EP7. Digital Hospitality with Ty Fujimura

Hello and welcome back to the UserFlows Podcast. UserFlows is a show where we talk about UX Design and UX Careers. You should listen to this show if... You are a student of user experience or product design. You are a professional who is considering a transition to the field or if you're just someone who's interested in UX design and wants to learn a bit more about it. In each episode, I'll interview a successful, working designer in order to discover how they found the field and have managed to thrive in this highly competitive landscape. We'll break down the steps they took in order to land their first jobs, dive into the mistakes they've made while building their careers, and hopefully teach a bit about the processes, tools, and best practices that have helped them in their own design journey.

If you haven't already, please subscribe to the show on iTunes, Spotify or anywhere else you listen to podcasts. I'll be releasing a show about every other week or so. If you'd like to be a friend to the show. Leaving a review and comment on iTunes would be very much appreciated. Share a link to this show with your friends and those interested in UX design. Feel free to recommend topics you'd like to hear discussed and if you have any questions about Design, Design Careers, or anything else for that matter, you can DM me on Instagram @userflows.live.

Today I'm speaking with Ty Fujimura, CEO of Cantilever Web Design and Development. Ty is an extremely thoughtful designer and design leader. His career purpose (I mean, look at that, he actually has a career purpose) is to unite creativity and business. Cantilever is a mission-driven company and its mission is to harness the power of “Digital Hospitality". A term I absolutely love, it means they believe websites are spaces that users inhabit, not billboards they see from a distance. Ty is currently focused on building a great environment for Cantilever’s staff to thrive and deliver outstanding results for their clients.

In our conversation, we dive a little bit deeper into what Digital Hospitality means to Ty, his team, and their clients. Cantilever is a remote-first team so we talk a bit about remote working best practices for the rest of us just toying at remote working. How to make time to let designers design and some of his thoughts around building a successful design culture.

I can not thank Ty enough for sharing his time and ideas. If you'd like to learn more about Ty and Cantilever. You can connect with Ty on Twitter @tyfuji or by visiting cantilever.co. If you're a soccer fan, Ty also hosts a fantastic podcast We The Peeps focused on US Soccer, USMNT the World Cup and is an irreverent take on US Soccer. USMNT Gold Cup, CONCACAF Nations League, and World Cup Qualifying. Give it a listen.

TM

Transcript

Howdy and welcome back to the UserFlows podcast. I'm your host, Thomas Morrell, user flows is a show where we'll talk about UX design and UX careers. You should listen to this show. If you are a student of user experience design, or product design. You're a professional who's considering a transition to the field or if you're just someone who's interested in UX design and wants to learn a little bit more about it. Each episode I interview a successful working designer in order to discover how they found the field and have managed to thrive in this highly competitive landscape. We'll break down the steps they took in order to land their first job, dive into the mistakes they've made while building their careers and hopefully teach a bit about the processes, tools and best practices that have helped them along in their own design journey.

Today I'm speaking with Ty Fujimori, CEO of Cantilever web design and development. Ty is an extremely thoughtful designer and design leader, his career purpose, I mean, look at that he actually has a greater purpose. His career purpose is to unite creativity and business. Cantilever is a mission driven company. And their mission is to harness the power of digital hospitality a term which I love, it means that they believe websites are spaces that users inhabit, and not billboards that they see from a distance. So Ty is currently focused on building a great environment for Cantilever staff to thrive, and deliver outstanding results for their clients.

In our conversation, we dive a little bit deeper into what digital hospitality means to Ty his team and their clients. How to make time to let designers design and some of the thoughts around building a successful design culture. I cannot thank Ty enough for sharing his time and ideas and why am I still talking? Let's just listen to the conversation.

THOMAS MORRELL

Ladies and gentlemen, we have Ty Fujimura. here with us today, Ty is the CEO of Cantilever web design and development, and also a podcast host, which is kind of how we met first. We the Peeps, which is a USA soccer podcast, and I think we were playing T-Ball in the park with the kids. And I was wearing a USA soccer hat. Yes, exactly started talking to me about soccer. And that's how I learned about it. And you're also a big help to me in getting this podcast going. So thank you for that. Since you had some knowledge, you kind of shared that with me and really appreciate that. I have to pay it back someday, somehow. So. But thanks for joining. So if you could maybe just give us a little bit of background on your kind of origin story of, you know, getting started in design.

