Jonathan Safir, A Creative with a Mathematical Mind who's unafraid to Career Pivot

(upbeat music) Hi, I'm Lisa Mazer, and this is What A Rebel. Hello everybody. Today's guest is Jonathan Safir, who I've known since our days at Parsons School of Design back in the late '80s, where Jonathan graduated as the photography major. And he professionally took photos for over 20 years. I love how his career path has followed some of his other interests in math and hospitality. And now he's the founder of No Pannock Design, a web development studio that delivers projects that are clean, innovative, and creative. I love working with this company because I appreciate his attention to design details. And also his geeky tech talk knowledge that I know nothing about. So today we'll be talking, which Jonathan, about my favorite topic of career pivots, as well as creative identity, and what happens when art meets code. Welcome Jonathan. Thank you. Yeah, so good to see you. A lot there too, our craft is good. Yeah. So let's start the conversation with a little rummenecing and talk about our time at Parsons. The question is, what was it like in retrospect? Just start a creative career in New York City back in the late '80s? Well, we were really in college, starting on college. It was actually my second college I started as a math major. But at Parsons, I kind of had a very limited idea that I was going to be a fashion photographer. When I first moved there, just because traveling and exotic locations and models and all that, and fun. But I didn't really get into that. I tried assisting a little bit as a fashion photographer's assistant to other top names in New York at that time. And it wasn't really my thing. The world was kind of a little too fake and postured. But I really had no idea what it was going to be like to be a creative in the world. I thought, OK, photography, that's what I'm going to add. I'm not a great illustrator or something. But really, I had no idea what being a creative in the world being a professional creative. And that was definitely something that Parsons stressed for us was like, OK, being an artist is one thing. But surviving as an artist, being a professional artist, you got to address that and see what that means in the world for you and in these times. And at least for the teachers that I had, many of them emphasized, you're in New York. You're in the '80s. It's kind of like you should be out of consuming art and design all the time. And go to the Metropolitan, go to the-- every exhibit makes sure you see it. And don't just go to look at the art, look at the people, look at the colors of the exhibit walls and the funds they use. And when you're waiting for the bus at a magazine stand, look at good magazines from all over the world. And absorb, absorb, absorb, learn, see what the trends are, see what is meaningful, see what's working, and what's not. They pushed us and they was so good for me. That was the beginning of the real story. Yeah, I think it was such an eye-opening experience. I mean, just being in New York, I mean, I know from me, I came from Western New York and you came from the East Bay. So really experiencing New York in itself and also having sort of, persons had sort of like New York as its campus in a way, right? So the Met was part of our art history class. Like we'd just go and have class up there and it was such an incredible experience. I went out like every month, I could just hang out there and turn up your name and look at stuff, check out different ways of it. It's such an extensive museum. I was just there last week actually. I know I'm jealous. I'm jealous. Yeah, it was really fun. So, okay, so you, you know, it's fun. I think photography, yeah. Say they go. I stayed in photography in that one. I stayed in photography, right? And you did that, but it wasn't in fashion photography, you did. So mostly out of school, I was assisting. And I got to, you know, being in New York and, you know, knowing other assistants and other photographers, I got to try out a lot of different stuff, you know, everything from, you know, traveling with Len Genchel, doing stuff for Connoisseur and doing all these great stories all over the country. And I went to Hawaii with another photographer I worked with. And some advertising, some big names and advertising and photo illustration. So largely, I didn't love, to be honest, I love the life more than I love the idea of having to negotiate the business of being a commercial photographer. So I kind of more drifted towards Binance. And so supporting myself as a fine artist, actually selling bricks to buyers. Oh, that's cool. So that, but you started the conversation by saying that you went to school for math initially. I did. Yeah, I started out at Cal as a math major. In high school, I loved math and my mind took to it. It was like, you know, like good chocolate or something. I loved it. I loved the putt, but you know, I was thinking about it earlier today, what I loved about it was the puzzle of it and the problem solving and the elegant solutions. A lot of what I love is being a creative director and a design firm now. I think how do we figure out interesting ways of solving puzzles that apply to the real world, that apply to real businesses. But at the same time for us, it still create a problem solving. Yeah. And that's what I loved about math. That's what I was good at about math. I actually compete. I don't know if you ever knew this Lisa. I was in a statewide math competition for juniors in 11th grade. And I took first place around math competition to be fast and to be smart. Oh my gosh. Well, that makes sense to me. Yeah. So nerdy. That's really good. And my mind was really fast. Yeah. Now, my mind doesn't move quite as fast, but deeper. I guess. Yeah. Just doing moves in other ways. I didn't even know about that then. It's funny when you say that because I always, I mean, I was actually interested in math and I was really good at geometry, which kind of makes sense because the way that I design, it's very, you know, it's like putting, as you said, like putting together puzzles in a way. And I'm really blocks out of the clients' content and story. And it's just, it's funny how that those different skills can bring you into different paths. So, okay. So you did, you went from math and then you're like, oh, I don't want to do math. I'm going to go to New York and be a photographer. Well, it's going to New York and go to art school. I had done a summer program. Actually, straight out of high school. Before starting, Cal, I went to Parsons for a summer program and stayed at Unisquart dorms where you lived later. And just got a taste of it. And then when I went back to Cal to do math, I was just like, oh gosh, this is, you were stunning. The photographer made me more, was way more like how I was engaged. Sure. Yeah. I found myself sort of spacing out back here. I was like, this isn't, no, I want to do that. Oh. I took the year off. I got a job at a camera store and took a couple credits at California College of Arts and Crafts. It's an out of CCA unless it's closed. I'm not sure. But I took photography there so that I could use the dark room and start working on a portfolio and to apply to go back to Parsons. That was my plan. Amazing. Amazing. I had no idea. Back in the day when we dipped our hands in photocamist. Yeah. No, totally. That was different technology or if you could call it technology. Oh, well, for sure. We're chemistry. Yeah. And there's technology with the enlarger and the camera. I mean, there was a certain technology and making the lenses. That's for sure technology. Yeah. Yeah. I for, you know, film. I want to say, there wasn't a lot of technology in design at that point because the Mac hadn't even come out until we'd have the ability to scan. Maybe three or four years later. So they got a sitex scan. