Episode 0001: Ethan Marcotte

Transcript:

KG: Our guest today on so many questions is Ethan Marcotte. He is the person who coined the phrase “Responsive Web Design”. He also is a writer, speaker, a designer, and I’m so glad that he came on the show.

I have so many questions.

We talk a lot about early web, tech unions, the community aspects of the web of inclusivity and justice that kind of is a thread through everything.

I’m super excited to share this with you.

Let’s get into it.

So today we have Ethan Marcotte here. Many folks know you as a web designer, a writer, a speaker. But before all of that came to be, can you tell us a little bit about what your dreams were as a kid or growing up?

EM: Oh, wow. One of those questions I didn’t prep for. That’s a good one. Man, I had a long period where I wanted to be a Ghostbuster. Does that count?

KG: That definitely counts. That definitely counts.

EM: All right, yeah. I definitely cycled through the usual, like, I want to be an astronaut or a fireman. But yeah, the Ghostbusters movie just unlocked something, I think. I had a little backpack I tried to turn into a proton pack for a while. So that’s the core memory I’m sharing with you today.

KG: Yeah, perfect. That’s your career has kind of spanned the last 20 plus years. Is that about right?

EM: Yeah, started designing websites in college in the late 90s, but my first design gig officially was late 99. So that’s kind how I into things.

KG: Got it. Yeah, we hit the scene about the same time. Different parts and aspects, but yeah, that’s about when my career started as well.

Is there anything that you have moment from earlier in your life that you feel like still echoes in your work today?

EM: Man, I think a few things. I mean, one thing that’s coming up for me right now is, you know, I come from a pretty rural part of the country and, you know, even still, I’ve still got family members who access the internet on something that’s pretty close to dial up. So, you know, a lot of them are on hardware that’s five or even 10 years older. I’ve got a close friend who told me once that if he could die with the laptop he has today, and this thing is basically falling apart, he’d die happy. So it’s, you know, in an industry that’s always like excited about the new iPhone release or thinking about folks who are on a fiber connection. I’ve always kind of got that, that balance in the back of my head that, folks who access the internet in ways that are different than the ways I access the internet, you know, they still deserve a beautiful experience. I like thinking about that, thinking about the design and layers and thinking about what’s not just usable, but also usable and attractive and yeah, beautiful for folks who are accessing the web regardless of how they’re doing it.

KG: Yeah, do you feel like was that a bit of a tenet as you explored responsive web design will get into kind of that whole bit in a little bit, but it seems like that has a thread through there. Is that right?

EM: Yeah, yeah. I appreciate you picking that up, Kendall, because yeah, that’s absolutely a big part of it. I’ve written about this before, but like an early, pretty formative influence on me was this essay called The Dao of Web Design written by somebody named John Allsopp he wrote, I guess he wrote a bunch of versions of it in different publications. But the one that I saw came out I think the year 2000 and I was working my first studio job and churning out websites. Back then in the Stone Ages, were like, we were always talking about screen resolutions, so like 640 by 480 screens. Then after a couple of years, we can finally design for 800 by 600. Isn’t that really exciting? And John was basically, he was talking about this as like, this is an impulse we’re carrying over from the printed page.

KG: Right.

EM: Decades or centuries even of thinking about our medium as something that has fixed dimensions. And we’re trying to bring that thinking over into the web, which is the first completely flexible design medium, right? Like by default, it doesn’t have any limits and it can be rendered on any size screen. And that just kind of like, that broke my tiny little 20 something brain a little bit, cause it was like, they’re just showing me that there was a different way of thinking about the design work that I was doing.

And that definitely lines up with that thread you were picking up on is, folks didn’t have the benefit of choosing their hardware or choosing the way that they access the internet, especially back then. So it was like, how can you think more flexibly about what you’re designing for people? Rather than having to have this conversation about, okay, well, our, our analytics say that we can now start thinking about slightly wider screens.

And by the time mobile came along, that definitely became a little bit more of a forcing function.

KG: Yeah. So like responsive web design, let’s maybe just dive into that article you wrote on alistapart.com in May of 2010 that kind of, it maybe codified or solidified something that was kind of happening. You coined that term in that article, but in the article, you talk a lot about architecture.

And using that as an illustration of how things are like how things are changing or how the web is different. And I know that a lot of early web designers were architects. So I wonder if that was a deliberate illustration with architecture or if it’s just lends itself to that.