TY FUJIMURA

My parents are a therapist and a painter. And that was the perfect background for a career in user experience related matters. I started when I was a freshman and sophomore at NYU studying math, I sort of discovered an interest in design. And I'd always been interested in the arts because of my father's profession. And always very comfortable with the arts. But I was just not very good at drawing and painting and all those sculpting or music. I was always just just Okay, so I never really saw a future for myself in those things. But once I discovered the magic of Photoshop and being able to let the computer do some of the prettiness for me that unlocked something in me. So I used to spend just hours a day just noodling around different fake logos and posters and banners and things like that. So I was like, in the back of calculus classes that at NYU, making subway ads for notice. Oh, nice. So that was like a very clear indication that like, you got to do this. Because if you're so motivated, that you'll do it for fun. You should do it.

THOMAS MORRELL

Right on. How was that explanation to your parents of going from math to a design?

TY FUJIMURA

They were very encouraging and yeah, to their credit. One. One thing about growing up with a therapist and an artist as your parents is that they're both self employed. So when I was in college, I really started my design practice, and I didn't really think twice about it. So by the time I graduated, I had a job. I never graduated and then had my resume and went around looking for a job. I built up clients while I was free. While I was in college. I had an office. So my senior year at NYU I I also happened to be married at the time. So I got married halfway through college. This is very unorthodox strategy. But so we were married and living in Brooklyn, and my senior year I decided to get an office because I needed to concentrate on my freelance work. So I would kind of sneak in my homework in senior year like, after hours at my desk at this co working space. Okay, but so I was like I was ready. I was ready like as of age, you know 18 to enter the workforce. School was never super high on my priority list. And I did various things, including some some, some flavorful adventures that I shall not mentioned, but some different different turns and twists and turns. And I eventually landed on this this freelance design world and I was just blown away that I could do something that I loved. It was it paid pretty well compared to you know, your normal college job. I had autonomy, and I was able to really build up a business while I was in college.

So by the time I graduated, I just kind of transitioned into doing design work full time. And it was, yeah, definitely the best decision I could have made, it really worked out well for for me and my trajectory. And I was very lucky to have that opportunity because of a very supporting family and, and my wife being willing to, you know, work while I was in school, because she graduated before me. And you know, lots of people were giving me the opportunity to just like, explore so that I could practice my craft. And because you know, the first year, you're definitely pretty bad. So you have to get through the part where you're really bad.

THOMAS MORRELL

Yep.

TY FUJIMURA

And then from there, just to summarize, basically, I was a freelancer. And I took a day job at a startup. And I wanted to try that, especially because our son was on the way. I wanted to have like the stability of a paycheck. But I did that four days a week, and I was freelancing, the other you know, three days, essentially, yeah, and maintaining my freelance practice on the side. So I decided that ultimately, I wanted to move more in the freelance direction. And so I let the day job go. But I just quickly expanded. And around that time, when I was letting the day job go, we got this really big project in for in the raw sugar, like the sugar they have at Starbucks.

Yeah, they, they were doing their new website and the agency. Someone I was working with who became a partner at Canilever, eventually, he got wind of this work. And so we did the project, we won the project against all odds and did the project. And that was kind of like the seed project that gave us the funding to start the agency, formally, so I started the agency, it was winter of 2012. And, and hired this guy on as a minority partner. And so as the two of us just figuring it out, and it was tumultuous, and, and scary, and all of those things that entrepreneurship should be, but has led to a really, really interesting place. So today, we're a 15 person agency. We're globally distributed, we have mostly US and Canada, we have one person in India, and we have one person in Denmark. So we have basically every seven hours of timezone there's someone there. That is very challenging, but also very fulfilling, because every day I get to work with and interact with people of all sorts of different cultures, different backgrounds, different skill sets, and it's super stimulating for me, and I think we do we do better design because we have all those voices and influences behind the work.

THOMAS MORRELL

Well, that's, that's pretty incredible. Or having people those kind of locations was that a strategic thing that got to cover something specific?

TY FUJIMURA

It was strategic to never exclude anyone on the basis of their location. Okay, so we we have the mentality that we have, we have a very unique philosophy, and we're a mission driven agency, which is a different kind of approach. And our mission is something we call digital hospitality, which is this idea that a website is a space that people enter not a billboard that they see from a distance. And that means that when you're designing a website, you're not just designing so that it looks cool. You're not just designing it so that you make the most amount of money, we, the North Star for every decision we make is the user and the user experience at the end of the day. So it's hard to find people who are really willing to live that out. So the remote model allows us to just hire those people wherever they happen to be. And we never want to exclude anyone on the basis of their location because we want to really become the best at providing this kind of work and doing this kind of work. And so if we can find someone in the, you know, in a far flung place where nobody else is we say, let's do it. And we've we've developed a really unique model of asynchronous communication and working standards and scheduling and our handbook so that we can kind of facilitate a working style where people, mostly self direct people work on their own time, no one's looking over your shoulder, you have minimal meeting time, you have, you know, just enough check ins that you don't feel disconnected, but you don't get, you don't push out the time in your day for design work. So to be a really like designer friendly organization, because the designers and the developers are the ones who ultimately deliver on our mission of digital hospitality.

