Students of Design

Joseph Israel Raul Bullard

Students of Design is a graphic design podcast for students, young professionals, or anyone navigating the design industry. Hosted by Joseph Israel Raul Bullard, a Logo & Visual Identity Designer based in Colorado.

Join me as I interview industry professionals and work with them to decode the design industry, talk about what it takes to be successful, and hopefully answer some of those burning questions that all students have. Email your question to studentsofdesignpod@gmail.com.

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50 episodes
Updated July 24
Explicit

Episodes50

Newest first

July 24 · 1 hr 10 min
Lauren Hom – Culinary School, Time as an Ingredient, and Slowly Burning Out – Ep50
Lauren is a lettering artist, muralist, food stylist, and trained chef based in New York City. Throughout her career, she's worked with clients including Airbnb, Target, Vans, Mailchimp, Adobe, White Claw, and many more. Lauren has also done an incredible job of monetizing passion projects like Daily Dishonesty, Ex Boyfriend Tears, and Will Letter for Lunch. In fact, landing a book deal worth 25K for Daily Dishonesty was a big reason she was able to leave her advertising job and pursue a career
June 19 · 54 min
Colby Nichols – Becoming a Professional Dork, Magic: The Gathering, and Dungeons & Dragons – Ep49
Colby is a designer, illustrator, dungeon master for hire, and Art Director of Print Innovation for Magic: The Gathering at Wizards of the Coast. So, besides my partner Meg, Colby is the closest thing to a Wizard I've ever met. lol. Anyway, before joining Wizards, he was a Creative Director and Co-Founder of Jolby, a design and illustration studio he started with his best friend Josh Kenyon. After 12 long years at Jolby, he decided to step away to rediscover his "why" and realized he was spendin
May 25 · 1 hr 8 min
Tyler Pate – The Creative Pain, Nickelodeon, and Corporate Design Misconceptions – Ep48
Tyler is a creative leader, art director, and illustrator born "in the sticks" of South Carolina and now based in Los Angeles. You might be familiar with his personal brand, The Creative Pain, an outlet that he uses to process the hurdles, burnout, and doubt that come with the creative journey. Luckily, Tyler grew up with his cousin, Darby, and they competitively pushed each other's creativity. Obsessed with skateboarding culture, Tyler collected graphics and stickers, and even made his own skat
April 22 · 1 hr 7 min
Blake Spiegel – Crop Conference, Tattoos, and Visual Rhyming – Ep47
Blake is a designer and art director in Minneapolis with over 10 years of experience working at the intersection of brand strategy and identity. He's the most heavily tattooed person I've interviewed, and he literally traveled across the world to Australia to get tattooed by one of his tattoo heroes—RESPECT. After growing up with computer games, doing kickflips, and helping his grandfather tap trees for maple syrup, he studied graphic design at the University of Wisconsin-Stout. After college, h
April 10 · 58 min
Dora Drimalas – Curiosity in All Things, Object Quality, and Working for Nike – Ep46
Dora is the Co-Founder and Executive Creative Director of Hybrid Design in San Francisco, and the Co-Founder of Super7. Over the past 25 years, her studio has worked with some of the most recognizable brands on the planet, including Nike, Apple, Google, YouTube, LEGO, Amazon, TED Conference, The North Face, and many more. Interesting, it all almost didn't happen because she originally chose to study film instead of design at The University of North Texas. Luckily, she met her husband Brian, was
March 16 · 1 hr 10 min
Martina Flor – The Lettering Design Roadmap, Building Your Email List, and Typostammtisch – Ep45
Martina Flor is an award-winning lettering artist, author, and educator living in Berlin. She also hosts the Open Studio podcast with over 200 episodes, and she's spoken at over 70 conferences across the globe, including TEDx, Adobe MAX, TypeCon, and many others. She's a lettering POWERHOUSE and has helped thousands of creative entrepreneurs become lettering artists and take their creative businesses to the next level. However, she wasn't always the super-confident person she is today, and it's
