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Design Downtime: Daily Summaries Delivered
by Guy Segal
"Design Downtime" celebrates the joys of living a balanced creative life outside the pixels and wireframes. Join your host, Guy Segal, a design director, on this journey to redefine what it means to be a successful design professional, as each episode features a conversation with a talented design expert, delving into the world beyond their design screens and uncovering the passions that fuel their imagination. Break free from the shackles of hustle culture and embrace the full spectrum of human experience – because life is too precious to be spent only in pursuit of productivity.
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- 1 weeks ago29 min
Andy Bell Loves The Legend of Zelda
It's dangerous to go alone! Take this episode where Andy Bell joins us to talk about his lifelong obsession with the Legend of Zelda. He explores what makes the franchise compelling: its creativity, humour, weird NPCs, and remarkable ability to stay consistent in spirit while reinventing itself across 20 games spanning 40 years. Andy also shares his self-imposed challenge of playing the entire series in timeline order, and the magical experience of introducing his daughter to the franchise and watching her fall in love with the same games that shaped him.Guest BioAndy Bell (he/him) is a designer, front-end developer, design agency founder, and the founder of Piccalilli, based in the UK. He has worked in the design and web industries for over 15 years with some of the largest organisations in the world like Google, The NHS, Harley-Davidson and Oracle. Over the years he has worked on both extremely large projects for huge organisations and tiny projects for small startups. Andy mostly specialises in CSS — whether that is consultancy, writing an expansive course, co-writing a course for Google, co-authoring a book on CSS layout, or creating a methodology to help people write better CSS.LinksAndy’s website: https://bell.bz/Andy’s agency: https://set.studio/The blog post that explains what he’s doing: https://bell.bz/im-playing-the-zelda-games-in-timeline-order/Zelda timeline tracker: https://tangled.org/bell.bz/zelda-in-timeline-order/blob/main/readme.mdCreditsCover design by Raquel Breternitz.
- 2 weeks ago23 min
Lisa Carey Loves Brian Eno
In this episode, Lisa Carey joins us to share her decades-long appreciation for Brian Eno. She introduces us to Eno the musician, producer, visual artist, and one of the originators of systems thinking in creative work, and traces a through-line from Roxy Music to Bowie's Berlin Trilogy, and from Oblique Strategies to a generative documentary that shows differently every screening - all united by a philosophy of embracing randomness and the unexpected over rigid planning.Guest BioLisa Carey (she/her) is a Design System Lead and Product Designer with a unique, 30+ year creative career spanning film, marketing, television, and software design, and her own creative pursuits. Working in the financial sector since 2012, Lisa brings over 20 years of UX/UI experience to her work. Currently, she is focusing on systemic design, front-end development, and AI collaboration within modern design system frameworks. Previously, Lisa spent 15 years in film as a director including the film Rough Road and managing international distribution and licensing for Ken Burns and other filmmakers. Today, she brings that same passion for visual storytelling to digital product design. A practicing painter who also teaches community courses exploring music and art, Lisa anchors her multi-disciplinary work in her true passions: systemic design, creative strategy, and making unexpected connections.LinksLisa on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisacareydesign/CreditsCover design by Raquel Breternitz.
- 3 weeks ago31 min
Erin Casali Loves Illustrating
A picture is worth a thousand words when Erin Casali joins us to share about her illustration practice. She reflects on not being able to visualize images in her mind, which makes her process generative and exploratory; drawing to discover, not to transcribe. Erin describes switching from pencil to ink as a forcing function to break perfectionist habits and train herself to think in whole compositions rather than obsessing over details. Finally, she explores the blurry line between design and art, where what makes something art is the human soul projected into it.Guest BioErin Casali (she/her) is a VP/Director of both product and design, with over 10 years of experience in each. She has a hybrid approach with design, product, and engineering in her background. Her rare blend of skills, including psychology and change management, enables her to foster collaboration and break down silos. Driven by a passion for improving lives through her work, she empowers teams to reach their full potential. She advocates for purpose, transparency, and diversity, fostering a culture of trust and agency. Her diverse experiences across startups, large corporations, advisory, and board roles have equipped her with a versatile toolkit to adapt to various organizational contexts and drive meaningful change.LinksErin’s website: https://intenseminimalism.com/Inklings of Late on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/inklings.of.late/Inklings of Late on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/inklingoflate.bsky.socialCreditsCover design by Raquel Breternitz.
- Aug 20, 202627 min
Jenny Dee Brecheisen Loves Barrel Racing
Saddle up and start your stopwatch, when Jenny Dee Brecheisen joins us to talk about her passion for barrel racing. She shares how it completely transformed her life, from city dweller to 10-acre landowner with four horses. Jenny explores the deep bonds formed with her horses through daily care and patience, the 14-17 seconds of pure adrenaline that make all the preparation worthwhile, and the steep learning curve and real physical dangers that come with the sport.Guest BioJenny Dee Brecheisen (she/her) is a UI Engineer on Cloudflare’s UI Platform team, where she works across frontend UI, systems, and engineering infrastructure. Beginning with a degree in graphic design and early work in print and marketing, she later moved into product design and design systems before transitioning into engineering, bringing a cross-disciplinary perspective to building products in the age of AI. Her work today spans everything from frontend development and accessibility to migrations, debugging, and improving how software gets built and maintained at scale. When she’s not working, she spends her time barrel racing and investing in futurity horse prospects.LinksJenny’s website: tinycrowbar.comJenny’s race-tracking app: highloper.comJenny on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yennie/CreditsCover design by Raquel Breternitz.