EM: Yeah, man, I love that. I hadn’t thought about that connection before. You know, you got me talking about my first studio job and that’s really where I think I fell in love with the web and designing for the web in general, because at the time, in the early 2000s, everyone was falling into this industry that hadn’t existed like five or 10 years before. And they were coming at it from a whole bunch of different disciplines. I don’t think I worked with any former architectural students that I can remember, but there were med students and artists and writers and folks that were just bringing a bunch of really interesting lenses to figuring out what this thing was. So I think that got me thinking about at an early stage, reading about other kinds of design and how they defined their practice. And so that’s how I fell into some of the reading around architecture, around responsive design, just because like, I’d sort of stumbled across, thanks to my wife actually, encountered some of these in the wild in New York, for example, like the High Line. There are a whole bunch of like elements of that, like benches and other sorts of like fixed elements that could be sort of like moved around to accommodate different sizes of groups or crowds. And that got me reading about like this form of interactive architecture and that responsive architecture, kind of using the same terms where there were actually a whole bunch of experiments around like, what if you could have a room that was built out of prehensile materials that could change their shape and quite literally bend or flex to accommodate different sizes of groups or walls made of glass for conference room, for example, but then you could make them opaque at the touch of a button or when they sort of sensed this occupancy threshold being crossed and I don’t know, man. I just love that idea. Thinking about this is like a conversation between the space that was designed and the people or person that was occupying that space. so at least for responsive design, was like, OK, well, this is actually easier work for us because we now have these new devices that we’re finally talking about, thinking about these capable mobile browsers. But rather than architecture, which is an incredibly inflexible medium over centuries or millennia, we’ve been around for minutes and, the web is again, like I said before, it’s completely flexible. It doesn’t really care what shape it is. So if we think more flexibly and design more flexibly, things get really interesting real quickly.

KG: Let me go back a little bit. So can you talk about how you first found the web or your first kind of experiences in that? I know mine was like, it was not AOL, it was Prodigy. Like dial up Prodigy and just playing games on there and stuff like that. How did you first encounter the web or experience it and what did it mean to you?

EM: Wow, yeah. Man, I haven’t thought about this for a long time. I didn’t have access to the web until college. I think, yeah, when I started in college in 95, that’s where I first had the option to like access a web browser and access the worldwide web. And so prior to that point in high school, some kids at my school had like set up a, a BBS.

So my knees just cracked saying that out loud. I’m definitely carbon dating. I’m definitely carbon dating myself.

KG: Yeah, I feel you.

EM: But that was the first time I could chat with people, not in a hallway, I could talk to people and could sort of like have discussions around things and, know, be punks about things. And that was kind of fun. But, yeah, when I actually like started to see the web was as a freshman in college and sort of seeing this as a place where people were publishing things they were excited about or sharing art they were excited about. I don’t know, it just felt like another better layer of that kind of like community building aspect that I really liked about the BBS. I mean, I wasn’t, I didn’t feel like I was part of it yet. I started like designing some like random pages for myself and some student clubs I was in, but yeah, it just felt like something got unlocked, I think. ⁓

KG: Do you feel like that meaning has evolved or changed over time? Like what does that mean to you today? The web or the internet or whatever we want to call it, a connected life.

EM: Yeah, it feels… Man, that’s a heavy question in 2025. I think that community is still there and that independent publishing spirit is absolutely still there. That’s one of the reasons I’m still keeping a blog going these days. And it’s one of my favorite places to be, just because it’s like a thing that’s mine. It’s a thing I can work on.

KG: Yeah.

EM: I’m still a heavy RSS user, so there are people and communities and publications that I follow through RSS. So it still feels like there’s that wild west frontier. Yeah, that rough and ready community building is still there, which still gives me hope. But the broader net is so much more industrialized and centralized than when I entered the medium and that’s, that’s like those, those two truths are kind of hard to hold in my head at the same time.

KG: The commercialization and industrialization is something—so I had a like I worked for myself for a long time and my studio was called Vigilanteweb and it was this idea of like this is not corporatized. This is something that is human beings and connection and things like that. So that’s kind of like I share that ethos for sure. And so it’s always been such an interesting thing because I make a living on the web, being a web professional have always, like I always say, like, and you were kind of mentioning this, like the career that I have literally didn’t exist when I graduated high school. Like I graduated in 1994, didn’t exist. And so it’s just a very interesting perspective to have. But yeah, like I think that that, that, community and the people that you connect with or can connect with is something that is, in my opinion, undefeated and amazing. And then it’s also terrible. you know, like there’s always two sides to it. So yeah, interesting.

