the time years ago on the side and then eventually ended up working for theme parks, working under their art directors. Part of it was theater tech and then part of it was designed. So I kind of got to do both and help art direct their outdoor events. Then from there, I started working as a designer for restaurant companies and I was like the only designer for like 23 different local restaurants in Tampa. And that was really fun. I got to do a lot of illustration. I learned a lot about appropriate but it was not where I wanted to be. And the pandemic happened and it was just, I needed something new. So I moved to Austin and freelance for six months and then I recruited a shout from Nimbus and it is a tech company that builds banks. And when I talked to my boss, I asked him what is the diversity of Nimbus? He didn't have the numbers for me but when we met, he was like, I can only leave by example. And so he was really good about hiring for diversity and now I'm able to, the only trans person on the DEI or a diversity equity inclusion belonging board. We just started it and I'm really, really excited 'cause of something that I've always been really passionate about and as a white person, I know it's my job to just sit and listen but I also get to educate the company on phone out and then I want to get to do a talk on it. And so I love the fact that I get to design but I also get to do what I'm passionate about by working with people to make more inclusive spaces. - And how big is the DEI committee? - Right now, so they do a rotation every six months. We just started it this year because Nimbus is a new company and it's got probably about 10 people on it. - Oh, okay, nice. - Yeah. - It seems large for a new company but that's promising, I think. - Well, our new company, it's like a five year old startup so I guess it's a late stage startup 'cause we have like 400 people, no. - Oh, 400 people five years? That's pretty impressive, yeah. - Yeah. - It's wild, it's grown so rapidly. When I started a year ago, we had like 100 people. - Oh wow. - Yeah. - I think there's a whole podcast episode about asking your questions about that transition of 100 to 400 people in a year 'cause those rapid expansions and tech, it's I think it really changed this what the designer job looks like over that time and it seems like that's happened for you so fast. - Yeah, it's been great because I've grown so much as a designer because when I started, I was hired just as a senior brand designer, you know, mainly doing like mock-ups for like you I sounds and like PowerPoints and then I was like, hey, I've been really wanting to get more into websites and I've also like great. And so I just started doing all the websites when I've just been doing a bunch of marketing sites and it's been really fun 'cause Nambus builds marketing websites and they also build banking apps. I build marketing websites. Nambus builds the app. It's like a core thing so they can build an entire banking app in 90 days. So sometimes credit unions will partner with us. Sometimes banks will sometimes go by banks. But it's all like niche or niche, niche is so like banks for pet owners or newlyweds and I get to make all the marketing websites for those. And then my boss goes them and then we have junior designers who do new designers and then we have an art director and a creative director so that's our team makeup. And it's really lovely. - It sounds lovely. I'm curious, is it, have you set up sort of like a design system or style guide and all of the websites you're building are in a sort of similar family of style or each of them really unique to the brands? - Each of them are completely unique to the brand because what we'll do is, so I get to design a brand from the beginning to the end. So I'll come up with the colors and the logo and then all of a sudden I'm designing the site and then I'm designing the first few like sneak peeks of what a UI could look like. And it's all completely unique. So like to think for pet owners, it's like blue and red and it's like very fun and lots of like round bits. And then you have the pink, friendly ones. That's like pink and very Instagramable and sourcing stock photos is like completely different. Well, like they're completely different and of a little brand and I think it's like core software that they re-skinned when it's followed. So yeah. - This is really fun. It sounds like the benefit of like an agency or freelance model where you're getting all these different clients but like the benefits of in-house. - Yeah, I feel like I'm working at an in-house agency and sometimes we'll partner with agencies when we're too overloaded or if it's something that we don't have someone to do. So like right now we don't have a motion designer and right now we don't have a front end developer. So occasionally we'll partner with agencies to like take care of those tasks. But for the most part, yeah, it's like working for an in-house agency. I'm doing all the branding and all the sites and stuff but it's still for a company and occasionally I'll work on my own company's brand like designing a career page or a website or something like that. But for most part it's the other brands that I'm working on. - Just to jump back in your career a little bit, I'm a theme park was not what I expected and it's maybe a little bit more unique of a career step. What