How do you distill down what a brand is? As we get back to work on growing No_System, I've run into some issues with describing what it is that we do and who the people are that we imagine in the No_System community. I have long tirades that I can go into about what we do and who we design for, but that doesn't instantly translate when someone lands on the webpage.Last week I sat with my coworking group and did a quick mastermind on some ideas I've had. I've been continuing to roll them around in my head, and over...

One of the places I've been spending more time the past few months is a subreddit called r/makinghiphop. It's certainly not the subreddit I would have expected to be hanging out in, but it's been a great resource for feedback as I've been working on There Is No_System. Every week they have a handful of different competitions that are mostly just meant as a creative challenge. There are challenges for low-fi hip-hop (the study-beats you've probably listened to one afternoon or late night while you were trying to focus), writing/rapping, and one called the One Kit Challenge.I've never really participated...

Hey everyone, it’s new song day! Keep reading to hear some thoughts and unpack the song, but if you just want to have a listen, click the play button.  no_system · O Death RC1   O Death is a song that I started writing earlier this year, specifically about staring into the face of COVID. I originally meant it to be the opening of the album, a bombastic metal/orchestral/hip-hop piece that was a rallying cry to all of the themes of the rest of the “rock opera” that is My-So-Called-Emo-Life  (oh how the women swooned for you, Jordan Catalano. If...

  Sometimes you need to treat life like jazz and improvise. Before winter break, I mentioned to my daughter that we'd do a drawing video while she was home. I meant that we'd spend some time drawing along with other drawing videos, but she understood that we'd be making drawing videos. So, here we are. Every Saturday at 2pm central we'll spend an hour or two drawing together. I don't know what Eleanor will draw, but I'll have to take something she did the week before and redraw it into the type of work I do. We'll see how it...

It's new song day! Todays new song is called Separation. Before we dive in, I'll let you listen.   no_system · Separation   Ok. Everyone back? Do you ever want to have the last word? Have you ever ended up in a situation where your emotions become so tied up in "the moment" that you can't communicate the way you'd like? Today’s song is about one of those moments for me: documenting what felt like the worst annual review I’ve ever received.  I couldn't have written this when it first happened, particularly with anything other than rage. I'm very thankful for...

I had the opportunity to sit down with Laura Kobylecky during SXSW this year and talk a little about what I hope to do with the NO_SYS collective. I'll be talking more about the collective in the upcoming weeks as we get closer to the next art releases. In the meantime, here's a  glimpse at some of the thinking behind the project.   

This year, on a gorgeous evening during the first weekend of SXSW, we had the chance to partner with the Austin Motion Artists Group to host a party called SIGNAL. The event was a way for the local design community of Austin to interact with the visiting designing community here for SXSW.  An evening of design, and music; the night featured headlining talks from Alex Toader (discussing his concept development process on Alita: Battle Angel), and James Ramirez, who discussed his main-on-end titles for Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse. We were very excited to debut our first works in the See...