EM: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, definitely. I mean, I joked one time, I don’t know, the famous like Tim Berners-Lee line “This is for everyone”, you know, I’ve gotten to a point in my life and my career where it’s like, you could read that as a curse a little bit. But at the same time, I don’t know, it’s like even folks that are on like one of the big social media platforms is like for better and for worse, people are trying to find their people. And there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of good in that and a lot of real connection in that, that I think is worth saving. You know, a good friend of mine, Erin Kissane has been doing a lot of work and thinking about how to build better networks for ourselves, like safer networks, more sustainable networks that aren’t sort of like part of that, more industrialized internet, that more commercialized internet. I see somebody whose research I really value. And so I’m glad people are talking about this because I think there are alternatives out there.

KG: Yeah, yeah, for sure. And it’s one of those things that I feel like we, especially people who have been at it a while and who have seen kind of the progression and things like that need to be, you know, like almost be a part like need to be a part of it because we can we hold on to that, we remember what the web can be as in terms of like as a as a means of connection and that type of thing.

KG: Yeah, yeah, I love that. I love that. And I want to say again, like, I think that’s out there now today, which, you know, still gives me hope. Just a little harder to look harder to find. But it’s still definitely very much thriving.

KG: Yeah, you got to parse through a lot of stuff.

EM: You got to parse through a lot of stuff. Exactly.

KG: So we’re at 2010. You’ve written the article for A List Apart. You then subsequently write a book, Responsive Web Design. Comes out in 2011. From there, what happens for you personally? Like how do you then, like in terms of how do you think of your own self, your career?

This is a big thing.

For some folks who don’t have the history that you and I both have and haven’t been around for so long. So people younger than 30, 35, maybe like this was a big deal. This shift into responsive, like you mentioned earlier, mobile browsing, those kinds of things. Like it was a huge shift. And I imagine that changed your life, your experience, certainly your career. Can you talk about that a little bit?

EM: Yeah, I can try. still trying to figure it out in 2025. I mean, the reception wasn’t anything like what I expected. Like that article came out and, I’d, the article was sort of proceeded a few months before by talk where I coined the term and then somebody in the audience, my friend Mandy Brown was editor of A List Apart at the time. And she was like, this needs to be an article. Like this needs a bigger audience. And so.

She was really responsible for bringing it to A List Apart. And then she also encouraged me to write the book. So she’s directly responsible for getting it on the world stage and getting it in front of more people. With that said, when I wrote the article, I kind of, I tell this to everyone, I dearly mean this. Like I hit a publishing deadline.

And I thought that was going to be the end of it, right? Like I just finished this thing. I got it off my to-do list and I kind of thought that was going to be the end. And I was not prepared for how it snowballed from there. Like designers that I really respected and admired, like Jon Hicks was a really early adopter of responsive design. He’s a tremendous illustrator, brand designer, and also really thoughtful web designer as well.

So for someone like him to kind of like put a stake in the round and be like, this is something that you can bring craft to. I mean, that just blew me away. He’s like 12 times the designer I’ll ever be. And it was really amazing to see what he was doing with the idea. And that was what I got most excited about was seeing more people think about not just like, OK, this is exactly how this has to be done, but like starting to like, OK, if I was going to bring my design sensibilities to this, here’s how I would do it.

It was just like there was so much grand experimentation happening. I haven’t really seen anything like it since. It was really something magical. But at the same time, I think once it got from independent designers to bigger brands and publications doing it, that all said to me that if I hadn’t come up with the term, somebody else would have because I think there was a need at that moment for a better way of working. So rather than creating a desktop website and a mobile website and a tablet website and like all these hoops we were jumping through back in the day, I think everybody knew that it wasn’t sustainable, but they hadn’t really articulated that there was a better way of doing it. And so I think I was really just lucky enough to be first out of the gate or really think that somebody else would have stumbled on the idea. But it definitely overtook my design practice, definitely.

KG: Yeah. It was interesting. I was, preparing for this and researching a little bit and, just reading about some pieces and parts were kind of there for like 10 years prior. Or nine years prior, something like that.

EM: Totally. Yeah.

KG: And so it’s, I think that the thing that was special or different was this unified way of thinking about it and talking about it, which like I think also underscores what you were saying about. It’s not a hard set of rules necessarily. It’s not a frame. You know, it’s a it’s a way of thinking. It’s a a way to apply your design sensibility to whatever it is you’re working on. And I think that that is something that allowed it to be flexible enough and kind of organic and fluid enough to be able to be adopted by literally everyone.

