Design Gurus Summit: Q&A with Kevin Fremon, Co-Founder & Design Director, Twenty20

Kevin is the Co-Founder and Design Director of Twenty20, an online marketplace for beautiful, authentic stock photographs with more than 45 million real-world photographs from 350,000 contributors. He has co-founded three companies, a web development agency, a social startup (vibe.me), and in 2011, Twenty20. Over the past decade, Kevin has successfully orchestrated the creation of social networks, learning management systems, and multiple web 2.0 apps. As a product design lead and UX-UI director, he has a deep understanding of rapid prototyping, information architecture, user flows, measured learning, and agile development practices.
He will be speaking at the Uncharted Minds Design Gurus Summit on September 19th. Click here to get 20% off tickets to the event.
Q. When you were growing up, were you always interested in art and design?
A. You betcha! One of my more vivid childhood memories was right around Christmas time, circa 1986. I lay sprawled across my bedroom floor with my box set of 80 colored pencils and my favorite oversized spiral bound sketch pad. That year, I drew each of my family members’ names in 80’s graffiti-style lettering to give to them as their Christmas presents. My love for art and design was cemented at that moment.
Years later, while in high-school, I discovered and fell in love with digital design by way of Corel Draw (#oldschool). It was a new elective class at my school, and I couldn’t get enough! I knew at that moment I had found my calling.
Q. What were some early influences on your career choice?
A. Hands-down, my parents. Unlike most parents, mine never attempted to push me towards a specific career path in life. Rather, they continued to reinforce that the world was my oyster, and I could do anything I put my mind to.
Both of my parents had an entrepreneurial bent. My mom ran a flower shop out of our home garage for almost 20 years. My dad, a tech-nerd (which I say in the most loving way possible), was a very early adopter of the internet and always had an idea for the next internet business. I have fond memories of him teaching me to write my first lines of HTML at the age of 14 in his dimly lit spare bedroom. A true coder…
Q. What did you study in college?
A. Fun fact: I spent the first 2 years of college…not going to college. Right out of high-school, I hightailed it down to San Diego State University. Yes, it’s a party school. I gained quite the reputation for not only having the largest computer monitor in the dorm, but also as the go-to guy for fake grade cards. My graphic design skills were in full effect.
After a couple of years, I pulled my head from my ass and realized that I needed to do something serious with this God-given talent. Not far from SDSU was the Art Institute of CA, where I enrolled and found my home.
At this time, product designers and user experience designers were FAR from being a thing. A majority of the classes taught skills that would equate to a job in Advertising. It wasn’t until my second year that a new class called Multimedia Design was introduced. This was right around the time designing websites in Flash was all the rage. I loved this class and excelled quickly. There was something strangely challenging and fascinating about thinking through multiple layers and levels of design.
Q. Tell me about your first design job.
A. My first “real” design job came right before the first tech bubble burst. I was still in Art School, and I landed a design job for a glorious seven months at a startup called upstage.com in downtown San Diego. Ok, Ok… I was an intern, but that still counts, right?
This was my first startup experience and likely what got me hooked. On the very first day, I showed up to a funky office on India street. I walked in the front door of the building to see a couple of dudes playing pool. Behind them was an open office with a bunch of young, good-looking people. Awesome! The energy was electric.
At that time, I was just sharpening my graphic design skills. A majority of what I worked on was marketing material like posters, flyers, swag, you name it…
Needless to say, the bubble burst, and I got to experience that first hand.
Q. Tell me about your role as co-founder with Twenty20?
A. I am in a very unique position, and I feel a ton of gratitude for it every day. I’m building a company and a product that ultimately serves my peers, fellow creatives.
While appreciative, it brings me a ton of anxiety. We’re in a new day and age for building startups. One that is all about “failing fast” and releasing MVPs (minimum viable product). As a designer, this is a hard pill to swallow sometimes. A necessary pill, but a difficult one.
Being a co-founder carries a special responsibility, especially when hiring and managing a team. How you show up matters, and your words and direction carry a lot of weight. The word “culture” is a big thing in startups these days, and rightfully so. When I think about my role as a co-founder, my focus is how I’m modeling the type of culture I want to create.