February 28 · 1 hr 7 min
Deja Jackson Howard – Making It on Your Own, a Fork in the Road, and the Numbers Don’t Lie – Ep44
Deja is the Founder and Creative Director of Dejamakes Creative Studio in Chicago. Her focus is on the brand and web design, and she primarily works with small business owners and founders who've DIY'd themselves into oblivion and have realized they're ready for a brand experience that combines strategy and storytelling. But before starting her career in sports advertising and eventually working for her dream company, Twitter, Deja played D1 basketball for the University of Pennsylvania, so she'
February 12 · 1 hr 2 min
Tad Carpenter – The Two Pizza Rule, Complacency Breeds Death, and SUNday Suns – Ep43
Tad is an illustrator, designer, author, and self-proclaimed BBQ snob from Kansas City. He co-runs a design and branding studio with his wife Jessica called Carpenter Collective. Their team has worked with companies like Macy's, Publix, Adobe, Hallmark, Coca-Cola, and MTV, among others. You've likely seen some of the illustrations from his SUNday Suns series, and if you've heard his Midwest vernacular, you might know the meaning of "Ope," "Alrighty, well," and "All good, no worries." His fathe
Dec 23, 2025 · 1 hr 14 min
Ram Reyes – 365 Posters, Self-Sabotage, and I Can Has Cheezburger? – Ep42
Ram, aka Oversettext, is a graphic designer and content creator in Fresno, California. Shoutout: Lucena. He's probably best known for his 365 project; he designed one poster a day for an entire year. However, I discovered him through his "You know what font that is?" videos on Instagram. He loves Futura Condensed Bold, like LOVES, and he's an advocate for our rights to use Comic Sans without career-ending judgment. Fun Fact: Way before Ram designed vinyl album packaging for Kings of Leon, he wor
Nov 28, 2025 · 1 hr 4 min
Jen Wagner – Creative Market, Self-Worth, and Font Licensing – Ep41
Jen is a Nashville-based independent type designer and resource creator for creative business owners. You might be familiar with some of her best-selling typefaces, like Perfectly Nineties, Editor's Note, and Founder's Hand. However, long before her formal education in type design from Type@Cooper, Jen got her start on Creative Market. She created and uploaded font after font, even though she didn't know the rules and guidelines of type design. The best part is IT WORKED, because people bought a
Nov 18, 2025 · 1 hr 1 min
James Edmondson – Counterspace Equals Letterspace, Toasters, and Vectorizing Type – Ep40
James is an author, type designer, and the founder of OHno Type Company, a digital type foundry based in San Jose, California. You might license some of his wildly imaginative fonts, including Beastly, Ohno Fatface, Degular, Polymath, Regrets, Obviously, and Hobeaux. Before he got his start in the bowels of graphic design, James studied design at California College of the Arts. Then he learned how to cast typographic spells while attending the Hogwarts of type design, AKA Type Media at the Royal
Oct 30, 2025 · 1 hr 1 min
Maya Ealey – Working In-House, Anti-Racist Vocab, and the Journey to Authenticity – Ep39
Maya is an author and multi-hyphenate creative leader based in the San Fransico Bay Area, specializing in art direction, brand design, and illustration. Today, she's a Brand Design Lead at Yahoo, but she also worked at Lyft, Asana, and Square. WAY before working at any of those places, she spent the weekends at her grandmother's playing Sonic the Hedgehog and drawing Powerpuff Girls and Sailor Moon. She's also obsessed with 80s, 90s, and early 2000s pop culture, and has an affinity for hard edge
Oct 16, 2025 · 1 hr 3 min
Olga Muzician – Stand With Ukraine, Food Lettering, and Murals – Ep38
Olga is a Ukrainian-born and New Jersey-based muralist and lettering artist. Thanks to her godfather, she began painting at the age of six and has been an artist ever since. She has created artwork for notable clients, including Crayola, Snapchat, Tillamook, Coca-Cola, Trader Joe's, and others. Olga spent nearly a decade working in the magazine industry, and she reviewed a lot of resumes during that time. One time, someone's father called Olga to ask why she hadn't hired his daughter for a job o
Sep 27, 2025 · 1 hr 18 min