So, yeah, totally. That makes a ton of sense. I think one of the things also I was reading about was the Boston Globe website, which I don’t know if this is 100% right, but what I remember in my memory of that coming out, I totally remember it, first of all. And that it was like the first major publication that really embraced this and adopted a responsive web design for its website. Is that accurate?

EM: Yeah, that was the first big name that I’m aware of, at least, that sort of like took the jump. I was pretty honored to contribute to it. You know, I live in Boston, so getting invited to be part of the team that was working on it. And it was a big team. There were a lot of people that made that redesign happen. And yeah, again, was similar to what I was saying with some of the designers, like Jon Hicks, who first got on board, like the folks that sort of saw this not just as like a cool, quirky idea that some random web designer came up with. For them, at least, it was a business imperative because they had, like everybody doing business online, they were trying to reach people who were on every size screen at different points of the day trying to read their content. So for them, was a no-brainer.

KG: So like with that project and others, I’m sure, like article, book, all of these things, and like, I know that you’re not a huge horn tooter of yourself, but like, was there a moment that you realized that these ideas were literally reshaping the internet?

EM: Man. I don’t know if I’ve ever thought about it in those terms. Because like I said, think that the web was… My friend Frank Chimero was a designer and he writes pretty deeply about the state of the web as a design medium. He’s written a lot about what he calls the web’s grain like wood or any other material that has a way it wants to be worked with. And I think that… We had been working with the web in a way that was just like natural, given that it was so new, but like also like not the way it wanted to be worked with as a material. So thinking about flexibility, thinking about networks as a design material, thinking about like those different layers I talked about when someone’s accessing your work, like that’s, that’s the kind of stuff that like feels like if anything, if responsive design changed anything about the internet, it was simply just like giving us a little bit of a chance to reset. Like getting back to closer to the material and do better work with it. But yeah.

KG: That’s so interesting. I mean, throughout this conversation thus far, craft has been such a huge part of it. Like what, where does that come from for you? Is that something that you’ve always held on to or that’s always been something that you’ve been interested in or cared about?

EM: Yeah, I like to think so. think, you know, I grew up, you know, I’ve got, I’ve got farming families that raised me and, you know, folks who worked outdoors and, you know, like I said, I come from a rural community and I think I was sort of told from an early age, like, you’re going to do something, it’s worth doing it right. So, that has different connotations and different contexts, but at the same time, when it came time to start thinking about like what I wanted to be as a designer, I think that was definitely something that I always sort of heard. And then coming up alongside of a bunch of other designers more skilled than I am, who were sort of talking about this idea of craft and thinking about doing work well, like Dan Cederholm wrote about like how to kind of like push visual design in interfaces forward without sort of like undercutting some of those details underneath the build that he was arguing really makes for craft. Like if your style sheet doesn’t load, what kind of experience are you serving somebody? This is, that might feel like detail work or boring work to some people, but like he always talked about it as if when you buy really beautifully made pieces of woodworking, there’s craft in the joins, right? Like these fundamental pieces that you don’t often see, but you can tell that somebody thought about that. And I think that that’s still really important to me. I don’t know if the industry still places any value in it, but I try to anyway, at least in my practice.

KG: Well, yeah, well, it’s interesting, like, because… I’m going to just draw some connections here. Semantic web, there’s a piece of that is like, have it be readable, have it be something that makes sense, have it be those types of things. And I think that, again, all of that’s been commercialized and done. There are other things that have been taken with that. But I think that having that, there’s an inclusivity piece of that too with semantics.

EM: Mm. Right.

KG: That I think is certainly interesting. But yeah, like when you look at a table, like if somebody has crafted a table, you don’t necessarily see everything. But if you get underneath that table and you see how everything is connected, like that is certainly, so I’m just drawing the connection of that with like a clean DOM, like something that is very readable and very, makes sense and those types of things. So yeah, that idea of craft is super interesting. And I do love the idea of if you took away the style sheet, like what would your document look like? And again, most people haven’t seen the internet like that, but like, but if you did, like if you just remove the style sheet, what would your document look like and would it make sense? And, all of those types of things, like I know in my day job, like that’s something that I try and bring to the table because I’m trying to tell a story, you know, in those different aspects. And so there’s pieces of that. So, yeah, it’s interesting that that craft and how that is an underlying piece of the web that I think. The broader public maybe doesn’t even think about, which is also a bit of a beautiful thing to me, like, because unless you’re a woodworker, you don’t know what that join or like how that that piece, you just know that, that’s a beautiful table or that’s a beautiful cabinet or whatever it is. And you can appreciate that, but you’re not necessarily in the nuts and bolts of like, or the not nuts and bolts, if you will. So yeah, it’s interesting.

