About

Hi, I'm Brad.

I help teams ship products people love to use.

I'm a Design executive with 25 years of experience leading product design at Shopify, The New York Times, Fanatics, Volvo, and 100+ brands. I build teams, ship products, and transform how organizations design in an AI-native world. I'm an author, hybrid athlete, former stunt actor, parent, and educator.

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The Full Story

How I got here

I'm from a town with more cows than people in Alabama. I built my first website in 1996 for my classmate's awful band using a pirated copy of Photoshop, Jeffrey Zeldman's DHTML Textbook, and notepad on the family Dell. I've been getting paid for design work ever since.

I went to school to be a lawyer, hated it, and fell into a Product Design role at Verizon where I helped design some of the first mobile apps ever made—VZNav and VCast. In 2008, I left to start my own thing.

I founded Suckerpunch, grew it through a merger with Nine Labs, did work for global governments and a lot of Fortune 500s, then sold my partnership stake in 2016 and went into consulting. When Shopify came calling, I went back in-house and have spanned in-house design leadership and consulting roles since.

Along the way, I was a stunt actor. I appeared in Avengers, Fast & Furious, and Hunger Games films. (Yes, really.) I wrote a book called Creative Truth about what it's actually like running an agency. I got to do some amazing charity work throughout the world. And, I still teach UX design to students wherever they are.

Present

What I Do Now

I lead product design organizations. I'm a player/coach—I build teams AND I ship work. I refuse to be in meetings about meetings.

My recent focus has been AI integration: not just using AI tools, but transforming how design teams work in an AI-native world. At Fanatics, I deployed OpenAI, Adobe Firefly, and dozens of AI-assisted automation tools into production workflows that changed how 50+ designers and hundreds of production employees operate.

I also run:

Start & Build — a home for education for designers, engineers, and entrepreneurs. Learn more
Hyperplane — a design and technology studio where I help design organizations adopt AI tools and workflows that actually work. Learn more
The Creative Age — a newsletter, podcast, education platform, and upcoming book on learning to keep the creative flywheel going as you get older. Learn more
Speaking — I speak at conferences and corporate events worldwide on AI, design leadership, and building things that work. Learn more

Personal

When I'm Not Working

I focus on my family. I'm a father of three boys who have made my hair gray. My partner, Lindsey, is a world-class Pilates instructor. We travel a lot and find ourselves on some new and insane adventure almost every week.

I'm a hybrid athlete (weights and distance running), a luddite writer, painter, horror movie cinephile, comic book collector, yoga and pilates enthusiast, sneakerhead, pretty decent chef, and plant hoarder. I believe that the world still has a chance, everyone deserves to love how they love, and that happiness and kindness are a choice. So make it.

But, I will absolutely fight you over Oxford commas.

Experience