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Parsons after we graduated. Mm-hmm. That was like the first beginning of scanning film like in the early 90s. Yeah. Yeah. No, we were already out in the world. No, I remember having to take classes in design and having to turn in a thing where we requested a phone and it would print onto a phone. Oh, yeah. Transferring to paper. Yeah, it's the type setting. Yeah. And unlike buying a sheet of pre-made fonts, you could actually write what you wanted. It would print it all in a whole paragraph or whatever. Yeah. And then you're like, oh, I made a two-burner. I'm sure we're not as bold. Yeah. It was a painstaking. Not like that. Not bad. And I have to say, like, one of the things that I wanted to do was to get a little bit more One of the things for me thinking about how technology actually made me like design a lot more is because I don't know, there was something about like that painstaking method of type, setting type, you know, turning by hand and everything. And I'm like, oh, it was just, it was a lot. And then all of a sudden, you're on the computer and it's like, oh, wow, you can kind of just do it on a map. Gosh, can you imagine now going back and like trying to have rub down letters and trying to do kerning, at least sequentially and you can't go back and move them. I know. It's so funny. Back putting in the whole. And it really makes you appreciate, you know, all the designers from way back when that that's how it was done. I mean, because it, yeah. Because there was such a, it wasn't just an art, there was an elegance in the craft. There was a real, you had to have a, you had to have the craft. It's like having a good hand to paint or get into to, to draw letters. I mean, even before. Yeah. Yeah, it's very different. I mean, I've met all designers. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, there's something. So this one got, he said he'll work on the font for two years. Oh, yeah. It's getting all the elegance of how it works, how it fits together and, yeah, kerning and all that. Yeah. Yeah, it's impressive. I always think. I know there's those, the type houses that still create fonts, custom fonts, even for projects, yeah, he works corporations or whatever. Yeah. So, you know, I mean, I think, you know, so doubling back to, you know, this question of like, you know, what did we think it was going to be like to be a professional artist when we were a person? It's like, I had no idea how many different areas. I would find interest in applying my creative direction. Well, sensibility to the different kinds of work that, yeah. I mean, I split life somewhat less ordinary in that I moved a lot over the years and I, even I was eight and a half years of, not being a hobo, but moving, you know, but I seasonally like I would. No mad at what's called it, no mad at what's called it. It's seasonal. It wasn't even nomadic. It's season because I was, you know, I was in New York most years in December and January. I was in Wahaka most years in October and November. And between that, I was in Seattle or San Francisco or Mexico City. I worked on a number of different smaller projects, film projects with other creatives in Mexico, especially a couple of restaurant startup projects in Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands and in Port Towns, Washington, where I was helped develop systems and train staff and design a bar menu and actually design the printed menu. Wow. I designed an e-chain for a friend one year in Guatemala. And it was all just sort of creative spontaneous. The spontaneity that just, you know, that creative energy that would attract me to projects and projects to me. Yeah. And it just worked like, you know, a certain form of magic. Yeah. Well, I think a lot of a key is staying adaptable in some ways. Like, you know, not getting too locked down in your creativity because then it kind of gets stagnant. I think don't look for other opportunities on where it can go. I think creativity for me, I mean, I had this one class with Mark Hasmerak, which was, I don't remember the name, but it was basically like what it meant, like how do you call up that creative energy to be in your being, right? No, not in your work, but in your being. And so then by being creative, it attracts opportunities for you to participate as a creative. And you have to find it and you have to be friendly and social. Where did you take that class? That sounds awesome. That part is it. Oh, wow. Yeah, it was super cool. I mean, it was basically what I'm saying in the class. It was in the photography department. Wow. But we did a lot of writing. He interviewed us all on video at the end about creativity and. And he was just a wacky. He had a bad reputation for being like on the cutter or something like that. And we would bring in our prints and he would take them to the paper cutter, the guilt paper cutter and chop them up. And he'd cut down a nice 11 by 14 print to the little weird triangle and say, here's the essence of your photo. Four hours making that print. No, you can't cut it through what you're allowed. You threw it out because you wouldn't let them cut her photo. But he taught us and he said design like using the frame. He focused on two main things. He's like an awareness of light. One of three awareness of light, which includes color awareness of the frame. Composition. And an awareness of that creative essence. This is the heart. Wow, whatever you know that it. And he's like, and to be an interesting piece of art has to have all three. I think that's when we started talking about the idea of what defined it as art was it in the way it has its own life for it's still alive. That's what led me into those blurry photographs that I took for many years that impressionist style with camera motion. How cool. It was called still moving. That started in the 90s when I started traveling actually on a job to bar harbor main for conference, which was like Ikea back in the day catalog shooting. We were up there for a month. That's fun. But the idea that you know when I call them still moving because they still had that sort of vibration, you look at it like the impressionist pains you look at them and you kind of it makes you feel a little almost a little not seasick, but you feel the motion. It takes you on a ride. I have a lot of those photos. I do. They they must have been boxes these days. And on. Oh gosh, if I were to digitize though, right? They're all there. They are. They are. They are. I need to build a new website on supermitches actually that will have portfolios of my different years. It's a nice body work. I