Podcast
Design Futures: Alumni stories about life after design school
Conversations with former students exploring careers, creative practice, and the transition from education into professional design practice.
dfp
Featured Episode
Greg Tariff
Director of Product Design, BILL
Startup risk, unexpected pivots, and the places where a designer's real growth actually happens.
About the Show
Design Futures is a podcast where I talk with former graphic design students about what happens after school, how they found their way into the field, what their work looks like, and how their education shaped their path. Each conversation offers a different perspective on building a creative career. Together these interviews form a structured knowledge system, capturing and organizing career narratives from design graduates into a growing archive that connects education, practice, and professional identity.
Career Pathways Knowledge System
episode archive
Conversations across careers, industries, and creative paths.
Product Design
Melike Turgut
Product Designer, Shopify
Say yes to unexpected opportunities. The stranger who asks you to teach or the colleague who moves on to a new job might be the person who shapes your entire career.
Web Design
Taira Perrault
Product Designer, Mozilla
Designing for accessibility and inclusion isn't a niche specialty, it's the foundation of good design, and when you center it in your process from the start, the result is work that genuinely serves everyone.
Brand Design
Kristie Malivindi
Creative Director, Landor
The path to creative director is paved with mistakes you learn from, patience you develop by watching great leaders like the ones who mentored you, and the simple but rare decision to just be kind.
Product Design
Alex Gennette
Product Designer, Netflix Games
Humility in the design process, genuinely designing for users rather than yourself, is what separates good designers from great ones.
Motion Design
Jonny Ouelette
Creative Director, Kill 2 Birds
If you’re passionate about a specific area of design, build a portfolio that proves it and learn the language of that world so others can see it too.
Advertising Design
Casey Ligon
Stop Motion Director, VML
Follow what flows out of you naturally, put it out consistently and the right career will eventually find its way to you, because what pours out of you authentically is the portfolio no one else can replicate.
Web Design
Alyssa Varsanyi
UX Designer, New York State
Staying relentlessly curious, talking to strangers, pursuing research, designing things that feel meaningful, is what keeps a design career alive and evolving.
Brand Design
Alex Terry
Creative Director, Motorola
A great design leader doesn’t just craft compelling stories, they hire people who believe in those stories and then get out of their way.
Product Design
Taneisha Lugo
Product Designer, Peacock
Let go of your ego early because the moment you stop trying to own the whole project and start genuinely collaborating with the people around you, the work gets better and so do you.
Context
These conversations surface patterns across design careers, revealing how designers actually navigate the gap between school and practice. The podcast informs my teaching, curriculum design, and learning experience work by keeping them grounded in real outcomes.