THOMAS MORRELL

Wow, that's really cool. I really love that mission, and that you hit on two things I wanted to talk to you about specifically. So that's perfect the digital hospitality, I love that term, you should definitely trademark that or do whatever you have to do, because that's a good one. And the remote working, so pretty much all of us are kind of forced into remote working. I personally love it. But it's definitely a big change for most. Do, you have, I guess any tips for the rest of us of how to you know, build a design culture and, you know, keep everybody sane, and actually, you know, keep projects moving, as you're so vastly dispersed.

TY FUJIMURA

I think one of the hardest things in creative work is figuring out how to do it remotely. Or perhaps I'll make that reversed. One of the hardest things in remote work is figuring out how to do creative work, that's a better phrasing. And it is exactly because of the challenges that you laid out, it's really challenging to replicate the spark that you get from those whiteboard sessions with people in the room in a virtual setting. And it's really hard to, to stimulate the same ideas when you can't just even go have a beer and chat about the project or go walk around whatever city you're in, where your offices are, and just trigger things that that you might not otherwise think of some of the things so we take that as an, an opportunity, because we figure if we can crack that if we can be the team that figures out how to do great creative work in a remote context, that's an incredibly powerful result. That means that we've built a model that anyone could hopefully use, and that would change the way that creatives live. Because a lot of the time, if you're a designer, you need to move to the Bay Area in New York City, London, if you want to do really high level design work. And that's wrong, there's a lot of people who can't do that don't want to do that need to stay close to family or parents or have a have some other life circumstance where that just doesn't make sense for them. And that we need to facilitate that as an industry.

So there, there is no other path. What's the phrase, the only way out is through, you know, we have to figure out as an industry how to do great creative work remotely. Some things that we have observed, I would say in our attempts at doing that are that you need to be much more deliberate about requirements, because expectations are much harder to get in an ambient sense. So you have to very deliberately come together and find your moments where you're going to brainstorm and you're going to collaborate, you're going to stimulate those ideas, do that in a concise fashion where people don't feel tired from being on zoom for five hours, or whatever. And you need to give people a certain amount of latitude to explore ideas on their own. But you also need to help them understand where to direct themselves. So it's the balance.

Another thing that we try to do is just making sure that people's circumstances are comfortable. So at the company, one thing we do is we allow people to work at home, and we'll reimburse their home internet and any other you know, random office expenses that they may have in their home office, or we will let people get a co working space. Some people in full, you know, pre COVID, some people will get the corporate co working space for two days a week. So when they need a little jolt of energy or to be around people or to talk things out with people, they can utilize that. Whereas if they feel like hunkering down and being in figma for six hours, they can do that too. And another key aspect is expectations. We are not the kind of firm where we're going to take on a job and then two days later, we're going to try to pitch someone and we're going to burn the midnight oil to try to get awesome design work done fast so that we can be ready for this big pitch. That's just not our style. We are much more deliberate, planned and formal about our process in general, so that we can guarantee that the results are going to be there. And we're not perfect at this by any means. And I think a lot of people on my team would be like, well tie you remember that time when because we definitely have times where we go We stray from that principle. But that's that's our ideal is that as a designer, you should understand, you know, where the key milestones are what, what is expected of you by those dates, but you should have autonomy to kind of figure out how you want to meet those those mandates and ultimately fulfill the user's need.

THOMAS MORRELL

That's fantastic. Sounds like there's a lot of autonomy kind of working as a designer at Cantilever, which is something you don't get at a lot of place.

