New York, April 21st, 2021

Born in Germany, Marvin Schwaibold is an award-winning graphic designer living in New York City.

After working at Master Plan and Watson Design Group, he’s now the Senior Visual Designer at Squarespace, the all-in-one website building platform founded in 2003 and with a global team of 1,200 people.

In an interview with TIA, Marvin described his life in New York City and his regular day working at Squarespace.

He highlighted the lively design culture present at the company and listed the changes seen in the industry over the years. While missing the pre-Covid life, he argued Squarespace was able to successfully adapt.

To kick things off please can you tell us a little bit about New York and why is a great place to work?

I live and work in New York, Williamsburg to be exact. This city has a very creative feel to it that is hard to put into words really. It’s very vibrant, fast passed and always changing. The density of the population here and the amount of cultures and backgrounds that collide together is very inspiring and beautiful.

I think NYC has a really rich creative culture and a lot of my friends from all over the world live here. From world class agencies to large product companies and an enormous amount of startups you can really find any job that suits you. It’s one of the coolest cities in the world and I’m very proud and honoured to have found a place and a carrier here.

What’s a regular day like in Marvin’s shoes?

I’m an early bird. I wake up around 7 am workout, shower and usually go out to get coffee at Black Brick (Best place in Williamsburg for Coffee in my opinion) Then I get straight to work. I’m most creative early in the mornings and late at night so those times are sacred to me. If I can get away with it and my day isn’t filled up with meetings I take a few hours to concentrate on my work.

For lunch, I love to cook, hit the gym for cardio spinning sessions and then back to work. Occasionally I’ll go on a walk or dip into a gallery or museum in the afternoon. There’s always plenty of ways to distract yourself in NYC. In the evening I like going out with friends and colleagues. I’m a huge foodie and NYC is really the best place to be in terms of food! Pick a cuisine or a dish and I bet you NY has a restaurant that serves it!

I also love to play pool so always up for a beer and a game of pool or a game of Call of Duty Zombie with my little brother and my best friends from Germany. That’s always a lot of fun and helps me relax and decompress.

Can you tell me about yourself and your role at Squarespace?

At heart, I’m a graphic designer and a typography nerd. I studied graphic design in Germany and have been focusing on branding and interactive design my entire career.

I’m currently a Senior Designer at Squarespace, a website building and e-commerce platform, working on a small team called Concepts where we focus on interactive design systems. The Concepts team sits between the product and brand team at Squarespace and focuses on interactive campaigns, ways to push the boundaries of our product, and new ways users can and will interact with the web in the future.

We’re essentially a research and development team that is utilised across the organisation to jump in and out of larger projects or work on our own goals. I’ve been focusing on something we call Brand Ambassador websites as well which has been rewarding. Our Brand Ambassador websites allow us to use our platform to build new websites and then take those one step further to showcase, both internally and externally, how far we can push the platform forward and introduce new elements and components that could be integrated into Squarespace further down the line. We are very lean and nimble, which allows us to move quickly and iterate a lot.

My nights and weekends are usually filled with freelance and personal projects. I use these projects as a way to grow my knowledge and skill set. Sometimes, they help me bring concepts and ideas to life that I have during my day to day work or vice versa. I try to blend my knowledge between all disciplines and projects I work on to get the best possible output.

COVID-19 is a first-of-its-kind disruption, one that leaves no community, government or business untouched. What challenges were you facing before the pandemic and how are you dealing with them right now?

Before COVID, getting my colleagues excited about a project or a new feature was best done by sitting in a room together, with the ability to speak to individuals face to face, bounce ideas off of each other, and collaborate on our products.

The same went for the iterative and creative process of creating something new. Prior to the pandemic, we were able to tap someone on the shoulder to show them a new prototype, tap on the window of a meeting room to get someone you forgot to invite to the meeting to come over, or catch up with them during a quick run in in the hallway.

Now, all these special moments have disappeared as we all work from home, and has been the biggest challenge we’ve faced this past year. Fortunately, Squarespace and everyone at the company have done an outstanding job of trying to make do with the fact that we only communicate through virtual meetings, so it’s all become quite normal to me. Nonetheless, I miss the energy of being in a packed room.

My team copes with these challenges by setting up short meetings left and right, calling each other over FaceTime, or joining hangouts together for hours on end listening to music and quietly working. This allows us to really feel like we’re back in the office, giving us the opportunity to look up and ask someone a question without having to put a meeting on their calendar first.

What is the creative culture like at Squarespace – how does it match your own values as a creative?

Squarespace is and always has been a design-led company. Design is core to our brand’s DNA and the work our creative team touches spans across product, web, motion, branding, and more.

