Did I Do That?

A new Did I Do That?!? Holy cow, we don't even know how to attack it! Neven Mrgan (Creative Lead at Panic) sits down with Sean to talk about his design mistakes… as well as German dub Darth Vader, turning your company’s office into a mad scientist’s lab, and the Seinfeld Presidential Library.Neven Mrgan is the Creative Lead at Portland very own Panic. Born in Croatia, he moved to the US in the 1990s, where he has pursued a career in design, software development, videogame design, and occasional writing and event production. His personal interests include cooking & eating, books, and psychedelic music.You can learn more about Neven by visiting his website, mrgan.com; there, you can find links to his games, his blog, and his book, Have You Tried Sketch?. Panic’s latest game, Big Walk by House House, is coming later this year, but in the mean time, you can see their whole library of games, Mac software, and even pick up a Playdate at panic.com. If you want to hear more about Panic’s history and even more on some of the stories we touched on in this episode, give a listen to The Panic Podcast (new season out now!), produced by Neven’s partner Christa Mrgan!This episode was recorded on Saturday, March 14 2026 in The Rat’s Nest.—Like this episode? Subscribe wherever you found this podcast, or visit us on the web to see all the options.Subscribe to the newsletter and get each episode delivered to your inbox.

Put on your biggest, fuzziest Jamiroquai hat because this Did I Do That? is virtually insane! Illustrator, art director, set designer, game maker, and more Emily Suvanvej (AKA Emy Su) sits down with Sean to talk about her design mistakes… as well as comforting crustaceans, “gardening,” and The Backrooms at the mall.Emily Suvanvej is an award-winning, Thai-American designer & illustrator who lives at the crossroads of visual mischief and lovingly-crafted imperfection. Formerly an Art Director at BUCK, she’s worked with top brands like Spotify, Nike, YouTube, and The New Yorker, and was recently a core creative force behind BUCK's first game called Let’s! Revolution!.You can peek at Emily's work at emy-su.com, or send her your favorite lost media on instagram at @emy_su. You can find the link to the many places you can get Let’s! Revolution! (including Steam, Xbox, Playstation, and Nintendo Switch) from its website, letsrevolution.com. You can see Emily’s production design work for the Fergie’s "Love is Blind" and Zed’s Dead “Too Young” music videos on YouTube.This episode was recorded on Saturday, January 31, 2026 in the Rat’s Nest.📣 WANT EVEN MORE ABOUT THIS EPISODE, AND/OR A VERY WEIRD BLOG POST VAGUELY RELATED TO THE OPENING BIT? Check out the show's newsletter for my Rome Transit Report, as well as other bits and bobs from our past two episodes this season.

Did I Do That? is back again, even though every time someone says that, it presages a disaster. Globetrotting art director, father, and genuine jack-of-all-trades Sam O’Leary sits down with Sean for our season 8 premiere to talk about his creative missteps… as well as the “good” stuff “kids” go for, woofing, and North America: where everybody knows your name.Sam O’Leary is a maker, storyteller, and professional tinkerer who has been making a glorious mess since 1986 — in art, life, work, and in all the places they overlap. Whether it’s a large-scale identity system or a one-off handmade object, Sam values the same things: resonance over reach, clarity over cleverness, and good questions above all. Over the years, he's worked on brand strategy, narrative frameworks, illustration, animation, sculpture, motion design, set design and build, woodworking, hand-painted signage, murals. public installations, props, books, toys, posters, whimsy, good times — and probably many things he's forgotten. Originally from Wellington, Aotearoa, Sam is now based in Portland, Oregon, where he lives with his partner and their three wonderful, wild children.You can find Sam’s work and more at his website, conduction.co.nz! You can also find him on Instagram at @samolearypresents; there, you can check out the “Artisan Designer for Hire” box he made for OMFGCO that we talk about in the episode, as well as lots of his other work!Special thanks to the great Sarah Hollowood for connecting Sam and I for this episode—you rock!This episode was recorded 10 January 2026 in the Rat’s Nest.

Did I Do That? is back, because failure is the best design teacher.Starting next Thursday, we’re cramming for a lecture hall-sized eighth season that’ll drop new episodes through ‘til August, summer school be damned. This season’s curriculum will be jam-packed with guests hailing from all over the map (specifically, that big one on the pull-down screen above the chalkboard). We’ll have new mediums to explore, new territories to cover, and plenty of new mistakes to laugh about. Want an A… or at least the C- you need to get by? All you have to do is show up.Join us February 19, and every other Thursday after that, at dididothat.design or wherever you get podcasts.