EM: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love that. I love that.

KG: So responsive web design, your career. Going to fast forward a little bit. You done a lot of speaking, lot of writing, all of those things. And then in 2023, you released a book called You Deserve a Tech Union. What prompted that? That’s kind of, it’s a little bit of a left turn. Like maybe if you’re not like.

EM: Yeah.

KG: It was, I’ll be honest, it was a little bit to me. was like, that’s cool. Like I didn’t expect that.

What first made you realize that the labor side of tech needed more attention or representation or that this was something that, like, how did this come to, to your brain and, and need to be something that was done.

EM: Sure. Yeah. That’s a great question, Kendall. Because yeah, I think if you look at my three books, two on responsive web design and then one on labor issues in tech, it definitely feels a little bit like a little bit of a left turn. But I think that I’ve been thinking about and writing about labor issues for a few years before that. I think I started in 2016, 2017 because this was something that was kind of happening in tech for years. mean, around the election in 2016, like a lot of people in tech were sort of like asking themselves, like, what could the results of our labor be used for? We collect tremendous amounts of demographic data about our users and an incoming administration wants to target different marginalized communities. Are we building products that are actually going be enabling harm?

They were leading a lot of very public conversations that we hadn’t really seen in tech, or I hadn’t seen in tech since I joined the industry. And that felt new to me. And those sort of escalated in useful ways, like people at Google, for example, talking about their employer talking about launching a search engine in China, which could be used to facilitate human rights abuses. And again, they’re coming at this from like a, this is our labor that is being used for these products. Like we should have a say in how these things are actually deployed and implemented because we built this. And then that all sort of escalated up to this point of the Google Walkouts in 2018, where folks actually were responding to gross abuses and unsafe working conditions at the executive level.

And they basically decided to withhold their labor and leave the office for half a day. And that felt like a new moment for me. And that ultimately resulted in, there were actually unions forming in tech for the very first time, places like Glitch and Kickstarter. And so it felt like there was this thread that I was kind of just watching happen that many workers across the industry were basically asking themselves, “What is our work meant to be used for?” And why don’t we have a say in that? And then the next step is like, we can have a say in this. And this is how we can form these unions and get organized in our workplaces. So I think like the through line that I see through all my books, you the first two on responsive design and then one on labor and tech was there’s this idea that I’m interested in and it feels kind of big and weird to me.

And I want to try to make it understandable to myself, but also to more people, because it can feel intimidating to get started. And whether it’s responsive design or forming a union, the steps to get started are actually very simple, and anybody can do them. So that’s kind of why I wanted to write about it. But at least for the labor piece, I knew that I didn’t have the on the ground experience that I did with responsive design. So I wanted to talk to people who were actually leading those discussions. So I started reaching out to workers and organizers, folks who’d formed a union for the very first time, folks who were negotiating their contracts for the very first time and starting to get a sense of like how these different parts of the process played out for them and why they got started on these paths and trying to bring those voices into the book in a way that like, again, I was like, I want anybody to feel empowered to do this. And so if me stringing a couple words together can make those ideas more accessible, that’s something I love doing.

KG: Right. That makes sense. It seems like in talking about responsive web design and in talking about you deserve a tech union, there is a sense of community. There is a sense of justice. There is a sense of those kinds of ideals or principles. Where does that sense of justice come from in your life?

EM: Woof. Man. I don’t know if I have one answer for that, I think.

You know, I’ve been raised by a bunch of different people who have very strong senses of ethics and morals and justice. You know, I’m not religious myself, but I was raised in a church and that was a big part of that education as well. And my grandmother and an old writing mentor of mine, who’s still very close to me. I think those are, those are two big people that I think of when I think about like people who tried to make sure that people were treated fairly. Also, that it’s worth speaking up when things aren’t fair and they could be better. You know, that writing mentor I mentioned is a former Episcopalian minister and he was actually the person who had first introduced me to my very first labor poster. Union politics and labor politics and labor movements was something that was always very important to him. And so if I know anything about unions, it’s because he started me on that path.

KG: Was that a long time ago?

EM: Yeah, that was, I mean, that was in high school. Yeah, so that was early 90s, I think is when I first met him. He was my English teacher at the time and we’ve stayed friends since. And but yeah, my grandmother worked at Dairy Farm and see. I mean, I wrote about this in the book. I’m to get a little emotional now. But she.

The thing I always remember about her was…

Anybody could stop in at any point of the day, no matter how busy she was, she would stop and feed them.

