Meet the Unsplash team:
‘Meet the Unsplash team’ is a series of interviews with members of the Unsplash team, giving an insight into the people behind the platform.
Who are you and what’s your role at Unsplash?
Graphic designer at Unsplash
Where do you live?
Montreal, QC
What’s your working background? You might like to share where you have worked previously, or the type of work you have done prior to Unsplash.
I studied Design at Concordia University & communications at Vanier College. I’ve had the opportunity to work with a few startups here in Montreal as a Web Designer (Frank & Oak & Crew), and Art Director (Deux Huit Huit, Dose & Cook it).
When did you join the team?
I joined the team in Spring 2017.
What are your responsibilities / What does a regular day at Unsplash look like for you?
I’m in a somewhat unique position at Unsplash because I was a huge fan of the platform even before getting the opportunity to join the team. It was (and still is) my go-to site for all things photography. As a visitor, collector and contributor to the platform, I’m able to design for a product that I enjoy and consume. Together with the product team, every new week is an opportunity to challenge the way we consume content on Unsplash and create features that would improve the browsing experience.
I also work closely with the Community team. I especially like to get involved in projects where we’re able to reward those of us in the community. I’m able to feature select photographers on the editorial feed, get in touch with those who reach important milestones via newsletters, provide new photo content for popular search terms, and even answer some of the questions the community may have regarding the platform via our community slack group. Whatever I’m working on at Unsplash, I always try to make it worthwhile for the community.
Who do you primarily work with within the team?
Designers at Unsplash are in a unique position as we get to work with pretty much everyone. I actually find it funny sometimes when my teammates are hesitant to reach out to the designers by fear of being a bother. We actually don’t mind helping out!
But if I had to name one person in the team that I work with the most, that’d be Kirill.
Why do you enjoy working on Unsplash?
Unsplash has been very useful for me in the past: It was that one place you could get high-quality images to use for any project. Since joining Unsplash, I’ve become a contributing member to the Unsplash library, and it’s now one of those sites that I visit regularly.
I love building for us users. I love that Unsplash is simple, easy to use. It forces us to make things uncomplicated. It’s also a place of respect (we put 100% trust in the people we collaborate with). But we’re not scared to challenge each other when it comes to what we do outside of the workplace (soccer, CrossFit & life choices lol).
We’re also very fortunate to get to work with people who are not from the city so whenever we get the chance, I love organizing activities outside of the workplace, discover new places in the city and ultimately, get to know the people we work with.
What tools do you use?
I use Dropbox paper for scoping projects.
I use Trello for tracking progress on some of our projects.
We have our internal team Slack for discussions & the community Slack to get in touch with Unsplash contributors.
I use Sketch to create mockups; Marvel to develop prototypes.
I use some of Adobe’s products. (Photoshop lulz).
We use Dropbox for hosting all of our files.
Also shout out to Grammarly, JPEGmini & VSCO.
What is your favourite thing you worked on at Unsplash?
I like to think of us on the team as part of the Unsplash community so any project that revolves around rewarding the community in some creative way is my favorite thing to work on at Unsplash. With over 90,000+ photographers and over 580,000+ photos, it can get hard to give everyone the exposure they deserve on the platform. One of those projects we were able to do was the Unsplash Awards which allowed us to feature the most deserving photographers on Unsplash. We invited some of the industry’s top people to judge different categories and reward the winners with awesome prizes. There have been talks of bringing it back this year; we hope that we’ll be able to make this year’s edition even better.
Where do you work?
I’ll split my time between home (with my dog Toshi) & the Unsplash workspace in Old Montreal.
What do you like to listen to while you work?
I like to listen to what I refer to as low-fi chill. Artists I enjoy: Real Estate, Wild Nothing, Beach Fossils, Bombay Bicycle Club, DIIV, Beck, RY X…
I’ve been listening to lots of classical music lately: Alexandra Streliski, Nils Frahm, Goldmund…
Favorite Montreal artists in the afternoon: Patrick Watson, Arcade Fire, Half Moon Run, Daniel Bélanger, Jimmy Hunt, Louis-Jean Cormier, Ariane Moffatt.
For when I’m falling asleep: The War On Drugs (Red Eye)
The classic: Neil Young (Harvest)
And Kanye West.
Favourite working snack?
I’ll have a craving for cookies in the afternoon… anything with chocolate.
And an afternoon tea, or soup.
What do you do when you aren’t working on Unsplash? Hobbies / past-times…
Constantly thinking of new ideas and buying domain names. Current hobbies include digitizing old souvenirs (VHS tapes, family photos from when we were younger), photoshopping things and exploring print design. Things I wish I did more of: exploring, learning, writing, reading.
Where can people find you / chat to you?
I’ll share my every day on Instagram. I like to share some of my design work on Dribbble. I’m also on Twitter. I also want to write more, so that’ll be on Medium.