TY FUJIMURA

So that yeah, it's, it's almost by necessity, but I think it's, that's really where, and this is a shift that we're even making internally, because we are at 15 people now. So when we were at six people, I could realistically kind of see all the decisions that people were making, and I could be involved and provide input and all that. But at 15 people, you know, we really have to trust people to to deliver. And so we need to what we what we do, what we try to take it on ourselves to do and I try to do as a leader is just remove barriers, you know, so if someone feels like they're stuck, because of x and y, factor, what can I do to facilitate them getting unstuck? Or if they don't feel motivated by a project because of whatever reason? What else could they be doing? Or how can we shift it around there? How can we shift around their role, so they feel motivated? So for me, it's the you know, autonomy is, is given, because there's no way to not do autonomy in a remote setting. And so it's a matter of consolidating that with the project goals, and the client need and the budget and all those things. And when that comes together, it's a it's a beautiful thing. And I think, at our best, I think we provide a really fantastic experience for a designer who wants to wants to express themselves, and who wants to be sort of work like, like in control, you know, if you want to be in control, but you don't want to run your own business, we try to be a really great place for that kind of person.

THOMAS MORRELL

Yeah, fantastic. And so those 15 employees, I know, you were just looking for a few, I think I sounded like UI designers, and also kind of front end developers. Are they part of that 15? Or is that in addition to that?

TY FUJIMURA

Yeah, so we actually recently brought on a couple folks to fill some of those roles. If you're hearing this, and you're interested in checking out what we have available, you can go to cantilever.co/careers and we have all of our open job listings there. And we are pretty much like, if you don't see your job on that, please reach out anyway, if you feel like you're someone who believes in this digital hospitality principle, we like to just kind of find a way to, to fit people who we feel would be really great on our team. And, you know, recruiting is, I think, for me, one of the hardest parts of running a design studio, because there are so many different factors to what makes a designer fit well, with studio, you have to have talent, but you also have to have some passion enthusiasm for the work, you have to have the right collaborative style, the right attitude about working with your teammates, and you have to feel comfortable working remotely, you have to feel comfortable being being pretty independent.

And, and you know, there are a lot of great people who just don't fit one of those particular criteria. But one of the things that I've learned is like, it's, it's okay, you know, we that, that we as a studio, we don't have to be perfect for everyone, we just have to find the people who we are perfect for and make sure that we we've reached them, you know, and there will be a studio out there for any talented creative that matches the the style of work that they like to do and the subject matter and things like that. Or if there isn't, then you can start with Hello, you can email me and I'll give you advice.

THOMAS MORRELL

Oh, that's fantastic. And that definitely works both ways. Like, I've went to work for a specific company. And as soon as I got there, I was like, Oh, no, this is not the right place for me. I don't think I'm a fit. And so that's really cool.

TY FUJIMURA

Yeah, and that's tough. Those stories are all too common. One of the things that we are really dedicated to is just elevating the level of standards and in the industry. Which, you know, I try not to be too egotistical that you know, I'm gonna solve the world's problems or anything but I feel like the the web development and web design industry is like right there with the construction industry on the don't trust these people. Yeah, And we get a lot of people who come in with these like horror stories about how they've been poorly treated. Obviously, we only hear one side of the story, but like, I think that people's expectations around the kind of work that we do is really low for a reason. And that's something that as a as a community we should figure out solutions for how can we unite talented creatives with clients who need their creativity in a way where nobody is up until two in the morning and, and nobody's paying twice what they thought, you know.

It sounds, it sounds so simple, but it's actually really, really difficult. And that's just because creative work is difficult, the internet is an incredibly new thing. That's it, I would say nobody has mastered it. Because there's only been so long to master it, you know, there's, if even if you look at like being a lawyer, you can go back to the Magna Carta or something, but all we have is like Tim berners Lee in the 90s. And that's, that's it. So. So it's, it's still a very nascent field, and I don't think people have figured it out. And if we can be a small part of answering some of those questions, and like pushing the industry forward a little bit, I would be very proud of the impact that we have.

THOMAS MORRELL

That's fantastic. And yes, I'm proof that it is hard to do what you're doing, I tried to do it for a good five years or so. And we were successful to some point. And we spent a lot of time, most of our work actually fixing kind of broken websites, that somebody was very upset with some web developer who charged a ton of money, and then, you know, left the country. And we'd have to track down who owns the domain names. And you know, how did they get access to their emails and all that fun stuff, which is never fun. But it was extremely difficult, and I never got over the very late nights, which is why I no longer have a company. So congratulations to you for making it this far as pretty amazing.