is that work environment like? - Wow, it's wild because I was doing theater tech and then I went to another theme park where I was doing more graphic design stuff. The work environment is wild because your days aren't really, you never know what you're gonna be doing. So one day you're paying fake blood on stuff because your art director is like, we need this to look more Halloweeny. And in the next day you're running fog and smoke machines and it's like the humidity you've got in there. make sure that it's not too much fog that guests are tripping over themselves. And then the next day, you're coming in at 2AM for a load-in, and it's all the stuff that you've designed for an event, and you get to put it all up. And it's so cool to see everything in person. All of your designs that were on the computer, I got to design a mural and stuff like that that we got in vinyl and were able to put up. And it was so cool seeing all of this stuff. But I'm also helping install it. So it was all hands up. Before design, I was in theater all the way. So I'm doing a carpentry welding. I was a fireworks technician for a while. I didn't make up art. I was a costume designer. And all of that, I feel like, has really helped me with design because it's still the same principles with like learning what looks good together. So now I've been able to do it spatially, and I can also do it on the computer. It just sounds like such a great conversation starter. So that's fantastic. And then real quick, you said that you did six months of freelance once you landed in Austin before you were at Nimbus. What was the decision to go freelance? And then what was maybe the decision other than Nimbus reaching out to you? How did you decide to make that leap to in-house again? Well, so when I had my job in Florida, it was one of those where I was the designer for all of the restaurants, but I was also like, they kept adding projects, but not adding new people. So I would be working till like 8 p.m. every day and then getting calls, like getting yelled at. And it just wasn't necessarily like the best environment, especially because like when COVID started, because it was a restaurant industry, they were like restaurants can still be open. So a friend needs to be in the office, and I was the only one wearing a mask. And I was like, this just isn't safe. Gosh, yeah. So, and Austin's family is like, Florida was really an accident. I was only supposed to be there for six months for a pain heart. And then I just ended up staying three years. So coming back, and then like, I had had like a bunch of connections in Florida that several like small businesses needed websites since they were moving online because of COVID. So I was able to work. And so like getting all of my stuff together, getting my portfolio together. I was also like teaching people on TikTok during that time, and just kind of exploring what I wanted to do with design next, because I was kind of making the tradition, from graphic design to visual design and brand design. So I needed time to build up a portfolio for that. I'm glad you brought up TikTok. Can you tell the audience a little bit about what you were teaching on TikTok? Yeah, so for a while, I was teaching percreate lessons on TikTok and a little bit of stigma as well. And I want to go back to it. I just have my aunt. But teaching a lot of things that stumped me in art school. So like, perspective, when you do it in digital art, there's a lot of tips and tricks that can help you set up spaces. A lot more easily, because backgrounds are really hard for people to draw. And then from there, I started teaching. Like, here's how you can draw on percreate and transition at the stigma, or these are the differences, because I wanted people to get an education and for me, art school and stuff like that is always something that I'd wanted to do. But as someone that was raised like poverty lane, it wasn't necessarily something that I had expected to be able to do. But I still wanted that education. And so I wanted to be able to share what I learned with other people and simple easy to suggest format. So that's why I got started in TikTok. I'm teaching all of it. Well, I love that you do that. My role at Figma was to run design education. And it's because like, at the time, and I think still now for the most part, the majority of design education still, like you said, happens at this higher education level, which is only accessible to six or seven percent of the global population. So it is something that's still very inaccessible. And so that was one of the things that we were doing there. And I just love that you and other people have been doing so much design education on line for free. I think it's really important for us to democratize it more. That's 100 percent when I think. I don't think that I would have gotten into design if I didn't have a free copy of Photoshop 6 on my computer when I was a kid. And I don't think that other people should be scared of entering an industry because it was startup costs. Like Adobe costs so much money that I don't like to support Adobe because people around the world can't afford 20 or 30 for a student price if you're in higher education. And if you're not in higher education because you can't afford it, $50 a month, that's not feasible for most people. Most people are living paycheck to paycheck. So