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CAPTN OffScript

CAPTN OffScript
CAPTN OffScript
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87 episodes

  • CAPTN OffScript

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

    23/06/2026 | 54 mins.
    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 neuroscience
    Why she has Strava on her website, and runs to galleries
    The 2008 video she uploaded by accident that launched her career
    Going back to school after a Times Square billboard and a museum acquisition
    Getting bored of herself, and wanting to feel fresh on stage again
    Where her love of lettering really came from
    Refusing to pick one thing, and making peace with the boring parts
    Still feeling imposter syndrome, and forgetting her own achievements
    The 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/mrseaves101
    LinkedIn: 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.
  • CAPTN OffScript

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

    19/06/2026 | 7 mins.
    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 herself
    Knitting, and why her husband calls it "posters made of yarn"
    Fabric as another canvas for the same design thinking
    Making things by hand as a counter to AI
    How she actually uses AI, and where she won't
    Why graphic designers don't retire
    Maybe 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.
  • CAPTN OffScript

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

    16/06/2026 | 1h
    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 means
    Becoming "singular" and refusing to compare yourself
    Doing things before he knew how, an agency before he'd ever worked in one
    The immigrant who wanted to be called John Smith
    Looking like the happiest person in the world while burning out
    Creativity as a way to hide from himself
    Reaching therapy at forty, and unlearning the stigma he grew up with
    Radical accountability and the anger he didn't know he had
    Why 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.
  • CAPTN OffScript

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

    12/06/2026 | 23 mins.
    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 child
    Leaving home at 16 and living above a pub
    Cutting ties with family after years of trying
    The partners who saw the good part first
    Finding home far from where we started
    Why 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/@cjcawleydesign
    Sticky Notes podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@WeAreStickyNotes
    Instagram: 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.
  • CAPTN OffScript

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

    09/06/2026 | 55 mins.
    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 takes
    Leaving her own studio because she'd become a project manager, not a designer
    Why being "not Western enough" turned into her biggest strength
    Keeping a Polish name on purpose, and her mission to make Polish design visible
    Being 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 Introduction
    04:35 A Polish name, and making Polish design visible
    07:33 Leaving the studio to design again
    10:41 Why her style never stops shifting
    13:38 What recognition actually took
    16:37 Turning mistakes into a style
    19:34 Why style takes years, not hours
    22:27 Breaking into the global design world
    32:27 Visual identity through an art-history lens
    35:14 Finding what makes you different
    39:55 Weirdness as the source of style
    43:31 What nine years of art school did to her
    47:04 Teaching, and how to give good feedback
    50:24 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.
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About 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.
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