CAPTN OffScript

CAPTN OffScript

There's a version of the creative career conversation that almost never gets recorded. Not the award acceptance. Not the process breakdown. Not the polished origin story where every setback was secretly a setup. That version exists everywhere. This isn't that. CAPTN OffScript is where designers, founders, illustrators, and makers sit down and talk about what's actually going on — the fear before the pivot, the year where the work dried up, the identity crisis that came with success, the moment they almost stopped, and what kept them moving. The messy, honest, deeply human side of building a creative life. I'm Alen. I run a one-person type foundry called SilverStag Type, and I've been working in and around the design industry long enough to know what gets edited out of most interviews. I started this show because I was tired of highlight reels dressed up as conversations. I wanted to hear what creative people actually think — about money and meaning, about burnout and reinvention, about imposter syndrome and identity and the thousand invisible decisions that quietly add up to a career. So that's what we do here. We go long. We go deep. We don't rush to the takeaway. And because I'm not just a host — I'm a working designer who's navigated a lot of the same terrain — the conversations tend to go places most interviews don't reach. Guests have included Jessica Hische, Elliot Jay Stocks, Sophia Yeshi, Kieron Anthony Lewis, Philipp Louven, and Sergio del Puerto. What they share isn't a follower count or a famous client list. It's that they showed up willing to say something real — something I hadn't heard them say before, in any interview, anywhere. That's the bar. The show runs in two formats. The long-form Conversations are the main event — unscripted, one-on-one, unhurried. The kind of interview where we're still discovering things an hour in. Then there are the Monday Break(Through) episodes: shorter solo pieces from me, working through ideas and observations as a creative founder. Less polished. More honest. No five-step frameworks. No sponsor reads dressed up as advice. No artificial urgency. Just two people taking creativity seriously, and seeing where that leads. CAPTN OffScript started as The Type Convo — a typography-focused show — and evolved into something bigger when I realised the conversations I most needed to hear weren't about fonts. They were about what it actually costs to build something on your own terms, and what it means to keep going when the path stops being clear. If the "official" version of a creative career has never quite matched the one you're actually living — the doubt, the detours, the days when you're not sure what you're building or why — this show was made for you. New episodes drop regularly. Come in anywhere. Stay for the honesty.

  1. S02/E35 - Gemma O'Brien on Getting Bored of Herself & Refusing to Pick One Thing

    1 day ago ·  Video

    S02/E35 - Gemma O'Brien on Getting Bored of Herself & Refusing to Pick One Thing

    Gemma O'Brien is a lettering artist, a fine artist, a muralist, and most recently a student of neuroaesthetics. She's painted a billboard in Times Square, had work acquired by a museum, and she has a public Strava profile on her website, because running is as much a part of her as the lettering is. I'd been trying to get her on the show for a long time, and the hardest part was knowing where to start. So we talked about how someone ends up doing this many things at once, and why she has no intention of narrowing it down. The line that stayed with me: after ticking off every career goal she'd ever dreamed of, she went back to university because she'd grown "almost bored of myself." In this episode: Her intuitive path from law to lettering to neuroscienceWhy she has Strava on her website, and runs to galleriesThe 2008 video she uploaded by accident that launched her careerGoing back to school after a Times Square billboard and a museum acquisitionGetting bored of herself, and wanting to feel fresh on stage againWhere her love of lettering really came fromRefusing to pick one thing, and making peace with the boring partsStill feeling imposter syndrome, and forgetting her own achievementsThe one word she'd keep if she had to destroy everything else Find Gemma here: Website: https://www.gemmaobrien.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mrseaves101LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/studiogemmaobrien/ Find me here: captnoffscript.com@captnoffscript This week's Friday bonus: Gemma and I go deeper into burnout and the flow state, the hidden cost of doing this much, and what it takes to protect your focus. It goes to newsletter subscribers first, a week before it's public. Subscribe at https://captn.myflodesk.com/newsletter. If you enjoyed this episode, leaving a 5-star rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify takes less than a minute and helps more people find the show. I'd be incredibly grateful. If you liked this episode, listen to: Jessica Hische (S02/E21) — another lettering artist on building a creative life on her own terms, and why imposter syndrome never fully goes away.