And you know. That community building aspect, I think, is something that I always think about with her. And she never would have called it that, but she made everyone feel welcome.

KG: Yeah. That was the sense that you got was that that community piece was there. That was part of it. That’s part of the deal.

EM: Yeah, like, this is how you show up for people. This is how you take care of people. Yeah, again, she would never have used these words. And in fact, you know, she would definitely not call herself a union sympathizer. We did not agree much politically, but, you know, she knew how to show up for people.

KG: That’s amazing. Thank you for sharing that. I guess next question that’s kind of similar, so you had a platform. You were a writer, you were a speaker, you had this kind of responsive web design on your CV that people kind of listen to you. Do you feel like this move into you deserve a tech union and that type of thing was an opportunity for you to use your platform for progress or good. Was that in your thinking at all, or was it just a very logical next step that happened for you?

EM: Yeah. That’s a good question. I don’t know if I’ve ever thought about it in those terms specifically before. I wasn’t like, hey, I’ve got however many thousand followers on Twitter, RIP Twitter. I think it was more like, it was really more like bringing these ideas to a wider crowd. So like if responsive design hadn’t taken off, well, I don’t know if I would have been given the opportunity to write a book on labor issues and tech, but it was really about like, this is the thing I care about and this is the thing I’m going to write about first and foremost. So, you know, if it makes it easier for somebody who, I guess the one thing that I did see as useful is, and I say this right in the preface and anytime I talk about this is, I’m not an organizer. I’ve never been in a union. This is something that I’ve been researching and writing about for a while and interviewing people who are directly involved with it. But like, I’m coming to this for the first time too. So let’s you and I see if we can figure this out together.

You know, so that writing mentor I mentioned, like one of the first classes I had with him, he always talked about this as like, we only have so many weeks together in this, this class, whether it’s a full year or half year and the best I can do for you in this topic is act as a tour guide. Like I’ve been here before, I know some of the big landmarks. So the best I can hope for is that after this class is done, you’re gonna at least know the landscape a little bit better so you can continue to come back and explore this yourself. And that’s always been how I’ve thought about the industry writing I’ve done.

Responsive design or labor issues is like, can’t cover this whole topic, you know, personally because of my lack of skills, but also because like, we do only have so much time to walk together. With You deserve a tech union, There’s so many things that I just couldn’t include because of word count limitations from my publisher. So there’s a lot of stuff there that a lot of nuance and sort of like, counter-perspectives that hopefully folks are to be able to dive into this and learn about themselves. And I’ve pointed to a bunch of resources in the book that I think will hopefully be helpful to that. Yeah, at end of the day, it’s like I am but a tour guide in these lands and, you know, would love for folks to come back on their own steam.

KG: Great illustration. Yeah. I mean, that kind of brings me to like thinking about your creativity and your process. It seems like that’s always been a part of your life in all of these different practices. Do you have any specific creative practices or things you do to keep yourself grounded creatively or inspired creatively?

EM: Man, a few.

One thing I’ve noticed as I get older is I’m better at noticing when I need to get away from the keyboard and get outside. So I’ve become a runner in the last decade or so. And there’s a beautiful river here in Boston that I love running along. I think if something’s not working creatively, whether it’s words or design project, like I need to push away from the keyboard and change the landscape in my head a little bit. So yeah, that usually involves going for a walk or run, getting outside a little bit.

Otherwise, I don’t know, I’ve become really into sketching a little bit more as a way to generate different ideas. Also helps me pay better attention to meetings. Keeps my hands and my head focused a little bit, which is nice.

KG: I feel that, yeah.

EM: And otherwise, just reading, too. think, again, it kind of gets me out of whatever I’m working on. Helps me think about something else for a little while.

KG: So you’ve had many different chapters in your life, in your career that we’ve talked about. How do you know when an idea is worth sticking with?

EM: Hmm. I think it’s two things. I’m working on a design problem right now that’s not the biggest thing I’ve ever worked on, but it feels a little bit like I painted myself into a corner. And so I’m trying to get unpainted or un-cornered. So I’ve been, again, trying to step away from it when it doesn’t feel like it’s working. Then coming back to it will usually help me see things in a different way. But I know it’s, I know things right now are actually heading in the right direction just because it feels right. It’s hard to articulate, but it just feels like, yeah, this is working.