At Squarespace, we always encourage people to explore their big ideas. If you have an idea, chances are high you’ll find a group of people that are willing to take time out of their day to help you bring that idea to life.

The roll up your sleeves, maker culture at Squarespace is one that resonates highly with me, and is the reason I joined the company in the first place. This culture is especially apparent within our Concepts Team—I’ve never worked with so many talented and driven people before.

The perfect client brief: Does it exist?

Yes for sure. The best client brief I received last year was on a freelance project with Centogene, a rare disease company with a strong focus on hereditary diseases that I worked on with Jesper Vos and Daniel Linthwaite. Their former CEO Professor Arndt Rolfs trusted me to design and lead a digital campaign for the company. A website that showcases the mission and vision of Centogene on an interactive canvas.

He told me “Make something you’d be proud of. You know what Centogene stands for and I trust you to build something that will push us forward”

Clients that trust you and your work are very rare but they do exist. When you find someone like that don’t let go. They’ll help you create work you want to see in the world and that you can be proud of.

solutions.centogene.com

Tell us about a recent project you’ve worked on that you’re proud of. What particularly brought out the best in you?

My team recently launched a portfolio website for Marcus Eriksson, a prolific photographer based in Vancouver. Eriksson works with high-profile clients and personalities, and his photos have a unique and clean style.

We wanted to create something very simple, yet organic that showcased his work in the most natural way possible. The site’s user experience and navigation balances solving a business problem for Marcus, and our own artistic values that we wanted to leave behind while creating this project.

I’m especially proud of the interactive project index page and the homepage screensaver mode we created for Marcus’ portfolio. The iterative process of any project, curious teammates, and a client that really wants to push themselves and us to create something simple, interactive, and new really helps me get the best work done.

https://themarcus.com

You’ve worked with some brilliant brands, how has the creative industry changed over the course of the last 10 years?

The creative industry shifts with the implementation of new technologies. I see a lot more digital milestones being set within the realm of WebGL. It’s fun to implement 3D on a canvas and be able to push digital storytelling forward in that way. The web has become a lot more interactive and complex.

I also think the importance of product companies has really made a dent in the creative industry. You won’t believe the amount of talent being nurtured and curated at companies like Squarespace, Uber, Stripe, Airbnb and so on. Companies that didn’t exist 10 years ago currently running 200 people creative teams that are leading the way in new product design strategies and creating the new status quo of how to use and interact with digital products.

The last space worth mentioning here are Startups. Working as a creative in a startup these days is exciting, profitable and can very well propel your carrier forward in unaccepted ways. Some of my closest friends all work in the start-up realm in Berlin. Its fascinating to see these young and talented guys lead large scale teams and rake in millions in funding. It’s a fast growing space with a lot of growth potential.

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?

Its not so much advice rather than getting challenged by trusted colleagues that I respect and that respect me. My biggest two learning curves in my carrier has been with Hochburg, a small design Studio in the heart of Stuttgart, Germany.

These guys took me under their wing when I didn’t even know how to use photoshop. They taught me a great deal and I’ve been working for and with them ever since. These guys would push me to my limits and make me redo work over and over again. It was the best thing that happened to me at the time. I was still in university and learning close to nothing there but I’d spend most days at Hochburg (https://hochburg.design/) and spend my days and nights working and helping out on any project that was tossed my way.

My second biggest learning curve was working for the studio Watson DG in Los Angeles. (https://watson.la/) I worked under the guidance of their lead creative director who would constantly have me iterate on my work. He would push me and my capabilities to my limits and help me produce some of the best work I’ve ever done. Feedback was always critical, harsh and straight to the point but that’s the only feedback I like giving or receiving myself.

Those guys saw something in me and really helped me develop my hard skills. It was tough but really worth it! In a sense, my advice to anyone starting out in the industry would be to find mentors and idols that they respect and admire and try to work with those people. You’ll learn and grow at a tremendous speed by doing that.

Three top tools you can’t live without?

Figma, Photoshop and Illustrator are the top three for me.

If you could have one superpower, what would you choose?

Anyone familiar with the movie Jumper? Id love to be able to teleport wherever I want to go instantly.

Can you name a fun-fact people would be surprised to learn about you?

Its not really a fun fact I guess but I stumbled into the design industry kind of by accident. I had applied to study medicine in Latvia after finishing Highschool but pivoted last minute because my mother had gotten me an internship at Hochburg.

The design agency I mentioned earlier. I had no background in the industry except for a few flyers for bars and clubs Id previously designed but I still remember my first day of the internship. Best day of my life! I decided then and there to become a graphic designer.

Thanks Marvin!

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