mean, in the end, it's about 35 images shot over the span of four or five years. And it supported me. I mean, when I set fine arts supported me, it was selling those images as prints as color prints that I would make in the dark room. Oh, cool. So that works off from 90 to 94 supported me. Gosh, at least for another 10 years. Amazing. I've set up a big prints and I would show up in New York. I saw you some of those years. I would show up in New York with a box of my, you know, like 20 images that I wanted to print that year on negatives, color negatives. And I'd rent a dark room space and buy box or like eight boxes of printing paper, color printing paper and just go full on a week or five days in the dark room and print out volumes of work. And then I'd order mats and I'd order frames from queens and one park city and I'd go out to work the holiday market, the Eonskore holiday market. Oh, that's funny. Yeah. Yeah. You know, one month, I was, I was some years I was supporting my entire year on one month of working the art market. Oh, wow. That's incredible. Which included travel and back to Mexico and all that Ecuador and all that. Yeah. It's great. It's great. It was hard work. Yeah. I mean, standing out there at Christmas time, you know, like wearing cut off little gloves, little woolen gloves. So I could sign prints and put things in the bags and beat people and shake hands and stuff. And at the end of the four weeks, because it was Thanksgiving to Christmas. At the end, like the last joint of all my fingers would peel the skin would come off. This is a wild prospect for a month. Wow. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Well, okay. Five years ago, after you did all that amazing photography, what led you to switch into web development? Well, I built, I did build. I designed a website for myself as a photographer. This is in 2000. Right before I moved to Port Townsend or as I was moving to Port Townsend, Washington, I hired a firm to build me a custom content management system, a CMS. This is before WordPress. Way, way, way before Squarespace. Yeah. It was, you know, based on how the web was composed back then. It wasn't cascading style. It wasn't CSS. It wasn't code that made the size. You actually had to open fireworks and dreamweaver and make little. All right. I remember. Bices for your buttons and your on-stage, upper-stage. And I had told these guys what I wanted. I said, look, I need to be able to create my own portfolios, you know, sports, landscape, portrait, whatever. And I need to be able to upload the images and I need a button for each one. And they're like, okay, you have to upload the normal state of the button and the active day and the upper state three different little gifts. Each time was a very, very, very primitive content management system, but that was the idea. I remember my friends, my two friends and I that we were talking about the stuff a lot. We're like, this is a thing like how I think expression was not expression engine. It was a macrameedic contribute existed back then. And you could edit text on a page. It was for offices to be able to give out delegation to edit page text. But I was like, no, I need to be able to make portfolios and have a media gallery and sort it out into groups. And that's kind of where it started the entrance from there. I started that and then we started talking about let's make a content management system my two friends and I and we were in way over our heads. None of us had that level of coding experience and we sort of found our way until we realized that WordPress had become what? What we were hoping for and it was way of all because it was open source and you know thousands of people who had contributed to it and a third of the websites in the world were running on it. And I was like, I'm just going to I'm just going to plunge in and learn that. That was about five years ago only it was right when we moved back to the Bay Area at the beginning of COVID. And I met a guy who has a company and nonprofit that I thought sounded really great. It's called in advance and they do social justice work and I said, hey, I. Would you be would you like some pro bono consulting work and you know on your website and noticed it's got some some areas that could be improved. He was like, absolutely, we would love that and that led pretty soon after into building a new website for for one of his sub brands. And and I was like, OK, I got to learn WordPress site. I had to do it. You plunge in jumped in and started researching on the web and joining some Facebook groups for developers where they ask each other questions and people are very one of things I love about this community is how. Supportive everyone is that we each other people teach each other these groups on Facebook that I found you're not allowed to request to be paid you're not allowed to send somebody a private message unless they've invited you to. It's not a job board at all. It's about teaching each other and figuring out together and I love that. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, there's so many online sort of forms that are so helpful for creativity and pretty much everything right at this point, but yeah. I guess I mean, I only kind of know the little sub world that I'm in but. But it is one of the things that I love about this community is is the besides obviously that I get to be expressing my creativity and my attention to detail like you said my problem solving solving I love. But you know design and running an agency it does have a lot of these other pieces for me of my past my hospitality and caregiving in that sense of like helping somebody figure out like I mean I worked in catering and the wedding business for. And I'm a lot of it is listening to the guests and figuring out what kind of party did they want and helping you're in our house and we want to make a good party for you and help you have the experience of you and your guests want to have. It's kind of the same with our clients now. I mean a lot of the time what we're trying to do is figure out what's what's their company about and who are they trying to attract to their website and what experience. So I think one of the things when working on websites is I think most people don't realize how in depth it is that's the main thing that always comes up is how much detail is in the programming and building of websites. And I think for clients you know most clients are kind of non tech people how do you keep things running smoothly for clients when they're not very techy. And I think that's a matter for us a lot of times when it's a clear division of you know here's what we're taking care for you and here's what your responsibilities are separate. It gets messy when there's too many cook sometimes even within my own team a big part of my role as the as the managing partner is that I have to kind of keep track of who's doing. It's possible for what piece and I have to be the switchboard between everyone to make sure that you're you know if you're designing and Solomon is writing code and. I'm doing the page building and we're sort of integrating all these pieces and understanding. How it's all going to work on all these different device types and vertical and horizontal