    55 min
  2. Bonus 002 - Martyna Wędzicka: Posters Made of Yarn & Why Graphic Designers Don't Retire

    5 days ago ·  Bonus Video

    Bonus 002 - Martyna Wędzicka: Posters Made of Yarn & Why Graphic Designers Don't Retire

    This is the second bonus episode of Captn OffScript. When Martyna Wędzicka and I recorded her main episode, we spent most of it on the past and the present. But right at the end, I asked her where she's heading next, and the answer was so warm and so hopeful that I held it back for this. It went to newsletter subscribers first as a private YouTube link. Today it's available here too. It's a short one, and a lovely one. Martyna noticed a pattern in her own career: roughly every four to five years, she rediscovers herself and her style. She thinks she's at the edge of one of those cycles right now, and the next thing turns out to be knitting. Her husband calls what she makes "her posters, made of yarn." She talks about fabric as another canvas, the same design thinking carried out in a different material, and about choosing the handmade on purpose as a counterweight to AI. And then the line I can't stop thinking about: graphic designers don't retire. In this conversation we talked about: The four-to-five-year pattern of reinventing herselfKnitting, and why her husband calls it "posters made of yarn"Fabric as another canvas for the same design thinkingMaking things by hand as a counter to AIHow she actually uses AI, and where she won'tWhy graphic designers don't retireMaybe becoming a fashion designer in ten years The main episode this bonus extends: S02/E33 — Martyna Wędzicka on Being Weird, Polish Design & Why You Can't Rush Your Style https://captnoffscript.com/s02-e33-martyna-wedzicka-being-weird-style Find Martyna here: Website: https://www.wedzicka.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wedzicka_com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/martyna-w%C4%99dzicka-obuchowicz-69343252/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wedzicka Find me here: captnoffscript.com@captnoffscript This was the second Captn OffScript bonus episode. Newsletter subscribers get future bonuses on YouTube a week before they reach the podcast feeds. Subscribe at https://captn.myflodesk.com/newsletter.

    7 min
  3. S02/E34 - Radim Malinic on Creativity as Escape & Becoming More of Who You Already Are

    16 Jun ·  Video

    S02/E34 - Radim Malinic on Creativity as Escape & Becoming More of Who You Already Are

    Radim Malinic has been a role model of mine for years. He's a designer, a writer, a speaker, he runs the agency Brand Nu, he hosts his own podcast, and he's built a whole philosophy around the idea of daring creativity. I expected this conversation to be about all of that output. Instead it became one of the most honest talks I've had on the show, about the cost of the work and the years he spent hiding inside it. He told me he once thought he was the happiest person in the world while crying into his birthday cake from overwork. We talked about creativity as escape, growing up in Czechoslovakia and wanting to blend in as an immigrant, reaching therapy at forty, and the philosophy he built out of all of it: become more of who you already are, because everyone else is taken. In this episode: What daring creativity actually meansBecoming "singular" and refusing to compare yourselfDoing things before he knew how, an agency before he'd ever worked in oneThe immigrant who wanted to be called John SmithLooking like the happiest person in the world while burning outCreativity as a way to hide from himselfReaching therapy at forty, and unlearning the stigma he grew up withRadical accountability and the anger he didn't know he hadWhy he'd happily delete all his work and start the next mountain Find Radim here: Website: https://radimmalinic.co.uk/Podcast: https://radimmalinic.co.uk/podcast/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/radim.malinic/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandnu/ Find me here: captnoffscript.com@captnoffscript This week's Friday bonus: Radim and I go deep on fear, why you can't unlearn it, and why your brain treats sharing your work with strangers like a sabre-tooth tiger in the bushes. It goes to newsletter subscribers first, a week before it's public. Subscribe at https://captn.myflodesk.com/newsletter. If you enjoyed this episode, leaving a 5-star rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify takes less than a minute and helps more people find the show. I'd be incredibly grateful.

    1hr 1min
  4. Bonus 001 - CJ Cawley & Alen: The Scripts We Were Given & the People Who Helped Us Change Them

