Design Downtime

It's dangerous to go alone! Take this episode where Andy Bell joins us to talk about his lifelong obsession with the Legend of Zelda. He explores what makes the franchise compelling: its creativity, humour, weird NPCs, and remarkable ability to stay consistent in spirit while reinventing itself across 20 games spanning 40 years. Andy also shares his self-imposed challenge of playing the entire series in timeline order, and the magical experience of introducing his daughter to the franchise and watching her fall in love with the same games that shaped him.

Guest Bio
Andy Bell (he/him) is a designer, front-end developer, design agency founder, and the founder of Piccalilli, based in the UK. He has worked in the design and web industries for over 15 years with some of the largest organisations in the world like Google, The NHS, Harley-Davidson and Oracle. Over the years he has worked on both extremely large projects for huge organisations and tiny projects for small startups. Andy mostly specialises in CSS — whether that is consultancy, writing an expansive course, co-writing a course for Google, co-authoring a book on CSS layout, or creating a methodology to help people write better CSS.

Links
Andy’s website: https://bell.bz/
Andy’s agency: https://set.studio/
The blog post that explains what he’s doing: https://bell.bz/im-playing-the-zelda-games-in-timeline-order/
Zelda timeline tracker: https://tangled.org/bell.bz/zelda-in-timeline-order/blob/main/readme.md

Credits
Cover design by Raquel Breternitz.

In this episode, Lisa Carey joins us to share her decades-long appreciation for Brian Eno. She introduces us to Eno the musician, producer, visual artist, and one of the originators of systems thinking in creative work, and traces a through-line from Roxy Music to Bowie's Berlin Trilogy, and from Oblique Strategies to a generative documentary that shows differently every screening - all united by a philosophy of embracing randomness and the unexpected over rigid planning.

Guest Bio
Lisa Carey (she/her) is a Design System Lead and Product Designer with a unique, 30+ year creative career spanning film, marketing, television, and software design, and her own creative pursuits. Working in the financial sector since 2012, Lisa brings over 20 years of UX/UI experience to her work. Currently, she is focusing on systemic design, front-end development, and AI collaboration within modern design system frameworks. Previously, Lisa spent 15 years in film as a director including the film Rough Road and managing international distribution and licensing for Ken Burns and other filmmakers. Today, she brings that same passion for visual storytelling to digital product design. A practicing painter who also teaches community courses exploring music and art, Lisa anchors her multi-disciplinary work in her true passions: systemic design, creative strategy, and making unexpected connections.

Links
Lisa on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisacareydesign/

Credits
Cover design by Raquel Breternitz.

A picture is worth a thousand words when Erin Casali joins us to share about her illustration practice. She reflects on not being able to visualize images in her mind, which makes her process generative and exploratory; drawing to discover, not to transcribe. Erin describes switching from pencil to ink as a forcing function to break perfectionist habits and train herself to think in whole compositions rather than obsessing over details. Finally, she explores the blurry line between design and art, where what makes something art is the human soul projected into it.

Guest Bio
Erin Casali (she/her) is a VP/Director of both product and design, with over 10 years of experience in each. She has a hybrid approach with design, product, and engineering in her background. Her rare blend of skills, including psychology and change management, enables her to foster collaboration and break down silos. Driven by a passion for improving lives through her work, she empowers teams to reach their full potential. She advocates for purpose, transparency, and diversity, fostering a culture of trust and agency. Her diverse experiences across startups, large corporations, advisory, and board roles have equipped her with a versatile toolkit to adapt to various organizational contexts and drive meaningful change.

Links
Erin’s website: https://intenseminimalism.com/
Inklings of Late on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/inklings.of.late/
Inklings of Late on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/inklingoflate.bsky.social

Credits
Cover design by Raquel Breternitz.

Saddle up and start your stopwatch, when Jenny Dee Brecheisen joins us to talk about her passion for barrel racing. She shares how it completely transformed her life, from city dweller to 10-acre landowner with four horses. Jenny explores the deep bonds formed with her horses through daily care and patience, the 14-17 seconds of pure adrenaline that make all the preparation worthwhile, and the steep learning curve and real physical dangers that come with the sport.

Guest Bio
Jenny Dee Brecheisen (she/her) is a UI Engineer on Cloudflare’s UI Platform team, where she works across frontend UI, systems, and engineering infrastructure. Beginning with a degree in graphic design and early work in print and marketing, she later moved into product design and design systems before transitioning into engineering, bringing a cross-disciplinary perspective to building products in the age of AI. Her work today spans everything from frontend development and accessibility to migrations, debugging, and improving how software gets built and maintained at scale. When she’s not working, she spends her time barrel racing and investing in futurity horse prospects.

Links
Jenny’s website: tinycrowbar.com
Jenny’s race-tracking app: highloper.com
Jenny on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yennie/

Credits
Cover design by Raquel Breternitz.

It's not all mosh pits and crowdsurfing when Luke Murphy joins us to talk about nearly 20 years of band life. They talk about the sharp contrast between recording an album and the rush of performing it, and how the Brutalligators' chemistry works through defined roles, mutual respect, and just enough creative tension to push each other forward. Luke also punctures the myth of touring glamour, but explains that the friendships, the crowd energy, and the moment a new song lands on stage make it entirely worth it.

Guest Bio
Luke Murphy (they/them) is a Principal Design Advocate at zeroheight. Before zeroheight, Luke has worked as an IC and leader in product design and advocacy teams at Memrise, Mr & Mrs Smith and Microsoft. They host the Design Systems WTF podcast, and co-organize the WDC and Converge conferences. When they’re not nerding out about design systems and DesignOps, they are busy raising their 13-year-old son, shouting in a queer punk band, or running a DIY vinyl subscription company. They also don’t sleep.

Links
Luke’s Website: www.lurkmoophy.com
Brutalligators on bandcamp: brutalligators.bandcamp.com
Brutalligators on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/6PQwcg9SjBaPxGhqWeSIs5?si=w0sEdUZiTI27Yfr1stBZyA

Credits
Cover design by Raquel Breternitz.