layouts and extra wide layouts and how does it look on a small screen versus a big one it. How to colors you know play together that's more in the design but a lot of times we're sort of reinterpreting things and have to sort of take. You can't even take you can't really take anything. At their initial idea stage it's the idea is important and it's great and then there's the reality of it and then there's sort of a testing experience where people like. Either we think or we show it to the clients I mean you and I with dance notation there was a lot of parts are we. Ask them questions they would give us what they're thinking right we would describe it back to them and they'd say sounds good and we build it and they'd like oh no that's not. We realize you know we they didn't think they could they were imagining. We were imagining probably more completely as far as visual because that's what we do but we meeting you and I and the rest of the team but still the client then says oh. Well actually we kind of want them our visitors to have a different experience how can we modify this and. Again that's part of what I love is that it's adaptive and it's flexible and it should be really she you know to stay I mean just like our bodies if you don't. If you get rigid and you say I can only do this one motion over and over again your body's not going to be too happy. You're saying that like websites need to be. Adaptable dynamic and dynamic they should be able to grow like you know like a starter home that can have more stuff added onto it. And you maybe thought about that time so you planned well right right how you position things I think also the content needs to stay fresh I mean. If you want people to come back to your site again there has to be a reason unless you're showing something that's so cool that they want to show all their friends. Or a game or some kind of experienced or just some super useful information your content still also needs to stay fresh and so a lot of times we have to explain. That to the clients that you know I mean some of our clients are kind of it's a brochure it's kind of a set and forget it. Right but I was going to say like one of the projects that we recently completed which was the dance notation bureau which is a nonprofit it's like an online archive of dance notation. And it's an archive that spans since I think it started in the 40s or even the 30s and and they approached us to recreate their website because it was basically outdated and ready to go offline I think right. Yes it was it and it was also I don't know if this is the right word obfuscated like it was you know like it was difficult to navigate you had to find. Yes, even now we built a super menu where you can see all the different pages except for the individual blog posts but you can see all the different pages in a big mega menu across the top. Yeah. So you can find what you're looking for it's and it's still it's deep and so. Yeah, it was a big project no doubt and I think it's a way to help them group their content and reorganize it and make it accessible in the navigation and right. So that's something you touched on before I think Lisa is like. A big piece of some of these projects what makes them really big is that we get involved early helping the clients. They recognize their content and tell their story and that's you know it's you know if you have a if you have a simple website with an about page a portfolio. Services page and a contact me page. There's not a whole lot of planning you know and full of hours of arranging your content writing some text but. And on profit site which is what we find really interesting to do these much bigger projects because we get to go much deeper with our design and with our structure and with our the whole storytelling is a much deeper arc. But it involves more discovery time of working with the client generally. Either continuously or intermittently as they go off and do the homework on their own helping helping like structure all the content ahead of time before you start building and that way just like an architect. Like you don't just start boring concrete before you know what the building is going to look like and. That's a great. I like that you know like better plan the better plan you are what's you know measure twice build. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's true. For the dance notation bureau, we had such a huge spreadsheet of content. A flat length. Yeah, with links to different, different pages of content, as well as references to their archive that existed as blogs and things. Because everything in the spreadsheet was grouped, like reorganizing the pages and what kind of pages they were and any special details. But then each page's own content had a separate document, which laid out all the content so that you can build based on real content, not based on imaginary. Yeah, it was a great, I loved that project. I swear that was one of my, as much of a beast it was. It really was a project that I was, I mean, I'm so proud of because it really took them from this antiquated website that was not even mobile friendly at all or tablet friendly and barely kind of worked. It was like 15 years on, on, on, on desktop. So it was really a reconfiguring of all their content into something that is now very easy to navigate. I have to say and looks incredible. So that was, I just loved, I loved it. So I mean, it's exciting to me that they find us and work with us and we work with them. And in the end, they're happy and we're proud of the work we did and their board is happy and their website visitors are happy. The content is more accessible. That's to be fun. That, that, that, the big reward there is when it's the whole project is everybody's excited at the end. Yeah, happy that we did it all together. Yeah. So we took, took, took, are, you know, a lot of people worked on that project. Totally. Both on their side and on ours. Right. So at no panic design, I was going to ask you, how did you come up with the name, no panic, and panic design? That was shot. It actually well. I came up, I decided to use it. I suggested that we use it as the name, but it was something that he always said to me when I, you know, I, as I do, I get passionate and I get loud and express myself by frustrated or confused. And you know, no panic, no panic, bro. And we were, we were, I think, I think Jen was in the office at the time and, you know, reading or something on her phone on the phone and, and I was working with Shazib and, and we were trying to come up with it because I was operating a severe images before which is, you know, my parent company name. We wanted to come up with the new name and we were just, you know, stuck stuck all the time trying to be clever, trying to be whatever and, and I just said, I, oh, it makes me smile and Jen is like, oh, that's awesome. And Shazib started laughing. He was like, really? And I said, yeah, really? And we get really great response, you know, people. It's so easy to remember. And it's sure. Yeah, it makes sense. Yeah. Yeah, people smile and they're like, oh, great. Yeah. I'm like, you know, I mean, we don't want a panic. We don't want you to panic. Exactly. Yeah. We want to stay focused enough to not