But the other part of it is feedback is the biggest part. And that’s something that’s always been a big part of my process, but it’s something I’ve been trying to pull into earlier and earlier parts of my process, just to like, if I’ve got some sketches that aren’t working or I’m thinking about a problem and it doesn’t feel like it’s clicking. I’ll try to ask some friends or colleagues whose opinions I really respect and sort of like get their take on it. So yeah, just stating the problem, like, “hey, this doesn’t feel like it’s clicking. And here’s what I’ve tried.” Opening up the process a little bit has been really helpful.

KG: Is that something you’ve always done or is that something that’s kind of you’ve grown into?

EM: Really grown into it. It’s still hard for me, but it’s easier than it used to be. When I… I’m just thinking about that first studio job I mentioned before. I was working with designers that were just… Even at a web that was three minutes old, it felt like they’d had decades more experience. And plus, so much of that work back then was about the big client reveal, right? Like we’re going to have swarm on a bunch of comps, a bunch of designers are going to kind of work on their idea. And then like, we’re going to sit down with a client. We’re going to sort of like, or here’s what your site could look like. What do you think? And, so much of the, the lead up to that was so siloed and so heads down that it really did feel like you don’t bring people into the process until you’ve got something that’s ready to show. It took me a long time to work out of that.

And I’m still working out of it a little bit. Like, it still feels scary to bring folks into something that doesn’t feel finished.

The work’s always better for it. It takes a while to unlearn old patterns, but I’m glad I’m unlearning that one.

KG: Yeah, for sure, for sure. I that that is something that, it’s like there’s so much of a vulnerability with sharing that work that opening it up to, especially when you’re still working on it, figuring it out, like it’s very, it’s very vulnerable to be like, what do you think of this thing that is just kind of like a, like a glimmer of an idea in my brain?

EM: Yeah. Mm-hmm.

KG: And I’ve kind of put down a little bit and to open up, like, I always feel like, so, I went to art school, I was a painting and printmaking major and it was always like, when you are going to a critique or whatever, it’s like, my gosh, this is my soul that I have placed on this canvas or whatever. Like, and it just feels like I’ve always thought like, putting your work up, whether it’s a painting or whether it’s a mock of a website or whatever, up on the wall for critique or for discussion is always such like, it’s such a brave and courageous thing

EM: Right. Yep. Yeah, totally, totally.

KG: And it’s like, yeah, that’s just what you do. You have to do that. But like, when you slow down and think about it, I’ve had to over time create like a little bit of a space between that so that so that it can be OK. So it’s like, OK, this is not my worth. This is not like those types of things. But this is something that, like, like you said, which I totally agree with. It’s going to make the work better. And so like getting that in my brain was like, OK, OK, cool. And then also from a fine art perspective, like on a painting or whatever, getting input from like my professor or friends who, like you say, have that you respect their opinion, like that’s going to they’re going to ask you questions.

EM: That’s great. Yeah.

KG: From a different perspective that you can then be like, how do I want to solve that? And I think that that’s like a little bit of it.

EM: Yeah. Yeah. I love that. I love that. Yeah, I think opening yourself up to those conversations is really important. Again, it’s like I’m a self-taught designer. And it’s something I had to teach myself over a long period of time. So I’m glad I learned the lesson. But yeah, think it’s like you said, I think also that this work does not define you as a designer. This is how you approached a particular problem.

The craft is still there. The process that brought you to that point is still valuable, but opening yourself up to like, hey, what about thinking about this problem in a slightly different way? Yeah, think it’s always more perspectives. So yeah, I love that. Love that.

KG: Is there anything in your life from a creative point of view that you feel like has been a source of healing for you?

EM: Man. Well, it’s not part of my life right now, but… This isn’t something I write about or speak about very much. Singing has always been big part of my life. so, choral singing specifically. I did a lot of singing, like, classical music groups in college. I was very cool, as you can tell. But then back in, like, 2016, 2017, I joined a local chorale. And, man, was great to reconnect with that. I miss it. So, yeah, that obviously stopped back in 2020.

Maybe at some point, I’ll reconnect with that. It still feels good to sing with other people.

KG: Right. There’s something magical about it. Like I grew up in the church as well and not religious now, but like that was always the, like the thing is like when singing together. Like a concert, same thing. Like when people are singing together, it’s such a, a unique and special thing. Yeah. Cool. Thank you for sharing that.

EM: Yeah. Totally. I love that. Yeah, you too. You too.

KG: Yeah, of course.

As we all grow up and kind of come into our own, we’re learning constantly. And then as we progress through our lives, we see that some of those things aren’t necessarily working or serving us well anymore. What are some things that maybe you have unlearned that have opened up space for something better or new?