- Aug 13, 202633 min
Luke Murphy Loves Being in a Band
It's not all mosh pits and crowdsurfing when Luke Murphy joins us to talk about nearly 20 years of band life. They talk about the sharp contrast between recording an album and the rush of performing it, and how the Brutalligators' chemistry works through defined roles, mutual respect, and just enough creative tension to push each other forward. Luke also punctures the myth of touring glamour, but explains that the friendships, the crowd energy, and the moment a new song lands on stage make it entirely worth it.Guest BioLuke Murphy (they/them) is a Principal Design Advocate at zeroheight. Before zeroheight, Luke has worked as an IC and leader in product design and advocacy teams at Memrise, Mr & Mrs Smith and Microsoft. They host the Design Systems WTF podcast, and co-organize the WDC and Converge conferences. When they’re not nerding out about design systems and DesignOps, they are busy raising their 13-year-old son, shouting in a queer punk band, or running a DIY vinyl subscription company. They also don’t sleep.LinksLuke’s Website: www.lurkmoophy.comBrutalligators on bandcamp: brutalligators.bandcamp.comBrutalligators on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/6PQwcg9SjBaPxGhqWeSIs5?si=w0sEdUZiTI27Yfr1stBZyACreditsCover design by Raquel Breternitz.
- Aug 6, 202626 min
Odette Jansen Loves City-Building Games
We built this city, or rather Odette Jansen did, as she joins us to explore her deep love of city-building games. She talks about being drawn to games with genuine depth and resource management challenges, and a blank canvas that gives her full control without consequences. Games like Cities Skylines or Planet Zoo, where she's logged over 400 hours recreating Disneyland leaf by leaf. Odette also reflects honestly on how being late-diagnosed autistic and ADHD shapes her play style. From the hyperfocus and Excel sheets tracking city resources, to the pure joy of knowing random animal facts at the zoo.Guest BioOdette Jansen (she/her) has spent 15 years in UX. She leads research and content at ING, and she also runs UXR Study (uxrstudy.com) - a training platform for UX researchers, used by over 80,000 professionals worldwide, with courses, templates, and support on everything from research to UX leadership. She's got a BSc in UX and an MEd in talent development and diversity. She's late-diagnosed autistic and ADHD, and that shapes a lot of her work - she's spent a long time looking at how organizations overlook neurodivergent people, and how to build places and leaders that don't.LinksOdette on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/odett/UXR Study: https://uxrstudy.com/CreditsCover design by Raquel Breternitz.
- Jul 23, 202624 min
Jarvis Moore Loves Sneakers
It's time to lace up when Jarvis Moore joins us to talk about his love for collecting sneakers. He shares how it grew from a childhood longing into a curated collection that serves as his primary form of personal expression, the systematic approach behind his collecting, and how he navigates the hype-driven world of limited collaborations and grail sneakers. Beyond the collecting itself, he reflects on how sneakers function as cultural shorthand, community building, and self-expression, including the Jordans he wore on his wedding day.Guest BioJarvis Moore (he/him) is a Senior Design Lead for Design Systems at Realtor.com, where his job is to build the infrastructure that makes great design possible at scale. In addition to maintaining and architecting systems, he’s spent his career teaching teams how to think in systems before they ever touch a component. His work spans enterprise design systems, AI tooling, and the harder question most orgs avoid “how do you actually build design culture, not just document it?” He speaks and teaches on all of it, because he’s lived it. He’ll tell you the hardest part of design systems was never the components. It’s the people. It’s always been the people.LinksJarvis on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jarvismoore1016/Jarvis on Twitter/X: https://x.com/jmodesigns10CreditsCover design by Raquel Breternitz.
- Jul 16, 202630 min
Sam Gordashko Loves to DJ
Get ready for the beat to drop, when Sam Gordashko joins us to talk about her love of DJing. She traces her journey from recording mixtapes off the radio as a kid to spinning sets at Burning Man. She shares how she learned to embrace imperfection as a recovering perfectionist, breaks down her systematic approach to navigating 50,000 tracks, and explains how DJing puts her into a flow state of constant, calculated risk-taking. Sam also offers practical advice for anyone curious about trying DJing themselves.Guest BioSam Gordashko (she/her) is a freelance design systems pro with a design tokens obsession based out of Toronto, and she's on a mission to make complex tech feel human. Over the years, Sam has worked with big names like Getty Images, Shutterstock and Intuit, plus plenty of scrappy startups figuring it all out, with most of her career spent as a "Design Team of One" at various tech innovation startups. You might know her as Samantha Gordashko or Sam I am Designs, the public speaker, host of design systems events, and educational content creator focused on design tokens, design-to-development processes, and systems thinking. She's got a knack for turning intimidating technology into approachable, actionable workflows and has built a reputation in the design systems community for making people laugh while sharing her future-friendly design pro tips, real-world workflows, epic fails, and radical honesty about what not to do.LinksSam’s website: https://samiam.design/Sam’s set, Promise Cherry Beach, June 12, 2022: https://soundcloud.com/ilovepromise/aubade-promise-cherry-beach-june-12-2022Sam’s set, Solar Seance, Club Rapture: https://soundcloud.com/aubade_samiam/ssraptureCreditsCover design by Raquel Breternitz.
About Design Downtime
"Design Downtime" celebrates the joys of living a balanced creative life outside the pixels and wireframes. Join your host, Guy Segal, a design director, on this journey to redefine what it means to be a successful design professional, as each episode features a conversation with a talented design expert, delving into the world beyond their design screens and uncovering the passions that fuel their imagination. Break free from the shackles of hustle culture and embrace the full spectrum of human experience – because life is too precious to be spent only in pursuit of productivity.
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