panic. Yeah. We want to work in a healthy pace. We want to, you know, we try and always do excellent work, but, you know, prior to, you know, sometimes people say, oh, this is, oh, that has to happen right now. And other times it's like, well, okay, times it really does. You know, we get a notification to you in the morning that says, there's a problem. There's a, you know, a server attack figured out. So we've had women so much different stuff over the over the last five years of working together. Our team is now 10 people, which I count you as part of even though you have your own company as well. Because it does. I mean, it sounds corny, but it takes, it takes a team, it takes community to, there's so much. Yeah. There's always more stuff to learn. And yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, there's so many different aspects. I had a meeting yesterday with somebody who, her specific niche is Google business profiles. That's pretty much all of her clients are in that one arena. Oh my gosh. And it's just one of like 100 different aspects of what projects need. Yeah. Yeah. It's good to have experts that know all this because it's really, it really is daunting to figure out where all what are that where you have to be online. Like what things you need to touch with your brand website that will affect. You know, you appear. If you put it on square space or wicks or WordPress, that's, that's really a small question in the grand scope of all the other. You have to be asked like what do you, what are you actually putting in? Who's looking at it? And right. Right. Is it on social media or is it back in the day? We had to send out little mail or cards and try and get a portfolio drop off. I'm not anymore. I wonder, was that was that easier? Maybe, but it was a lot more legwork. It was more physical work, I think. But that's what that's when you and I connected again after college was when you shared an office with Matthew and I was in New York those years running my portfolio around time looking for, you know, book cover jobs and sports photography jobs. I started shooting sports as well as doing my landscape, I know art stuff and fine arts got used a lot for publishing in magazines and books. And then I started getting some sports work as well, which. But I would go to New York and hustle my book around. Yeah, every year I'd go out and, you know, I know it had an opportunity to be in New York and to see my dad who was still live there for a few years at least. Running to people I knew from persons like you and see what you were doing and and see Matthew and Matthew was getting, you know, photo jobs as a culinary staff and corporate staff and. Right. That's our friend Matthew Septimus, who is a photographer and will be singing in a couple of weeks. You were traveling around and you're doing photography and you sort of branched out into other things. Your math interests also came back into play when you were tutoring students in math. Yeah, when I when I was in Port Towns in Washington and again, it kind of it kind of happened coincidentally in the way I had friends whose kids were in middle school. And they knew that I had been really into math just because you get to know somebody and how about their past and they think would you consider tutoring or our son and maybe a couple of his friends who could really use some help and in eighth grade pre algebra. And and that led to a full full blown program called brainstorm for education. I am at its peak had in small workshops. So it wasn't one on one to two during it was small groups four to seven four to nine kids in a group per subject level. I had all the way from general math general math pre algebra algebra geometry algebra to pre-calc apcalc and physics workshops eight different workshops meeting twice a week. Wow, I can't and my brain like, and you know, teaching all that math. I sort of it all started scaffolding and building off of itself. I understood, you know, a graph in algebra one and how it relates to the formula and calculus and and so exciting and so fun. That led to kids asking me is there any other subjects you can teach us because this is you know we they actually started applying for independent study credit to learn like why am I why do I have to go to school also if I just get lost or confused or board there and I'm learning the material with you anyway can you just but I was like, no, I'm not a certified teacher. I'm like a trainer. Yeah, right. You got to get the credit yourself to the end of the petition to the school to get the credit for the learning that they had achieved not for the class you never wanted to become a certified teacher. I want it to be to be a freelance creative. That's what I wanted to be able to build it my way and build it based on the environment I was in. Not be locked into any a giant. Yeah, I mean we're part of education for the number of organizations and sure. In terms of work, I've always wanted to just be a freelance always. You know, I'm not a freelance anymore. I run an agent. But you have your own meaning you have your own you have your own company that you run your own way and you have a lot of issues to my work. Yes, right. I both as our part of our two as part of our team as well as who our clients are. Yeah, and I like that. Yeah, I do too. It's always been my preference. The brainstorm. Because the math program became what we call the field course and kids actually got two credits were up there. to two credits. They got senior social studies. Our program was called the systems that feed us and so they could study food as their senior social studies. They could say food either from an environmental impact or an economic impact or a nutrition impact. And then their second credit was in was a fine art or an applied arts credit and they had to choose a method of documentation where they would work together to create the proof of learning. Basically you can't just say I learned things. So you're saying that you had beyond the math. You also do social studies and students were an incredible and senior social which is called contemporary world program. This program that you. I was the creative director and the certificate at teach. The school had to you know, somebody whose system had to authorize and approve and it was basically like an independent study graduate. I love it. That's so cool. So the first the first credit was social studies and the second credit was was applied art and so they either chose journalism photography, illustration or audio or video production. And so they were recording themselves and taking notes and their notebooks and drawing the food. We studied all these different aspects of how food moves in and out of the community. And I got to be the wizard in the center of the room. That's fun. Who knew? I didn't know you did that. Every time I talk to you, I feel like I learned something that you've done. Yeah. I. That's good. You know, I'm very creative. It's allowed me to say, okay, you know what? For the next three, four years, we're for the past three or four years. This was the the thrust of my creative work. And then it could be something different five years down the line. Yeah. Yeah. So right now you're very into website building and