    12 Jun ·  Bonus Video

    Bonus 001 - CJ Cawley & Alen: The Scripts We Were Given & the People Who Helped Us Change Them

    his is the first-ever bonus episode of Captn OffScript. CJ Cawley and I recorded the main S02/E32 conversation for over an hour and twenty minutes, and somewhere around the hour mark it took a turn that didn't belong in the main episode and didn't deserve to be cut either. So we held it back. It went to newsletter subscribers first as a private YouTube link. Today it's available here too. This is the more personal part of our conversation. CJ talks openly about growing up on a council estate in London, leaving home at 16, and cutting ties with his family two to three years ago. I share my own parallel story for the first time in public — Bosnia, a relationship with my mum that I'm grateful for, and most of the rest of the family almost non-existent. It's a conversation about the scripts we were given as kids, the partners who helped us rewrite them, and finding home far from where we started. If this is one you needed to hear, I hope it does for you what it did for us when we were having it. In this conversation we talked about: The script you're given by your parents as a childLeaving home at 16 and living above a pubCutting ties with family after years of tryingThe partners who saw the good part firstFinding home far from where we startedWhy we wouldn't change it, even if we could The main episode this bonus extends: S02/E32 — CJ Cawley: Getting Cloned, Getting Married & Showing Up Anyway https://captnoffscript.com/s02-e32-cj-cawley-showing-up-anyway Find CJ here: Website: https://www.cjcawley.com/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@cjcawleydesignSticky Notes podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@WeAreStickyNotesInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/cj.cawley.design/ Find me here: captnoffscript.com@captnoffscript This was the first-ever Captn OffScript bonus episode. Newsletter subscribers get future bonuses on YouTube a week before they reach the podcast feeds. Subscribe at https://captn.myflodesk.com/newsletter.

    23 min
  5. S02/E33 - Martyna Wędzicka on Being Weird, Polish Design & Why You Can't Rush Your Style

    9 Jun ·  Video

    S02/E33 - Martyna Wędzicka on Being Weird, Polish Design & Why You Can't Rush Your Style

    Martyna Wędzicka is a Polish graphic designer from Gdańsk with one of the most distinctive styles working today. She's a member of Alliance Graphique Internationale, a two-time winner of the Polish Graphic Design Awards, and she built her entire body of work on something most designers are taught to avoid: mistakes. "I really wanted to destroy something," she told me. "That was my main goal." We talked about what that actually means, why finding your style takes ten years and not ten hours, and what it's like to be a designer from a part of Europe the rest of the world keeps overlooking. In this conversation we got into: Why she builds her style out of chance, error, and "organising mistakes"The truth she tells students about how long style really takesLeaving her own studio because she'd become a project manager, not a designerWhy being "not Western enough" turned into her biggest strengthKeeping a Polish name on purpose, and her mission to make Polish design visibleBeing the weird kid in a Polish village, and why that's where style is born 🎙️ This week's Friday bonus: Martyna shares where she's heading next — the reinvention pattern she's spotted in her career, why she's knitting now, what she's making with her hands in an AI-driven world, and why graphic designers don't retire. Newsletter subscribers get it first, as a private link. Subscribe at https://captn.myflodesk.com/newsletter. Timestamps: 00:00 Introduction04:35 A Polish name, and making Polish design visible07:33 Leaving the studio to design again10:41 Why her style never stops shifting13:38 What recognition actually took16:37 Turning mistakes into a style19:34 Why style takes years, not hours22:27 Breaking into the global design world32:27 Visual identity through an art-history lens35:14 Finding what makes you different39:55 Weirdness as the source of style43:31 What nine years of art school did to her47:04 Teaching, and how to give good feedback50:24 Why she'd rather open minds than teach software Find Martyna here: Website: https://www.wedzicka.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wedzicka_com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/martyna-w%C4%99dzicka-obuchowicz-69343252/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wedzicka Find me here: captnoffscript.com@captnoffscript If you enjoyed this episode, leaving a 5-star rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify takes less than a minute and helps more people find the show. I'd be incredibly grateful. 🙏 If you liked this episode, listen to: Marta Cerdà Alimbau (S02/E26) — another European designer with an unmistakable, art-led personal style and a deep relationship with craft. For the conversations behind the episodes, including the occasional Friday bonus, subscribe at https://captn.myflodesk.com/newsletter.

    56 min
  6. S02/E32 - CJ Cawley: Getting Cloned, Getting Married & Showing Up Anyway