Q. How do you approach creative brainstorming? How do you generate creative solutions with your team?
A. First and foremost, I’ve found that getting out of the office and changing up the brainstorming environment is a critical and often overlooked practice. The whole point of a creative brainstorm is to think outside the box. I’ve found taking that concept literally has been a HUGE help.
We often go through a series of sticky note exercises at the beginning of any brainstorming session. Everyone in the room is handed a sticky note pad and a sharpie. We’ll go through a series of prompts and questions, each with a timer set for 2–5 mins. The short time constraint helps people not get hung up on the nitty-gritty details, but rather focus on high-level ideas that can be discussed as a group. Once the timer goes off, the markers go down. On an empty wall in the room, each person will get up and give a brief overview of their ideas and stick them on the wall. If anyone else in the room has a similar idea, they’ll hand their sticky note up to be placed in the same column.
I like this method because it gets everyone in the room actively participating and, more importantly, contributing.
Q. What do you do for creative inspiration? How do you stay motivated and inspired?
A. Most recently, I’ve found a great deal of both inspiration and motivation in teaching others what I’ve learned during the 15+ years of my design journey. Whether it be with designers or online entrepreneurs, sharing my knowledge has only increased my desire to keep learning and becoming better.
Over the past couple of years, I’ve contributed my time to the graduating UX classes at General Assembly by participating in their student portfolio reviews. I’ll also be working more regularly with their students by hosting various workshops. I actually have a workshop coming up in August 2017 where I’ll teach designers how to best collaborate and work with developers.
Along with that, I’ve recently launched my new personal website www.experienceisking.com. My focus is teaching online entrepreneurs how to deliver an incredible customer experience through brand strategy, experience design, and product creation.
Q. How would you describe your design process?
A. My design process begins by asking myself what I call the “Fantastic Four Questions.”
1) What problem am I solving for our customers/users/audience?
2) How do I know this is really a problem?
3) Is this the right problem to solve right now?
4) How can I deliver an exceptional experience by solving this problem?
At the end of the day, designers are creative problem solvers. The only way to find a solution is to really understand the problem and to step into the shoes of those we are working so hard to solve problems for.
In short, research and gathering any existing learning is at the forefront of my design process. From there, the process is largely dependent on the problem we’re trying to solve. I don’t believe in a one-size-fits-all design process. Some projects require a large amount of exploration, sketch iterations, etc., where others require as little as a conversation while standing around a computer monitor.
I do highly encourage designers to bring others into the conversation early and often, especially with stakeholders and developers. A tool I created to use with my team is “The Product Design Canvas,” which is intended for use early in the design process.
It’s a one-page sheet that carries along added context with a proposed design solution in a single glance. It’s been incredibly helpful when soliciting early feedback from others on the team. If you’re interested, I wrote up a medium post about The Product Design Canvas here.
Q. What career advice would you give to young people today?
A. Don’t be a screwdriver. Be a Swiss Army knife.
There’s been a lot of controversy around the concept of honing in on one core competency and becoming the best at it. This is opposed to having a more vast skillset that can be adaptive.
Adaptivity wins every time.
I speak from the standpoint of building startups and companies from ground zero. The ability to wear multiple hats is absolutely essential to survival. I cannot stress this enough.
Q. Hardest part of being a Design Director and Co-Founder?
A. The most challenging part of being a Design Co-Founder is balancing my proclivity for perfection with the scrappy-minded attitude a startup founder needs to keep the lights on.
As a designer, the details and customer experience really matter to me. I want to obsess over them and get them right. Yet, the co-founder knows there is a time and a place to focus on the details and a time and a place to ship in order to learn quickly. This constant tug-of-war is definitely one of the more challenging aspects of my role.
Q. Favorite part of being a Design Director and Co-Founder?
A. I’m going to be a little redundant here, but my favorite part is creating a product and company that ultimately serves my peers, other designers.
I consider myself very fortunate to be in a position, as a creative, to serve other creatives. It’s not often that those of us who work on products get to design and build for ourselves. It’s more likely that we are working on a product for a completely different target market than we fall into.
So, coming into work everyday with the opportunity to interact, learn from, and get to know other creatives in their respective fields is by far one of my favorite things.