the ever changing technology that goes along with it. How do you keep up to date with that? Because it feels like it's changing. Like, I don't know. Like every month or so. There's things to change for sure. I mean, it keeping up is it's kind of a question of perspective and scale. You know, I mean, I read a lot. My two primary partners and I, Shazet and Salman there, they, we research stuff together all the time. We put our heads together and problem solve. Like, okay, what? There's got to be some way we can do a KBC and turn it into xy. How are we? How are we going to, you know, when we start looking for creative solutions, you know, sometimes it's simple as asking Claude or chat GPD. We'll do us enough of the start to figure out which way we're going. But oftentimes we have to get creative with where we're looking things up and how we're wording our questions when we're online or who we go to with that. Sure. You say, hey, do you have any perspective? Which, which Facebook groups for which groups of developers should we ask? So now that you brought up AI and using AI as a tool, obviously AI is evolving very fast, very quickly. And there's probably, I mean, what do you see? How are things going to change in the web development, website development world? Do you think with AI? Well, I get asked, you know, am I worried? Is AI coming? Yeah, of course. I mean, we all get asked that. I think I'm always asked that as a crazy laugh. I'm like, you know, they, they, I mean, I use AI differently. I don't just ask you a question saying like, I mean, I watch endless videos too when I'm just, you know, doing scrolling it for in the morning. But, um, a lot of them say, you know, like, you're not going to get good results if you say, hey, chat GPD, make me 20 social media posts. Yeah, right. Right. Right. Uh, tell me what image to accompany them. Like, you actually have to train it to you and get it to ask you questions and all these kind of things. So, you know, like our discovery process with our clients, like, at least in its current iteration, the AI's are not, they're not trained to cultivate me to give it. Right. The content and have it help me sort it out. That's a very human to human thinking. I think a lot of the AI future is actually going to be switching from a database response to a thinking based response. This is starting already with, I believe that what's it called from China is modeling more in that direction. There's talk that GROC, uh, that acquisition of Twitter is actually to feed. Uh, with live content. Based on, you know, a lot of the, the AI's are trained in last year's content. Like, it'll give me outdated answers and tell me, well, my data is limited to as of December 2023 on this. Because that's when that model was released. It's training was based on what was available at that. I didn't even know that. I just, we can't access a manual for something that only came out last because it's not training live data. It's training on it. Ben data. I didn't. That's going to shift. I will shift and we'll see. I mean, it's anybody's guess. But, yeah. You know, there's also that side around like all the average 150, 170 years ago that photography was an art when cameras were invented. But, you know, I mean, did the finger painters say that to the people who made brushes? I don't know. Like, good, right. Right. Right. Right. Right. I think it's all about like the creative spark and the creative drive and how we apply it to whatever, whatever media, whatever toolset, whatever application. I don't think of myself as a, I'm a photographer anymore or as a developer agency owner. I mean, yeah, at the moment, I absolutely am. And I put heart and soul into it as well as a lot of attention and discipline and outreach and all this other stuff. But if, you know, I mean, to me, what's the future? Like, or you know, one of the things you asked me before our session today was like, if you were going to go back to Parsons, you know, if you were going to go back to college now, what would you do? Would you study? In my current state of interest, what I'm saying, actually, I guess my answer is what I am studying now, which is prompt engineering. To me, that's fascinating. And at least for myself, I know that that has components of my structured thinking approach and my interaction. I mean, I use, I work with Claude Sonnet primarily and just because it's the one that I've taken to. I like the way I can guide it. And at the end of every session, I have it. If I have, I'm working on a project that I know I'm going to work on in multiple days, because it has no sustained memory between sessions. Even within a single session, it only has a limited amount. Like if I'm working for eight hours, by the end, it's, it's lost track for the first four hours of work that we did. It's only going on a certain bulk of content in its memory. Yeah. So I have it right prompts for itself and say, okay, Claude, summarize everything we did today. And where we're leaving off and what our next steps are. Also, I want you to summarize what you learned about me as a human part of this process and what you've learned about working with me as the director of this process. And it writes this beautiful nine. It's about 900 lines of code generally in this one project I'm working on. Where it's, it's the first thing in the next day when I open a new, a new chat. That's what I feed it. Say, okay, before we get started, here's the prompt. Do you wrote yesterday? I know you don't have memory. I had your own prompt for today to get you up to speed. Can I give you that first? And I feed it then and then it says, Oh, hey, Jonathan, what are we working on today? I suggest we either start with a, b or c based on the, or would you like to work on something else? And we jump right back into the flow. It's like having a, it's like you have to retrain your robot every day. So you are as it's master, if you will, not really master, but user. Yeah. And the user, I'm for, from its perspective, I'm the client actually. Yeah. So it's just, I guess looking at AI as a helpful tool for us instead of it being something to dread and adapting to. I mean, I think that's what we're all kind of dealing with, right? Is the idea that, okay, things a couple of years ago were not done this way. And now you have this incredible tool. So is this something that you embrace or is it something that you, I'm like, throw your hands up and like, well, this isn't how it used to be. And, um, I don't know what to do. - I spent, I have an answer for you for that. I spent a month on a farm Costa Rica back in the early 2000s. And to cook lunch every day, we had a hearth fire, you know, yet a wood in the stove, and the outdoor wood stove with a big iron on top. And you had to get your beans in the morning, get the fire going and start the big pot of beans warming up, cooking. And you got to make the fire, and you got to be strategic about more fire in the back corner 'cause you want more heat and less fire over here 'cause you want to simmer something or put up some bread. You don't want to burn it. I have a induction range in my kitchen. I don't cook on a wood stove in my house. So I'm embracing the technology absolutely. And it's just different. - Yeah. - Is it