    2 Jun ·  Video

    S02/E32 - CJ Cawley: Getting Cloned, Getting Married & Showing Up Anyway

    CJ Cawley is having the strangest year of his career. Someone built a pixel-for-pixel clone of his website and replaced his face with theirs. A parody video of him triggered a wave of hate inside the design community. He's getting married this weekend. And through all of it, he keeps showing up on camera. This is one of the episodes I've been most looking forward to publishing all season. We recorded for over an hour and twenty minutes, and the conversation went so deep that the most personal part is going out as a separate bonus episode. The main one is here. The bonus drops Friday as the first-ever exclusive bonus episode of Captn OffScript, available only to newsletter subscribers for the first 7 days. Subscribe at https://captn.myflodesk.com/newsletter. In this episode we talked about: The website clone called Delwox and his perfect retaliationThe parody video and the pile-on inside the design communityGetting married this weekend with a surf simulator and an aerial hoopPsoriasis, the camera, and why no one cares what you look likeSticky Notes and four years of private calls with Jack before pressing recordThe McDonald's theory of AIKnob head tax and interviewing clients before saying yesThe loneliness of going freelance, and the friend who pulled him through itWhat he's most grateful for in the year before his wedding 🎙️ The bonus episode on Friday: CJ and I share the most personal part of our conversation, about childhood, family, and rewriting the script you were given as a kid. Newsletter subscribers only for the first 7 days. Subscribe at https://captn.myflodesk.com/newsletter. Timestamps: [Awaiting confirmation] Find CJ here: Website: https://www.cjcawley.com/Studio (Seeside Studio): https://www.seesidestudio.com/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@cjcawleydesignSticky Notes podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@WeAreStickyNotesInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/cj.cawley.design/ Find me here: https://captnoffscript.com/https://www.instagram.com/captnoffscript If you liked this episode, listen to... Andy J. Pizza (S02/E30) — another deeply personal conversation about showing up on camera, working with what you've got, and cultivating yourself instead of trying to fix yourself. If you enjoyed this episode, leaving a 5-star rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify takes less than a minute and helps more people find the show. I'd be incredibly grateful. 🙏

    1hr 3min
  7. S02/E31 - Kristof Devos on Designing Watches That Tell You to Slow Down & the Art of Doing Nothing

    27 May ·  Video

    S02/E31 - Kristof Devos on Designing Watches That Tell You to Slow Down & the Art of Doing Nothing

    Kristof Devos answered the call from his studio in a small town in rural Belgium, with a cat wandering in and out and his daughter's eighth birthday party happening that same afternoon. It felt like the right way to start a conversation about slowing down. Kristof Devos is an illustrator, a children's book author, a watch designer for the cult London brand Mr Jones Watches, and an art teacher in Bruges. For tax purposes he has two jobs. For himself, it's all one job. This one stays gentle the whole way through and still lands somewhere deep. We talked about a watch that tells you to slow down, a car crash that reshaped his entire idea of a life worth living, and why he'd rather write a long newsletter that takes fifteen minutes to read than chase likes on a platform he's come to distrust. In this episode we talked about: "A Perfectly Useless Afternoon" and the watch about doing nothingHow a ten-minute window of confidence led to Mr Jones WatchesLeaving art direction for a slower life in rural BelgiumThe car crash that changed everything, and the book that came from itWhy he takes two years on twelve spreadsHis new book, Big Brother and Little SisterQuitting Instagram and building through newslettersWhy AI might be a gift to human-made artWhat he hopes survives him in a hundred years Find Kristof here: Website: https://kristofdevos.com/Newsletter (Brief uit het Atelier): https://kristofdevos.com/brief-uit-het-atelier/Podcast (Podlood, in Dutch): https://kristofdevos.com/podlood/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kristoftekent/ Find me here: https://captnoffscript.com/https://www.instagram.com/captnoffscript/ If you liked this episode, listen to... Luis Mendo (S02/E29) — Luis appeared on Kristof's podcast, and they share the same instinct: leaving social media behind, building through direct connection, and choosing a slower, more deliberate creative life. If you enjoyed this episode, leaving a 5-star rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify takes less than a minute and helps more people find the show. I'd be incredibly grateful. 🙏

    1 hr
  8. S02/E30 - Andy J. Pizza on ADHD, Self-Worth & Cultivating Yourself Instead of Fixing Yourself

    21 May ·  Video

    S02/E30 - Andy J. Pizza on ADHD, Self-Worth & Cultivating Yourself Instead of Fixing Yourself