I took a break from mental health, which is why I haven't posted much on my design TikTok. I don't want to get back to it because education should be free and people should be able to learn what they're passionate about. And if I can give just a little bit of what I've learned away, I think that's what that is. So if someone wanted to start a design, it sounds like one of your recommendations would be to like finding these free resources online. What are other recommendations for people that like want to get into the web design industry? So for me what I did when I wanted to learn web design was I looked through all of the web flow videos. Like web flowing diversity, it's free. And if you do so much about how to think as far as like the box model and how HTML works. So when I went back into Figma, it helped me understand how to like group everything together. So web flowing diversity is definitely a great place to start. Of course, I already knew a lot about like web design going into it. So it might be different for someone that's like new knowledge at all. But I definitely think that it's very easy to understand. There's jokes and stuff to keep you entertained. So that and then if you want to learn Figma for design, definitely recommend Roddy's like five minutes of sigma or like any info like free resources that the design to put out. Because the people who are running the design tools will teach you more than you could have ever thought the defined tools are capable of. I'm really glad you brought up web flow university. One of my favorite courses that I recommend all the time is their freelancers journey, which I think they've renamed. But it's you'll still see that in the URL slug. It's called it was called the free lunch jury. Because as an agency owner, I learned how to do my job better just watching that. And like, yeah, fantastic stuff. You're totally great recommendation. What do you think something like every design manager or person that leads designers should hear? You're doing great sweetie. I don't think that people tell the same manager. But also really invest in your team. I think one of the things that helped me so much with personal growth this year is that my manager has made a point for each of us once a week to do a skillshare. And so it'll rotate week by week on if it's like the art director, one of the junior designers in me. But you have to do like you get an hour long to just teach the rest of the creative team something that you're passionate about. It can be design related, art related. One of my junior designers did a great presentation on diversity and stock photos. And how it's more than just like choosing people like you need to make sure that it's diverse with like people with wheelchairs. And so I think that's what I think it's like a lot of the things that I've learned so much from these skillshares and also from teaching my own skillshares. So it's like, oh, I'm going to teach it on prototyping and sigma. I should watch a few videos because I need to brush up on that. So like design managers just have such a chance to impact their entire team. So if you're a person with a lot of talent, you can just ask the management get stepped on, make sure that the tasks are done in Monday or a sauna or whatever. It's how can you invest in your team so that when they move past the career or the jobs that they're at that you can still help people with their resume or their portfolio because there's still people that you've worked with. This is your network. So how can you really invest in those people but also as a design manager and just making sure that getting good feedback. Like don't say that everything is great all the time, but also don't criticize too much. Like ask people like what is strong in the work and call that out. But then also like this isn't working. This is how it could work better like offer suggestions to help better your team. Dr. Raleigh. really important because people grow from feedback. Absolutely. I think that's all really good advice. And I also really believe in the like invest in people because everyone's going to go work at a different job at some point. So, like, be realistic about it. And I think like developing people while they're on your team will one keep them on your team longer. But yeah, like you said, that's your future network. It's always like important that they feel like a whole person and you can help with that. One thing that my CMO says a lot every marketing meeting is just, no one's going to retire here. So, use the resources while you can. And she gave us like an education budget of like several hundred dollars a quarter so that we can invest in ourselves. And she's like serious about it. Like, use what company resources you can to invest in yourself in your career while you're here. And I just think that's like a mark of a great leader. So, I think there are a lot of amazing things in our design communities. But on the flip side, there are a lot of problems. We see a whole variety of bigotries, ableism and racism and homophobia. And there's the patriarchy. There's white supremacy. How do you feel about it all? How do we fight it out of our industry? How do we as designers take like make an impact? Well, for starters, designers are the people who decide what everyone is looking at. All visual media that you see has been designed. And that