better? Yeah, and sure in some ways, it's a lot easier to turn up your thermostat and it is to make the fire in your wood stove. - Sure, sure, sure. - So to me, AI is no different to me. It's like, I mean, I saw a great quote that, you know, I said, "Oh, we're getting it wrong." Like, AI, we should be training AI is to do our dishes and clean our houses not to make art for us. I want to make the art of the day. - Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I agree. I mean, I think I've said this before when my conversations with people on this podcast that I think that any, this creating art, especially art by hand is gonna become even more important because it will become even more special because everything will be, so many things in our world will be like digitally created by AI. So actual human creating will be something that will be, I think, even more appreciated, I hope, anyway, that's my. - I mean, robots could learn to hold a paintbrush. - Sure, sure. - And, you know, and have a, I mean, who knows what's really going on in our own creative idea making? I mean, if you're seeing something and you're having a feeling about it or you're remembering something while you're looking and gives you an urge to paint a picture or design a color palette. And color palette has mood and it has temperature and it has climate and emotion and nostalgia and temperament. So, can an AI do that? - Maybe, I don't know. - Maybe, maybe. I don't know. - I don't know. All I can tell you is that I like doing it and I believe I'm good at it to a certain degree. - What? - Being creative and being a human creative, not an creative, - A deep look at it. - Sure, sure. - You know, but actually expressing my perspectives or creating a score, like anything, you know, like a, I mean, that's so fascinating to me that project with dance notation that it was, the lava notation is a system for choreographers to document where the dancers move and in what, like music is to a conductor, music score. I mean, I feel like that's what we're doing all the time no matter which kind of creative project we're doing in a sense what we're doing is we're creating an orchestra and a composition. - Yeah. - And I love it. I love it. I love that it can be different things. It can be different mediums. Currently it's web design and I, for me, one of the things that's really different about web design and I guess teaching as well, well, I guess restaurant too. It's collaborative. It's not solo. As a photographer, I was very solo. - Mm-hmm. - Yeah, I do prefer the collaborative work mostly. - Yeah, yeah, it's fun. It's very inspiring. It's great to, and you have such a good team. We have such a good team of people. So that makes it even better. - And I like it that I can have used as a designer and like I can design, but I find it more exciting to work in a different role as the lead developer with your design because it's your designing the way you design, not the way I design it. So I get to stretch my development concept around your design, which is very different. - Mm-hmm, yeah. - Or Daniel's design. - Right. - Yeah, and Stark is another designer who works with us on projects. Also a friend of ours from Parsons, which is us. - Yeah, yeah. - Wriggled all around. - It does. - We didn't know, right? We didn't know like 35 years ago, whatever it was. We didn't know how which people that we knew back then were gonna still be in our creative and French. - No, not at all, not at all. - And I do, I mean for you and I, I think just because I moved to the East Bay and then you had roots here. So you'd come back before you actually move back here. That's how-- - Right, so I don't like that. - That's how you're posting on Facebook. - Yeah. - Deand Rock, I think. - Yeah, yeah. - What are you doing in Berkeley? - I don't know, I live here. You didn't even know that I've grown up. - I totally forgot, no, I don't know. - You didn't even know that I'd grown up here. And I was like, well, I'm coming there next week to visit my family, let's say. - Yeah. - Yeah, this was an area I didn't know anything about. So probably if you would have told me when we were 19, 20 years old, I would have been like, oh, I have no idea what that was. - When I printed it off. (laughing) - Now we live like two miles from a part. - Yep, yeah, that's great. Well, it's always a pleasure working with you. I really, really do enjoy how you, you're so detail oriented in a way that I am not. So that's why I think we mix such a good team. And you are, I mean, you also just have just a really good design aesthetic. So for me, as a designer who's picky with the details, that is one of the most important things that you kind of look at spacing and how things interact with each other. And it's just, it's just a pleasure, always working with you. (laughing) - We're always, we're building, we get excited to see when you're about to deliver your PDFs. - Oh gosh. - Sheddy like, fine, we're like, oh, - Oh, that's good. - There's a tiny little bit of dreads too strong on the word, but there's a, (laughing) oh gosh, what kind of crazy challenge? - Challenge, let's say challenge. - What is this time challenge? (laughing) - Little bit. (laughing) - You always figured out. - But we also take it a step, we just, I didn't even tell you, we did a thing for D&B recently where I think it was for D&B. Where I was like, you know, it would be really cool if, wouldn't it be cool if and Solomon or, we'll say, did the client request that? (laughing) And I'll say, well, no, but wouldn't it be cool? For three of us say it's cool. - Yes. - The next question is, okay, who has an idea how to build it? Should we do it? Let's take an hour to do it. And that's, you know, that sort of obsessive creative nature of things. - Yeah, yeah. - Yeah, 'cause it's fun. - 'Cause it's fun. - Yeah. - Well, it's cool, it's like a worthy challenge. It's a worthy challenge and it actually will make a better user experience in the end. And I think that's a real valid point to like, our company called, our company's cultures is that we go the extra distance when it's, when it makes a difference. Because it is worth it. We, even if no one else notices, we notice and we feel much more like complete in our work because we went the extra mile to just tidy up the last little details or think it through a couple more times before we lock into solution and work together collaboratively. I mean, it's much harder to make creative, creativity is one thing, we create decision making is very difficult as a solo. - Yeah. - Yeah. - As a team, we can say, what do you think, what do you think? And what if, and have we considered and then we can make a better decision together? Because for one, all the pressure wasn't on one person and also because we got the perspective of our colleagues. - For web development, what's, what do you feel like is your specialty? Like what types of clients are your specialty? Or is there a specialty? - They're all somewhat similar in a way that they are giving information and they're trying to provide that either just that information as in the case of DNB, it's an archive or if it's a portfolio site like Orion Construction was, that the website has a purpose and what we really like is helping the