We were lucky to catch up with Spencer Nugent recently and have shared our conversation below.

Spencer, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What was it like going from idea to execution? Can you share some of the backstory and some of the major steps or milestones?

I’m not the most organized person, and so my journey from corporate America to being independent right before the pandemic in 2019 as a creative I was one that was more emotional than logistical. Even then, I did make some deliverance decisions to create space for myself to breathe and foster my creative, thinking and creative process. For example, after I left my job at Vivint Smart home, I took about a month to just soak up life. I try to be observant and thoughtful while thinking, creatively and doing something creative each day.

After that month was over, logistically, I decided to focus on a few simple tasks that I would do consistently. My YouTube channel was key in my marketing efforts and has led to several opportunities since then like authoring my first publication.

Marketing continues to be one of my bigger, struggles or challenges, but it’s simply a matter of allocation of resources personally.

Spencer, 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?

I am a Jamaican, born, creative and designer, and a full-time single dad. Right now those are the markers that define who I am. I started my education as a math student and quickly realized in calculus to that math was heading in the direction I hadn’t anticipated. The numbers started disappearing, and as we got deeper into theory, I fell out of love with math. Math and arts or not to dissimilar when you think about it. Both math and arts involve creative thinking. Specifically design requires creative, thinking and being able to see the big picture of problems, much like mathematics requires.

So while the tools and means are different, the process felt familiar transitioning into design. After university, I worked in the San Francisco Bay area for Astro Studios as an industrial designer. If you’re not familiar with the term, think of it a bit, like being an architect for products. We are required to have functional working knowledge of how to make products, but also have the ability to tap into human empathy and understand a human perspective when it comes to using products. Aesthetics also are important and a key part of what makes a good industrial designer.
I worked in the bay area for a few years, and then started my first business, Studio T-minus, as the recession happened in 2009.

Running my first business taught me a lot. He told me how to grind and hustle and follow through on my dreams. It taught me resilience and how to move forward believing in yourself and your dream. It taught me how to navigate difficult conversations with business partners, as well as clients. It also taught me to know when to quit. There came a time where together we felt like we needed different experiences to move forward in our careers, and so we did. At this point, I decided to enter the start of world by way of acquisition and integration into a larger company. A small company called Space Monkey was a previous client and was acquired by a large smart home company called Vivint.

The corporate years were in master class in leveling up in my design skills, advocacy, and process. You might say I gains of the perspective to understand designs a role in every day life in a much more meaningful way. I learned about the precursor to designing products by way of research and interacting with customers. I also had the opportunity to see the products being made on production lines, communicate with vendors, and understand more deeply the full life cycle of products from concept to Customer and beyond.

Right now, I am focused on my personal business 50-50, creative labs where I dedicate half my time to personal projects and the rest of my time to client work. I made that determination after pouring myself into working for others, and wanted to carve out some space and time for me to reconnect with my artistic root.

I consider myself a multi, talented human. I like to think my superpower is learning how to do things and understanding problems. I offer my clients, my unique perspective, given my diverse background, as well as my broad understanding, albeit at a high-level, of many processes, trends, strategies, and technologies.

Additionally, I have become involved in education at the university level, professionally, and online. I routinely conduct online, workshops, focused on design, thinking, design, visualization, and design execution where in I’m able to demonstrate how to successfully design and launch products. One example of, my educational efforts has been the publishing of my first book, the perspective, drawing guide, that was released in 2022. Currently I’m working on a follow up to that book which bills on the concepts presented in the perspective drawing guide.

Outside of client work in education, on the personal work side, I have been working to establish a small brand of home, focused goods that are made with care and consideration for the customer and the environment. The brand is called VSL, or very Salt Lake, and currently is sold online through my own website, and occasionally through pop-up shops and markets, in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

In 2009, the world was crashing hard. The speculative real estate market was paying for it since from predatory lending, and eventually the fall out hits my employer in San Francisco. It was risky, but a coworker of mine, and I decided to start a business. We really had no idea what we were doing, but we were young, energetics, and optimistic about the future, despite what was happening around us. We left San Francisco and relocated to the Sacramento area for pragmatic reasons, but what we didn’t anticipate was how difficult it would be to land our first contracts and gigs. At one point things were looking absolutely dark, and we had to do some thing.

Both of us were married at the time, and our spouses were either young mothers, or about to be. We felt her responsibility to provide, and the work just wasn’t coming in. One day, we decided to just start moving. I suppose that’s the lesson here just start moving and do some thing. So we did. Mind you, this might sound funny to younger readers, because we decided to go door to door to each of the businesses in our area. In hindsight, that was probably not the most efficient way to go about things, but we did it anyways. We’re not, we asked, we had conversations, and we would move on. That experience to me, was not about drumming up the business, so much as it was establishing some momentum in some direction. At the very least we were able to sharpening our sales and conversational skills.

Perhaps it was a bit of putting good intentions out into the universe, because after that period of time, we started receiving bigger and bigger contracts. Again, I don’t think this was because we went door-to-door so much as it got us pumped and moving and determined to make some thing happen. The conversations we had certainly sharpened our ability to have meaningful conversations with prospective clients. And it was from this experience that I adopted the mantra, “failure is a chance to learn”.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

Building an audience on social media is difficult. I’ve been building my community, recognition, audience, since 2008. In 2008 I turned a hobby into a website which is led to many business opportunities. At the time, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and so on we’re much smaller than they are now. In fact at the time having a website made sense. I made the choice to share my knowledge altruistically with the world. I love drawing. It’s a big part of what I do as a designer as I’m working to come up with the ideas. But drawing can be intimidating for a lot of people. My business, partner, and the time, and I would produce video, demos, blog, posts, and free resources to design students who are interested in sharpening their skills.

So that website did well and eventually I turned a small subset of what I was doing into another website called “Sketch-a-day”. Much like the name implies, I would do a drawing every day and post it. No demo, no explanation, and no context. It was a bit like Instagram before Instagram was a big thing, and eventually I ported my con ent over to Instagram where, for some time I continued in the spirit of sketching some thing every day and sharing it with people. That website and Instagram account started growing exponentially, along with a Facebook page, and YouTube channel as well.

My philosophy, when it comes to social media over the years is keep it simple, keep it consistent, and keep it real. Those three things resonate with people because no one likes a pretentious person. Keeping it simple makes your contents accessible. Keep it consistent, because like any relationship, I relationship with those who follow you is only bolstered by good communication and checking in. Keep it real because fake won’t get you far in life. At some point it catches up to you. Keeping it real keeps you human and keeps that connection that you have to your fans meaningful.

You never know where opportunities or experiences will lead you. At this point in my life, I would argue that most of my business is related to my efforts in the past, to give back to the community through education, but also through building a community through social media.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.5050.design / www.sketch-a-day.com
• Instagram: @5050creativelabs / @sketchadaydotcom
• Facebook: facebook.com/sketchaday
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/spencernugent/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBtSgEZk914z5InEs_U2J3w?sub_confirmation=1