Kory Miller – Interacting With Clients, Streamlining Your Business, and “Fixing” Logos – Ep37
Kory is the Creative Director and Founder of Park St Studio, a design studio based in Phoenix, Arizona. His wife, Kasey, is also his business partner, and she played a significant role in establishing the processes and practices that streamline the studio's operations. They have a great story of how they met, and together, they've worked with apparel brands, breweries, coffee shops, and the Phoenix Suns, among others. Their focus is on branding, packaging, merchandise, and custom illustrations,
Sep 13, 2025 · 1 hr 6 min
Nathan Walker – Basketball Illustrations, New York City, and a 4-Hour Design Competition – Ep36
Nathan is a seasoned Illustrator, Artist, and Designer living in Austin, TX, and surprisingly, we never crossed paths while I was living in Austin. But I bet we were in the same place at the same time and never even realized it. His artwork draws inspiration from urban culture, graffiti, street fashion, and sports. At the same time, his use of texture and exaggerated character features adds a gritty New York City vibe to his illustrations. Nathan's list of clients includes the NBA, NFL, New Bala
Aug 27, 2025 · 1 hr
Adam Vicarel – Near-Death Experiences, Chasing the Fog, and The Real Housewives of Dallas – Ep35
Adam is the Principal and Creative Director of Vicarel Studios, an artful branding and graphic design studio in Denver, Colorado. He loves avocados, even though he was willing to cut them (and feta) out of his diet early on in his career to be more frugal. RESPECT. Adam has worked with notable clients like NBC, lululemon, New Belgium Brewing, SYFY, and Native Roots Cannabis Co., and he believes "If you're thinking about doing a thing, you probably should have already done it." We hung out in Aus
Aug 15, 2025 · 1 hr 23 min
Brooks Engel – Setting Goals, Apparel Design, and Comparing Yourself to Others – Ep34
Brooks is a SoCal-born and Colorado-raised Independent Designer and Illustrator based in Denver. For the past 10(ish) years, he's been the driving force behind Nowhere Land, an outdoor and adventure-inspired apparel brand and design shop. You can recognize his work by its bold colors and stylized landscapes that transform into the shapes of animals. I met Brooks this year (2025) at Crop Conference in Austin, TX, while we were reviewing student portfolios, and we almost got into a fender bender
Jul 30, 2025 · 1 hr 5 min
Andrew Ordway – Skipping Design School, Investing in Yourself, and Learning To Say No – Ep33
Andrew is an Independent Designer in Colorado Springs who runs a studio called Impossibly Awesome Design Co. He specializes in logo and brand identity design, packaging, and illustration. Many of you know him from attending Crop Conference, and if you've been to The Springs within the past few years and had a beer at Bristol Brewing, you probably came across his work. I met Drew on October 15, 2022. Trust me, I found the calendar invite for our very first coffee hangout shortly after I moved t
Jul 16, 2025 · 56 min
Marisa Sanchez-Dunning – Embracing Chaos, Reclaiming Cinco de Mayo, and Forming an Advisory Board – Ep32
Marisa is a Chicana woman and the Creative Director behind If Only Creative, a Bay Area creative studio she founded in 2022. Her studio offers brand identity and packaging design, social media strategy and management, content creation, and trend-setting commercial photography. After serving ice cream, burgers, and coffee, and changing her major three times in college, Marisa attended the University of Huddersfield—which she claims is an amazing place, but I don't believe her—and earned a degree
Jul 2, 2025 · 49 min
Nicholas Miner – People Over Projects, Work Ethic, and Screwing Up Your Taxes – Ep31
Nicholas—Nick—is a Graphic Designer and founder of Miner Design Co., located near Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He specializes in identity design, illustration, and packaging design, and works with restaurants, food and beverage companies, hospitality, and retail clients. Embracing discomfort has been a recurring theme throughout Nick's life, and much of his work ethic stems from his experiences living with his grandfather. He's a firm believer in "People Over Projects," and building relationships wit