Season 8 is on our doorstep, with the next thing you hear here being the season 8 trailer! In the mean time, though, we've got another awesome all-timer from the archives to share—the great Eason Yang (founder and design director of NED: Not Entirely Dead, and more recently of AIGA New York's board) made the trek down from Seattle on St. Patrick’s Day 2023 to talk with Sean about looking for Lebron (in all the wrong places), working for dinosaurs, and resume hacking.You can find Eason on his website, eason.design, or on LinkedIn.Whether you’re a cancer survivor, have a resume gap, or just want to learn more, you can find out about NED and join the community at notentirelydead.org or on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/company/we-are-ned. If you have a gap in your resume, use NED as your employer on LinkedIn to give you context for it, and tell a friend if they’re in the same boat too! NED won 365: AIGA’s Year in Design Award in the category of Social Design in 2021, and was named one of Fast Company’s 2023 World Changing Idea honorees!This episode was recorded on Friday, March 17, 2023. One more special thanks to Eason for driving down to Portland to record this, of all things!⭐️ HELP SHAPE THIS SHOW’S FUTURE! ⭐️‍Please take the Did I Do That? Listener Survey at tiny.cc/thatsurvey!

Season 8 is drawing closer, but in the meantime, we're sharing yet another past favorite, this time from the amazing Kristin Rogers Brown, now full Professor, Chair of Graphic Design, and Director of the Center for Design at Pacific Northwest College of Art). Way back in September 2023 as part of season 3, Kristin joined Sean to talk nightmarish mascots, the corporate handshake aesthetic, and pencils that say stuff.You can find Kristin’s work—including some of the work at Bitch Magazine and Bear Deluxe— online at krbee.com, or on Instagram @krbee! You can find even more of Kristin's academic work through the PNCA website!—⭐️ HELP SHAPE THIS SHOW’S FUTURE! ⭐️Please take the Did I Do That? Listener Survey at tiny.cc/thatsurvey!

It’s a new year, and to celebrate while I dive deep into prep mode for season 8, I’ve picked out one of my past favorites to share again—freelance designer, grad student, and fellow Portland Institute for Contemporary Art design alum Mallary Wilson joined me way back in June of 2023 to talk inadvertently inappropriate imagery, erasers shaped like food items, and hoarding AOL hours. It’s an episode that’s unforgivably uncool, but we can dig it!You can find Mallary on the web at mallarydesigns.com or @mallarydesigns on Instagram—if you work at an agency and are looking for somebody killer to bring onto your team, reach out! If you’re wondering what the heck we’re talking about with regards to PICA and TBA and all, that, check out PICA.org—those around Portland may know them for their annual Time-Based Art (TBA) Festival, which will be celebrating its 20th anniversary this year. It is a weird, good time, and brings parts of the artistic globe to Portland you might never see otherwise.—⭐️ HELP SHAPE THIS SHOW’S FUTURE! ⭐️ Please take the Did I Do That? Listener Survey at tiny.cc/thatsurvey!

What’s the worst project you’ve ever made—the one you almost cringe to think about sharing with the world? It’s a feeling every designer can identity. But what if you had a chance to fish it out of the proverbial trash can and pit it toe-to-toe against some of your peers’ worst-ever work live on stage, with the hope of having it named “Worst in Show?”Did I Do That? Scrapes the Bottom of the Barrel did just that this past summer at Seattle Design Festival with special guests Isabella Medina and Maxwell Miller—and now you can hear it to celebrate our fourth anniversary and the end of season seven!Both Isa and Max are former students of mine now based in the greater Seattle area. You can follow Isa on Instagram as @is.medina, or as part of the community event series ¡snack time!, which also hosted an event during this year’s Seattle Design Festival! You can follow Max on Instagram as @stoned_cold_316, or near you at your local LINE ski and snowboard reseller!Bottom of the Barrel was presented live on stage at Seattle Design Festival in Lake Union Park on Saturday, August 16, 2025. Huge thanks to our competitors, Isabella and Max, for their generosity and good humor in being so game to be part of such a bizarre idea—you absolutely rocked it! Additional thanks to Seattle Design Festival for hosting us once again, and special thanks again to Adrian Pacheco and all our incredible SDF volunteers for helping to make this show happen!—An audio note: This recording unfortunately has a few noticeable audio issues; while I’ve done my best to improve things, these issues were also present on stage which is most evident during my opening monologue. Luckily, this improves as the show goes on, but apologies for the more-than-occasional lost syllable here and there.What work are they competing over? You can follow along using the slide deck with all the work our competitors brought here (PDF).Rather watch than listen? Check out the full video of the event, along with images of the work being discussed, on the Seattle Design Festival YouTube channel.