TY FUJIMURA

Thank you, I appreciate that. And I'm nowhere near done with that particular mission, as you might be able to tell from the bags under my eyes today. So there's there are definitely it's a process when whenever you're trying to start something and make something significant and meaningful and lasting. There's going to be those days. And that's okay. For me, my goal is like, let me minimize that or reduce that by 10% or 20%. This year from the year before. And if I if I think back to the way that I used to work, I'm really, really glad that I don't do that anymore. And I also can't do that anymore, because I have children and, and other commitments, and I'm just like, I'm older, and I don't have the stamina anymore to work the way that I did previously. And I think that's good, because sometimes those guardrails, like they just lead you in, in positive directions for your life. And I found like the COVID situation with having two kids in the house being in virtual school I was before with the school opened up here again, I was teaching them school, like 15-20 hours a week. And let's try my best not to like look at work emails and stuff because I just felt terrible about not like, giving them my, my best in those situations. But that squeezed everything else that I was capable of doing in the week. And that ultimately, like that led to a lot of challenges, but it was also healthy. It forced me to reckon with like, Okay, what can I do on 30 hours a week of work, you know, without things totally falling apart. And, and it's a, it's good to have those experiences where you just reduce remove some of your assumptions. And those that has been a positive aspect of the whole situation is just like understanding where some parts where I can start to let go more and more. And, and where you know, where I still need to be involved. And that's okay. It's an ongoing process.

THOMAS MORRELL

Yeah. And I mean, I think you pretty much read my mind as a lot of the questions I was going to ask you kind of gone through.

TY FUJIMURA

I don't mind talking. So you know, you can just tee up anything you want. I'll talk about soccer, too, if you are.

THOMAS MORRELL

Well, yeah, what is happened in the world of soccer, I can't wait to go see a game. And I moved to a place where there are no soccer teams.

TY FUJIMURA

Well, yes, good point. If you can get to Atlanta, that's that's probably a little far. But if you can get to Atlanta, there's there's a wonderful team in Atlanta that plays in a dome. So you might need to wait a little bit. But yeah, the world of soccer is wonderful. I'll tie it in with the topic of design and UX because one of my one of one of my closest collaborators at the company is our team member in Denmark and he's he's the head of our European office, which you can cantilever.dk Okay, and he is a soccer fan. And we have a project manager as well who lives in New York now, and he comes from South Africa, and he's a soccer fan too. And I find it we have like kind of a side chat going because we bore other people when we talk about this. We also we do some work for for soccer related organizations. So we have like a mostly non work but occasionally work group chat. Going with each other where we can just geek out about soccer. And I find that incredibly beautiful. Like there's there's all these different connections and, and relationships that I've either been able to create entirely because of the sort of shared language of soccer, or that I've been able to cultivate through that. And I think design maps really well with that. So I think design being a pretty international art. It's one of those things where I can usually break the ice from someone, whether they're from Nigeria, or China or Sweden, by bringing up the most famous soccer players from their country and getting their opinions and things like that. And that really helps to cultivate the kind of international group and community that we need in order to, to do that great kind of work.

THOMAS MORRELL

Nice, nice. And so is it a company wide holiday for the World Cup?

TY FUJIMURA

The last World Cup, I think I was the only soccer fan in the company at that point. So it was something of a holiday for me, I kind of mark it off as a as a light working period. I've had World Cups in the past where I watched every minute, and I can't do that anymore. Having children and at a 15 person company. So I just have to kind of diet, figure out what are what are the 10 Group Stage games that I'm going to try to watch, because I can't watch every single group stage game anymore. But it's Yeah, I can't be more excited. I mean, especially after the US miss the World Cup last time around. So qualifying begins in the fall. And I'm just, you know, praying to anyone who will listen that the US makes it back again, and gets to playing the World Cup. Now we simultaneously totally off topic, this is a the World Cups going to occur in Qatar, and the stadiums are being built by migrant labor force that is being incredibly poorly treated. And so I still am personally deciding whether I'm how I'm going to approach that. And the the intersection of the moral aspect with with my passion for the game, and the fact that the World Cup is like the only thing. It's like the most important non important thing in my life. Yeah. And so, figuring that out, I'll take any advice people have on that.

THOMAS MORRELL

Yeah, I think I watched a documentary on that one. And it's pretty eye opening. I had no idea it was going on.

TY FUJIMURA

Yeah. And it's, it's scary. Yeah. But you know, one thing about soccer is like, like I mentioned, it's an international connector. It's also something that crosses a lot of societal boundaries. And it's something where you can be a big soccer fan, if you don't want to support the World Cup, that's fine. You don't have to support the World Cup, you don't even need to know the World Cup exists, and benefit from the from from the game and understanding the game. And it just allows you to connect with other people, which is what it's all about.

