We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Federico Yniguez a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Federico thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Looking back on your career, have you ever worked with a great leader or boss? We’d love to hear about the experience and what you think made them such a great leader.

The best boss I ever had was actually my manager from an internship. It was the last internship I ever had but it was by far the best internship I ever had.

To set the scene, it was last year around February that I started an internship at this small start-up right out of college. While my skills lie in design, I was a general intern for the brand. Packing orders, measuring garments, sending emails, and sometimes designing. It was a hard environment to be in because the other members of the team were well acquainted and I never really broke the ice to introduce myself to them. I felt a bit like an outsider and my ideas were often shot down. This internship was also in the heart of Chinatown, Los Angeles and being from the valley the commute was a lot for me.

Eventually, I decided to apply to PACSUN, a brand that I knew a lot about having grown up in SoCal. I didn’t expect it but I received an interview with the digital design manager of the brand, Elli Zacharowitz, who, unbeknownst to me, would be my future manager. The interview was probably the best one I’d had yet and we became fast friends. I think what made Elli the best boss I’ve ever had was her willingness to encourage me. Coming from an environment where I felt discouraged, it was amazing to feel like I was doing things right at PACSUN. She never put me down, gaslit me, or questioned my intentions or design process. She always encouraged me to try new things and explore different avenues. Even thought the internship was purely digital, we still chat sometimes and she’s still checking up on me a year later. She really changed my life, in that, I know my worth as a designer and person when it comes to working professionally.

Federico, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

My name is Federico Rogelio Yniguez but everyone calls me Roho. I like to describe myself as a multi-disciplinary graphic designer but I’m really just creative in general. With a focus on branding and marketing, my craft is heavily in-tune with pop culture, news, and media at large. I’m very passionate about editorial design, fashion, and technology and how those epicenters of media are translated through design and communication. I would say that my commercial design work, while accessible, still carries a lot of my identity, passions, and spirit. In my own personal projects, my intersections often take to the forefront. I often call them experimentations and trials – more meditative and curious than my commercial work.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

When I graduated from college, I had to unlearn a lot of things that my professors had instilled in me that were not healthy. One thing in particular is the constant need for validation and approval. In art school, critiques can be one of the most important tools for learning but once you graduate, it’s important to gain confidence in your own decisions. Oftentimes after graduation, I would second guess myself or seek validation from my managers, taking it personally when I didn’t receive it or discouraging myself when I didn’t hit the mark exactly as they wanted. Design and art are not career paths without failure – being a commercial designer is filled with failure after failure but you learn from each one. I had to unlearn seeking that validation or final say from people around me and instead stick to my gut and my decisions.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on NFTs. (Note: this is for education/entertainment purposes only, readers should not construe this as advice)

I picked this question because I thought it was a little silly. NFTs, while well intentioned, are just another manifestation of capitalism. While I do believe NFTs can empower some artists (or at least that’s the supposed intention), I also think that the overarching commodification surrounding them is the larger issue. There’s art being made just for the sake of sales, which feels less authentic in some sense. I also think that there are deep issues in the ownership aspect of NFTs, especially when it comes to stolen art being coined. There are environmental issues as well with mining crypto so it just seems like an unnecessary distraction. We have wars, famine, homelessness, etc but the news and tech giants want to push NFTs on us? It just all seems so silly in the grand scheme of things.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://roho.xyz/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/roho.ai/?hl=en
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/federico-yniguez/