    Episode 30 of Season 2. The 80th episode I've recorded since starting this show. And honestly, I couldn't have picked a better guest to mark a milestone like that. Andy J. Pizza is the host of Creative Pep Talk, an illustrator, a children's book author, and one of the people who has quietly shaped how thousands of designers think about their own creativity. He's also the guy who chose to call himself "Pizza" because his real name made for an ugly URL. We started this conversation talking about goat cheese pizza in the UK. We ended it somewhere very different — talking about the cave you fear to enter inside yourself, about why his ADHD diagnosis at 25 first devastated him before it freed him, and about a line from his second podcast Right Side Out that I haven't been able to stop thinking about since. At the end of the recording, Andy told me this was the most personal interview he had ever done. In this episode we talked about: Choosing his own name and disobeying YodaADHD as a lens, not a deficitCultivating yourself instead of overcoming yourselfRight Side Out and the line that stops youThe cave you fear to enter, Joseph Campbell, and self-acceptanceTaste as the palette of your soulWhy AI is ending the era of perfect — and why that's a giftWorking with his wife Sophie, the Beatles, and why fighting makes the work betterHis dad's lesson: hard and bad are not the same thingThe most personal closing of the season Timestamps: 00:00 Introduction & Three Illustrators in a Row03:12 How Andy J. Miller Became Andy J. Pizza05:53 Pizza Toppings, Goat Cheese & the Best Fries in the World08:36 ADHD, Mental Health & Creative Work09:44 Moving Around as a Kid & the Identity Crisis It Caused15:30 The Seventh Grade Friend Who Loved Boy Bands22:00 On Popularity, Connection & Being Less Cool27:45 Taste as the Palette of Your Soul32:29 Why Follower Count Doesn't Equal Success33:33 Why Instagram Doesn't Taste Good Anymore36:36 How Taste Changes Over Time39:25 Collaborating with His Wife Sophie & the Beatles47:20 Perfectionism, ADHD & the Case for Doing Things Imperfectly58:51 AI, Human Creativity & Why Perfect Is Dead01:01:49 Cultivating Yourself Instead of Fixing Yourself Find Andy here: Website: https://www.andyjpizza.com/Creative Pep Talk: https://www.creativepeptalk.com/Right Side Out: https://www.andyjpizza.com/rsoInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/andyjpizza/Substack: https://andyjpizza.substack.com/ Find me here: captnoffscript.com@captnoffscript If you liked this episode, listen to... Sophia Yeshi (S02/E22) — another deeply honest conversation about self-acceptance, rejection therapy, and unlearning the fear of not being good enough. If you enjoyed this episode, leaving a 5-star rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify takes less than a minute and helps more people find the show. I'd be incredibly grateful. 🙏

    1hr 11min

About

There's a version of the creative career conversation that almost never gets recorded. Not the award acceptance. Not the process breakdown. Not the polished origin story where every setback was secretly a setup. That version exists everywhere. This isn't that. CAPTN OffScript is where designers, founders, illustrators, and makers sit down and talk about what's actually going on — the fear before the pivot, the year where the work dried up, the identity crisis that came with success, the moment they almost stopped, and what kept them moving. The messy, honest, deeply human side of building a creative life. I'm Alen. I run a one-person type foundry called SilverStag Type, and I've been working in and around the design industry long enough to know what gets edited out of most interviews. I started this show because I was tired of highlight reels dressed up as conversations. I wanted to hear what creative people actually think — about money and meaning, about burnout and reinvention, about imposter syndrome and identity and the thousand invisible decisions that quietly add up to a career. So that's what we do here. We go long. We go deep. We don't rush to the takeaway. And because I'm not just a host — I'm a working designer who's navigated a lot of the same terrain — the conversations tend to go places most interviews don't reach. Guests have included Jessica Hische, Elliot Jay Stocks, Sophia Yeshi, Kieron Anthony Lewis, Philipp Louven, and Sergio del Puerto. What they share isn't a follower count or a famous client list. It's that they showed up willing to say something real — something I hadn't heard them say before, in any interview, anywhere. That's the bar. The show runs in two formats. The long-form Conversations are the main event — unscripted, one-on-one, unhurried. The kind of interview where we're still discovering things an hour in. Then there are the Monday Break(Through) episodes: shorter solo pieces from me, working through ideas and observations as a creative founder. Less polished. More honest. No five-step frameworks. No sponsor reads dressed up as advice. No artificial urgency. Just two people taking creativity seriously, and seeing where that leads. CAPTN OffScript started as The Type Convo — a typography-focused show — and evolved into something bigger when I realised the conversations I most needed to hear weren't about fonts. They were about what it actually costs to build something on your own terms, and what it means to keep going when the path stops being clear. If the "official" version of a creative career has never quite matched the one you're actually living — the doubt, the detours, the days when you're not sure what you're building or why — this show was made for you. New episodes drop regularly. Come in anywhere. Stay for the honesty.

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