client identify what the purpose of that website is. Or their business in their sales process or in their mission of deployment or in attracting like the Blink Now site is mostly to show all the work that they do and to give people opportunity to get involved either by participating or by donating. So the website is really just a very big annual report brochure of-- - Right. what they do and why you should care about it and how you can get involved. I like that storytelling. - One last question for you and it sort of kind of goes back to us as younger creatives. But what advice would you give to younger creatives now who are starting out in this ever-changing tech landscape? What would I tell it? I'd say, you know, like be strong 'cause you're gonna need it and work hard because being creative is not enough and keep, stay hungry, you know? (laughs) 'Cause you gotta keep absorbing, you gotta to creativity's not just like a spark that lives by itself. Like you have to feed it, nourish it, and let it roam and let it rage. And you know, it's, it's, keep learning, keep following what you're passionate about. Be willing to just like hunkered down and study, study, study when you need to or fail, fail, fail at like, in the learning process. I mean, I remember telling people that, to shoot my body of work, that still moving body of work was in the end like I think 36, 37 images, something like that. I must have shot, you know, like hundreds or thousands of rolls of film, you know? 30,000 frames to get 35 images. Yeah. What? And I'm like, they're not, they're not all great. They're not, they're not all even, you know, that. Yeah. I mean, the great artists were only seeing small percentages. I mean, maybe Mary Kusoff were seeing a large percentage of her work. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, you know, I mean, how many thousands of paintings do you think Picasso made in Thruway or Godmaston? Well, only. I was just at the mat and there was a van Gogh, on the famous portrait of Van Gogh. You know, that was in this display. The one he has with the hat, the self portrait. And on the backside, it was in this clear display case. So you could see the front with the frame, you know, this beautiful portrait that everybody knows. But then you go to the backside. So on the back of the canvas, there was like the sketch sort of thing of this woman. I think she was like holding something totally not done. It was like on the back and I'm like, did, I always have a mixed feeling about like that. Because it's like, obviously he didn't want, and nobody was supposed to see this. Or when they use infrared technology to see, like underneath a painting that, you know, was something else was there. It would be like publishing a book or like a transcript or something or like the beginning, you know, sort of like outline of a book of somebody. - Do you mean by showing the sketch on the back when he didn't mean for that to be sure? - Yeah, yeah. - I don't know. I mean, he only sold one painting the entire time. He was alive. So I don't think anybody was looking at work. (laughing) And you know, and you had to get painting. - Yeah, yeah. - I guess for a hand, me was like, I'll turn this canvas around and I'll have another, you know, I don't have to buy a new one. (laughing) - I mean, nowadays, yeah, you don't even have, I mean, I remember shooting early digital cameras where you had a card. - Yeah. - I'm back flashcards. - What is? - Card that you had to take out and download your computer. - Yeah. - And I guess people still do that or they should. - You, because my son's doing that right now. - Yeah. - Is digital and your photographic class. - Yeah, your card. - Mm-hmm. - To be able to receive new images, just like reusing a canvas. I mean, to me, it's just a different incarnation of the same story. We're using some materials, whether it's paint or digital photography. We're still recording it in some way. We're still displaying it in some way, whether it's on a screen or on a canvas. We're using some level of technology, whether it's the people who made the oil paints that you're using, that you didn't make yourself or, and what are the binding agents or early photography has a lot of technology and chemistry in the making film and making of the lenses. - Right, right. - That's an analog photography. You know, what's next for me or for you? - Who knows? - Who knows? - I mean, I-- - I don't know. - I might be a psychotherapist by the time I'm ready to be able to screen all day and just talk to people. - Exactly. Well, that's what my friend is doing, my friend Aasia, who I interviewed a couple of months ago, and she's a trained designer. She wanted to ceramics, and now she's doing business coaching for people. Because she, yeah, she just realized, like as she was going through her, like working with clients, kind of like what we were talking about, how, you know, you realize that a lot of times when people come to you with projects, clients need guidance. Therapy, I'm saying in quotes. (laughs) All right, you know, like they need guidance and handholding, and that's what she realized. She was like, oh, a lot of what I'm doing here is helping people figure out what they really want to do. And then she started studying coaching in business and kind of life, generally life coaching. So it's pretty cool. Yeah, you just never know. - And then they do overlap. I mean, one thing that's missing for me in web design is my love of food. And you know, when I was in restaurants and hotels, I was a big creative force, you know? Food and scent, presentation and decor and all that. Each project can kind of bring different things, whether it's still in web design or other fields. I think, you know, a lot of it, like you said, it's not so much therapy that I'm talking about, but more like organizational training or, you know, I mean, a lot of it, you know, like I used to say to my master, it's like, I'm not your teacher, I'm your trainer. And it's no different in a lot of these other sort of levels. When you reach a level of mastery, I think, where you're able to see behind the curtain a little bit and help other people where you're ready to teach is when you're able to see behind the curtain and see the structure of things and scaffold up an education, or get stronger at what they're trying to say or trying to do. - Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, yeah, that's cool. I like that. That's a good visual. Well, Jonathan, it was great to talk to you. Can you tell everybody where they can find information on you and your company? Again, nopanic design is online at nopanicdesign.com. You can find us on Instagram and Facebook, more of me, the businesses are somewhat placeholders on social 'cause we are more one-to-one for our projects, but you can find me on Facebook or on LinkedIn, Jonathan Sifir, based in California. - Yep, I'll put that all in the show notes too, so people can connect. So Jonathan, what a rebel. Thank you for being here. - Thanks Lisa, it's always a pleasure. - Yeah, okay, thank you. Now that was cool. - Hey everybody, thanks for listening to What a Rebel. You can find me on Facebook and Instagram at LisaMazer_Art_Design. And my website is LisaMazerStudio.com. (upbeat music)