EM: Some things I’ve unlearned.

Well, I mean, we’ve talked about two of them, that kind of like preciousness that I am still working through on some small degree, definitely like that idea of unveiling your work when it’s ready. I’m glad I’ve moved past that. That’s been a big impact on me as a designer. And the other one, think, is, again, I think about the labor piece as well.

That’s definitely a big unlearning for me because, I write about this a fair bit, but like when I joined the industry back in the late nineties, like, you know, it like it was new and different. Like it was better than the industries that had come before. It had solved a lot of the problems that existed before.

It’s been a hell of an education in the last decade to see that that’s not the case, that we have work to do here, and there are people doing that work. And I also learned more about the tech industry is like history with labor since like its beginning, since the middle of the 20th century. Like these are fights that people have been leading for a very long time.

And so like learning some of those histories and sort of like drawing a line between them all the way to the present day has been really, it’s changed the way that I think about the industry for the, for the better, because it’s, it’s helpful to know that the discussions we’re having right now about the value of tech work and making it better for people working in tech. Those have been going on for a very long time. yeah, it’s just, it’s helpful to have that through line, I think.

KG: Does it feel for you like a sense of continuity of kind of that community? Like, hey, I’m not new to this. This is something that I’m joining. Like, I don’t have to create something out of thin air. It’s a movement. It’s an idea that I’m joining rather than I’m having to make up. Is that part of it?

EM: Right. Yeah, I like that, Kendall. I haven’t thought about that specifically, but that does feel right to me.

I think about it a little bit more like that these that there were lessons in the past that could be useful to us now. I think that’s where I take the comfort is like there are people who have been having this discussion for very long time and they probably learned things that by understanding the fights and the discussions that they had.

That might better equip us for the discussions we’re trying to have right now and trying to figure out a better future for ourselves. I do feel like if there was a future for the industry. It is in the tech worker’s power and having more. More of it and having that seat at the table so we can define like, okay, what is the value of our work and what is our value as workers? And I’m glad that conversation still happening. It gives me hope. Yeah.

KG: Yeah, right on.

All right, we’re kind of wrapping up here. I have one question. If you weren’t working in tech, writing, or speaking, what would you be doing?

EM: Man, Kendall. Is Ghostbuster still on the table?

KG: Yes, absolutely.

EM: All right, good. Good. Yeah, I think that might be my answer. Because I don’t know, I do not dream of labor. I would like to have more time to write and to do design for myself. But yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know. I used to dream about different futures for myself a lot. And right now it feels like there’s the possibility of doing good work in this industry.

KG: Awesome. So I’ve asked you a bunch of questions. Now is your chance to ask a Question of Week. So you can ask me and then all of the three listeners or whatever it is going to be right now can answer that in the comments or what have you. So if you have a question of the week, I would love to hear it.

EM: OK, well. What is your favorite thing you’ve read recently? Could be an article, could be a book, could be an advertisement. The brief is very open.

KG: This is, it’s interesting. So the thing that, the first thing that came to my mind is the difference between a request and a demand and boundaries and those types of things. I read something, I don’t remember, I’ll have to find the link, but it really helped shape my understanding of when I’m talking with somebody. It’s kind of parallels, I also recently read the Nonviolent Communication book.

Again, I don’t remember the author at the top of my head, but I’ll link it up. But just this idea of like, when you’re speaking with somebody, how to do that in a way that is, understanding the difference between a request and a demand or a boundary or what have you. like they all carry different things in what they’re meaning and how you deliver them and people react to them very differently. And so that is the first thing that popped into my head and the first thing that sticks out. Yeah. Great question.

EM: I love that.

KG: Well, thank you, Ethan, so much for your time. Please check out Ethan’s books and writing is the best place for that to just head to your website?

EM: Yep, best place to do that is my website, ethanmarcotte.com

KG: Awesome, I will put that in the show notes here and yeah, Ethan, thank you so much. I really appreciate the time. Thank you.

EM: Kendall, thank you. It’s been a real honor and great to chat with you.

KG: Likewise, man.

Please check out Ethan’s website is writing all of those things. ethanmarcotte.com. I’ll link it.

If you think that somebody else would be interested in this show, please share it with them. We are on YouTube, Spotify, Apple podcasts. Find us where you find your podcasts. If you have questions or would like to ask me a question or have guest suggestions, please reach out, somanyquestionsshow@gmail.com we’ll try and get some folks on that are interesting. Hopefully they’ll be as great an interview as Ethan was.

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Take care.

[Note: This has been edited for clarity]