I’m really not sure how to start this thing. Writing makes me incredibly nervous. It’s difficult, time consuming, and I’m generally pretty bad at it. But I’ve never really done it before, so I guess that’s okay. I actually kind of hope I am bad at it so I can look back a year from now and say “woah… what was I doing!?”

So… what are you doing?

Well, I’m building a blog! It’s going to be more than that… in the future — but for now it’s a blog. One of my bigger goals for 2018 is to… well… write more. But not just writing for writings sake; it has to go deeper than that.

I’m a digital designer by day and the majority of my creativity is expressed through the notes in my notebook and some boxes on a screen. But I want to learn how to externalize those notes, how to share my thought process behind some of those boxes, and get as many people as I can involved in the conversation. I want to be able to express that every-day creativity using a medium that I’m not all that used to (writing).

I’ve had quite the busy year behind me and have set some pretty lofty goals for my future self. I want to use this blog as an outlet to share everything I’ve been up to, and as a way to hold myself accountable for everything I plan to do in the future. By the end of it (if there is an end), I should have a nice record of my professional and personal progress as a designer and human being. I plan to learn as much as I possibly can and hopefully provide a bit of knowledge and a few resources in return.

And who are you again?

My name is Matt(hew) Taylor. For the past year I’ve been working at Fundrise as a product designer — helping to create and maintain a design system to support the rapid expansion of the design and front-end team, as well as improve the overall experience of the investment platform through things like audience research, rapid prototyping/testing, and a bit (a lot) of visual design.

Prior to Fundrise, I was a senior designer at Illustria where I lead a team of designers on a wide variety of web based projects — while later focusing on growing the agencies UX capabilities.

On the side, I have a growing number of (digital) side projects in the works. Some are close to completion, some will probably never see the light of day — but that’s how it goes. What’s important (to me) is that I’m at least writing about them — journaling the successes and the failures, and refining my process in the interim. I’ll leave the details for future posts but I’m excited to share my processes and open up an additional channel for validation and feedback.

Speaking of side projects…

Side projects and entrepreneurship are important concepts for me. For as long as I can remember I’ve always had an immeasurable desire to create something that can help move society forward in a meaningful way —whether it be a business, product, or piece of art. I usually try to start any project with that in mind (ie. Is this solving a problem? Is this useful for someone to have in their life?) and ground all my decision making around the principles of human centered design and development. I’m not necessarily looking to reinvent the world, but making someones life just a bit easier and perhaps happier is the end goal.

So what else should I expect?

This will certainly evolve over time, but in my head I want this blog to look something like this:

• Case studies from past and current projects
• Stuff from work that I’m able to share
• General thoughts I have about product design and development
• Shameless plugs and promotions about the stuff I’m working on
• Sharing resources and other cool stuff that I stumble across
• Answering any questions that people might have
• Personal life updates
• Pictures of my dog
• Pictures of other people’s dogs

So that’s all I really have for now. Consider me introduced! My goal is to get at least two high quality posts out per month starting in the new year. I’m taking a “when it’s done” sort of approach to this so I’ll refrain from having a concrete release schedule, at least to start off.

I’ll try to x-post most of these to Medium as well, or figure out a way to utilize it as a secondary platform. I’m immensely excited to get started and see what opportunities can come from this. Here’s to the road ahead, and happy reading!