can be super impactful. So, you're not going to solve one of these issues alone. And it's very, very, very important to not feel overwhelmed, but also doing your part. So, with ableism, you can fight that by educating yourself on accessibility. How can I make my contrast ratio is better? What can I do? What does this sound like in a screen reader? That is one way that designers can help fight ableism. Fighting, white supremacy, bringing up points that, hey, all of these stuff that have white people in them, why are we not choosing what are various people? This is actually mean to only be marketed towards white people. You're losing out on so many other people, but I don't feel qualified to speak like totally on all of these issues. But there's definitely so much more that we can be doing. I think that designers also play a big impact in what's going to happen, like, ecologically, like with the environment, with all the crypto stuff taking off of designers, you have to make a choice. You want to be involved in it or not. And I feel like I've seen a split on Twitter since an FTs took off. On one hand, it's great for up-and-coming younger artists who haven't been able to get a lot of money before. On the other hand, it's a bunch of rich people participating in a ponderous game that's ruining the environment. And so how can you choose what's right there? And are you going to make art? Are you going to participate in Web 3? Are you going to do this little site? So that's something that people have to design for themselves. But at the same time, if you're not, then other people that have a lot of money and might not have the best intentions are going to be the leaders in that. So where do you stand? So there's a lot that design plays into every political issue that we have right now. Like, all of it, like politics and stuff, like politicians don't get elected as a telemarketing. Marketing needs designers. So design responsibly. Yeah, design responsibly is really good takeaway. I think that you're the first person to bring up NFTs on the show. And I'm glad you did. Yeah, I hadn't really thought about how it really has created such a rift in our creative communities. But you're right, there's definitely people falling on one side or the other there. And I think the consequences are very great there. And I need to educate myself more on that before I can speak on it. I haven't made an NFK. I haven't dealt into Web 3. No hate if that's something that you have done because I see it from an artist perspective. Like I've watched people like artists I've been following, like for like a long time, like talking about how NFTs have helped me get out of the hood and stuff like that. And it's like it's so good to like see how it's made such an impact for these people that I've really wanted to like take off and at the same time it's like it's just sort of like the environment. And I would like to be around in more than eight years, you know? So I mean, you make a great point, like people working at Facebook have, you know, there's lots of nuance there because you're right. It has like helped some people get out of poverty. So there's like a benefit to those individuals. But yeah, with the NFTs, like you mentioned, it pawns these schemes and environmental impact. And yeah, it's a it's a large downside, I think. Yeah. Yeah. So the best thing that you can do is get educated. I think the more you learn about issues, the more you can decide where do I want to be on them because being in tech, we are at the forefront of this. NFTs don't get made without people making pictures. Guess who's making those pictures, designers and illustrators, you know? So we got to decide. Who is one person that you think the audience should know about? Does it have to be a designer? Definitely not. I would say Sean paid. He used to be a recruiter for Webflow. And he's queer and does a lot of stuff on Twitter that just teaches you a lot about diversity and hiring and retreats a lot of really good stuff that I've learned to tonsam. And I think that I've also just met him personally and he's great. He did a terror reading for me. Like, I can't recommend him enough. And what about reading? Is there a book that you think everyone should read? There's many books that I think people should read. Design related. I think feel like an art of it's going to be a really good book. That whole series because it makes you feel proud of your work. And it teaches you that it's okay to show your work. You don't have to just feel like no one's going to know that you're a designer if you're not posting about it. No one's going to see your work. Like, you could be great, great at illustrating, but if it's all going to stay on your iPad and in your appropriate files, like how are people going to know? And so it teaches you to share your work and be proud of yourself. And I think that's really important. And in real life, there's a bunch of other good books. On my reading list, like the 1619 projects and stuff like that, that just getting an education on US history and stuff we weren't cutting schools, I think it's really important as well. Yeah, you said earlier about educating yourself on issues that's really important. And I think like 1619 projects are really great call out. And to your greater point of just like things you don't get taught in school, I think, especially I grew