Sean Schumacher / Did I Do That?
Here’s our interview with Sean Schumacher, the host of Did I Do That? A Podcast About Making Graphic Design & Mistakes
Sean Schumacher is a graphic designer and educator whose research focus is on increasing knowledge about the people who make designs and how their minds work. As a designer, Sean has specialized in creating projects for artists and arts institutions for over a decade, including PICA’s TBA Festival, the de Young Museum, UNLV, and ASICS, among others.
Sean currently serves as an Assistant Professor of Graphic Design at Portland State University. Sean produces the program’s weekly online design lecture series Show & Tell, and serves as co-lead of the school’s experimental in-house design studio A+D Projects.
Follow Sean on Instagram and YouTube, and come meet Sean at PodConf 2023!
How many episodes have you published?
28 as of right now. The show is a month out from its second season finale.
Describe your podcast in 2 or 3 sentences
Did I Do That? is a bi-weekly podcast about graphic designers—the ups and downs they face in creative practice, because making design means making lots (and lots) mistakes.
In each episode, I’m joined by a professional designer to talk about the mistakes they’ve made in getting to be the successful practitioner they are today. It’s very weird, pretty silly, and definitely not serious—but neither are designers.
Why did you start this podcast and what do you love about it?
I started Did I Do That? out of a feeling that media about design often didn’t feel reflective of much of the creative process that goes into design work; as a teacher, I watched my students struggle to iterate on projects because their work wasn’t meeting the expectations of the highly polished work they’d find in their mood boards.
Who is your target audience?
A mix of both designers and general audiences (often on the younger side) who consume comedy podcasts
What’s the number 1 thing listeners love about your podcast?
The tone. I really worked hard to try to find one where laughing at mistakes can feel like something that everyone (including the guests, the listeners, and I) can feel non-judgmental.
Are you monetizing this podcast? If so, how?
I don’t currently monetize, but plan to explore some options to do so later this year.
What advice would you give a new podcaster?
I take a lot of lessons from design into my podcasting. The biggest piece of advice I’d give to a new podcaster is pretty much the same as what I’d say to a design student: don’t wait to make your first pancake (to borrow a line from my former student Walton Brush).
Whatever you start out with will be a messy, weird thing, and anxieties about making it perfect will only make it worse. Accept the rough edges, because there’ll be even more than you realize there are at the beginning…and make stuff with the intent to iterate on it. Making something is the only thing that brings you closer to making what you want.
What’s your favorite podcast you listen to?
That’s tough! Three Bean Salad might be the top show right now, though it changes frequently.
Anything else people should know about you or your podcast?
Nope. Not at the moment.
Where can people follow you?
Instagram or YouTube! You can find the show on Instagram at https://instagram.com/dididothat.design, or on YouTube at https://youtube.com/@dididothat.design.