THOMAS MORRELL

Absolutely. So, in your busy schedule, obviously, with kids in school and this company, you know, how do you stay motivated? Where do you go for inspiration?

TY FUJIMURA

I am inspired a lot by remote work. leaders who have charted similar paths in the past. A gentleman I got to speak to recently has named Sid Sijbrandij, and he's the CEO of company called Git Lab, which is a competitor to GitHub. And I reached out to him because I've always admired his stuff. And we've modeled a lot of our practices and processes at Cantilever after the way Git lab does things. And he was generous enough to spend half an hour with me and kind of answer my my fanboy questions. And I'm hoping to just keep a keep a dialogue with him and other folks like that who have who have been pioneers in this field. So those folks really inspire me. I'm also really motivated by classic design. And I'm not super involved in day to day creative direction. A lot of the time I do, you know, situationally, but I find that whenever I am, just brings me back to that original passion that I had for typography and grids and layout and art direction. And that stuff is just so easy to geek out on. So I take a lot of inspiration from just looking at great design. We have a project right now where we're trying to implement sort of a Bauhaus international style old school approach. And I have spent, you know, just 45 minutes or so just crawling through my my archives of what I might think of as inspiration for a project like that and it was super, super fun. I think inspiration for for designers, it's everywhere. And I can't tell you how many times I've had a project where I've like, thought of a solution because of this random thing. My friend showed me one time, or because of this art piece at the meet at a museum that I saw one time or something off, and that my wife said to me, or whatever the case may be, like a book cover that's in my house, you know, a magazine that I saw once and so I keep I keep a like, Camera Roll album, you know, my apple photos, I have an album of just like stuff that I think is cool typeography on the street, or graffiti or street art or whatever it is. And that that is a really good resource to just looking back through years and years of random stuff, I thought had some aesthetic value. Okay. So yeah, I think, as a designer, a huge part of it is just making sure you're open in the rest of your life to those little bits of inspiration or stimulation that you get out of something. And like when you vibe with something, that's probably the kind of thing that you should be doing. Because that's, that's what your eye is drawn to. And you can do that too. You know, there's, there's a certain amount of ingrained talent, but I think a lot of it is just hard work and learning how, why something works. So well. You know, if you love a certain font, you know, what is it about that font that worked so well for you, and maybe you can design a font that's just like that, or you can figure out the very best way to use that font.

THOMAS MORRELL

Perfect. So Ty, I don't want to take up all your time. Where should people go to get in contact with you and Cantilever?

TY FUJIMURA

I am sporadically active on Twitter, which is a ringing endorsement. No, I you should definitely follow me on Twitter, I'll put it that way. Because you might like my ranting about things. Um, yeah, I would love to interact with people on Twitter. I'm @tyfuji. And I tweet about design and business and, and life philosophy and productivity. There's another thing I'm really passionate about. And that's probably the best way to keep in touch with me regularly. My DMS are open, if you ever want to reach out, feel free. And you can email me as well. I'm at ty@cantilever.co. And I love to talk to people who are, you know, breaking into the field, people who I might be able to give limited and flawed advice to which you can take or leave. And people who are curious about the process of starting an agency and you know, and running a business. And I'm also very open to advice. So people are hearing this and they might be interested in mentoring me, I would greatly appreciate that as well. So I love to make connections. I love to meet people in this field. I find it fascinating and exciting. And it's just a wonderful community. And thank you for helping to create that community through the show. It's a really exciting concept. And I'm honored to be a part of it.

THOMAS MORRELL

I can't thank you enough for being here and for sharing that. And I love that that you're still open to having a mentor.

TY FUJIMURA

Oh, God. Yeah, I never stopped learning. Never stop learning. Yeah, I've got I most days, I feel like I have no idea what I'm doing. So that's a general principle of life. No matter how far you are in any particular area, that sense of mastery is so elusive. And I don't I am under no illusions that I have anything figured out. So it's, it's just take it day by day. And I think Yeah, I'll maybe I'll leave it at that. Like if, especially for more junior designers, I think people people artificially limit themselves to what they're capable of because they see some trajectory or boundaries around things. But those boundaries are made to be broken. And I think designers are perhaps in an even better position than most to figure out how to do that. So up so for it, never assume that it'll be a no and yes, just keep asking until you get a yes,

THOMAS MORRELL

That's right, experiment and iterate. You never know what you might find. Well, thank you Ty. Really appreciate this.

TY FUJIMURA

Yeah, my pleasure.

THOMAS MORRELL

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