up in the United States. Like I think there's a lot of gaps in education there for for my reading list from school. So I could completely agree with you. Yes, but no matter what field you're in, I think it's really important to read books about your passions. So even if you're not a designer, like, listening to this, like find a book about something that you want to pursue and when you read it. Or I'm terrible at reading books. I'm just going to admit that I have ADHD. I cannot, I cannot finish a book that is not something that will happen in my lifetime unless it's an audiobook. So I listen to everything, which is on another accessibility point. Make your things available both in audio and transcript version or yeah. So do you like when the author reads from the book or do you like audiobooks by like professional, like, I don't know, audiobook readers? So I'm not going to lie. If it's a high fantasy series and it's not read by an old man with a British accent, I don't know if I can get through it. Tell it a little bit. Everything else can be the author. But there's just something about old fantasy that I need that old man with a British accent. Yeah, it's part of the genre, I think. First, I don't know if that's like sexist, but I don't know. It's something. It helps build the world for me. Yeah, I understand that. I listened to an audiobook once and it was a fantasy series, but it was like a man with an American accent. And I was like, I don't know if I can get through this to be completely honest. I did, but it was really hard. Do you have like a like one major like audio book recommendation? [BLANK_AUDIO] A lot of the visual design books don't translate well to audiobook, but we kind of like think. I mainly listen to a lot of fantasy stuff in audiobook while I'm working, so it's more like the name of the wind, which is an amazing book that the author is very, very intentional about every word. So like in the second book in the series, someone like on Reddit found out that like the characters, like their speech is timed to a box piece and another character speeches times to a Mozart piece, and they all speak in Iambic, or the character, the main character is a bard, and he speaks in Iambic, and Tamator. And so someone on Reddit figured out that during a significant thing that happens in the book, they switch places, and one character starts speaking in the other, like the Mozart piece and the other character starts speaking in the box piece. And so it's just like all of this really intentional stuff that you wouldn't figure out a fancine come over it, and I think it's an audiobook you get to hear that Iambic Tamator a little bit more. Yeah, that's fantastic. It definitely sounds like the audiobook would be a better experience for that. I would have never known otherwise. So I believe that everyone should get paid for their time. So on this show, we share the profits from our advertisers with our guests. Are there other ways that the audience can support you? Yeah, I have a cash out and I have a fine ea coffee I can send you the link. But please don't ever feel obligated to like, yeah, I think that people shouldn't have to pay it's more like, you know, so with all of the like kick-talk stuff I do and everything like that, like, just donation. No, yeah, I don't ever want to have a paywall for anything. Definitely. Yeah, a little tip is nice. I'm with you like sharing free things and then when people can support they do and the people that can't, it's like they deserve those resources as well. Well, very sure, very sure. Where are the best places for people to find you? I know you from your wonderful Twitter content. We've talked about TikTok. So are anywhere else you want people to be guided? Yeah, so I mainly post on Twitter my handle is Sigma Antichrist. Sigma followed me and I was a 666 person that they followed. So I had to take my handle immediately to that. Yeah, that's why my handle is that. It was just my name before that. And then that happens and I've been Sigma Antichrist ever since. I'm so grateful to have the back story there. I was always so curious. I thought it was a great handle, but I was so curious. Yeah. Well, if thing follows you, I think everybody else should as well. Yeah, I'm not, my content is for the girl's days and gaze occasionally. I'll post design content, but I'm not necessarily saying that I am 100% professional on that account. That is my, that is my parental advisor. Re-warning. I'm also on Instagram. Okay, great. Yeah, we can put that in the show notes as well. No, that's perfect. Jay, thank you so much for being on Bezier. I really appreciate your time. It was such a great interview. Is there anything else you'd like to share before we wrap up? I would like to just encourage all the junior designers out there really quick. You're also doing great CV and like your portfolio and all that stuff, like don't let it, you're going to be great. Do what you can, you know, that's that's my encouragement. Bezier is a design interview podcast, amplifying voices in our creative communities that don't already have large platforms and aren't working at big five tech companies. We focus on finding guests from all over the world and representative of as many of us as possible. If you have a great guest idea for Bezier, please email us at [email protected]. That's i-n-q-u-i-r-y at cacht.studio.