No Context Kyle

2013-Current

A lot of what I do doesn't really justify a case study, and what with Instagram kinda sucking now, and accounting for the reality that every child of mine needs a roof over its head I present to you a wall of work (with no context).

Kyle W. Benson
Kyle Wayne Benson

I’m a brand designer in Oakland, CA. If I'm not baking or reading, you’ll find me at Savers. I run Very Cool Studio, work as a brand designer at GitHub, and run Song Club Records.

In my experience, design is what it does. Designers (me, Kyle) have the tendency to fall in love with the conveyor belt. And as we all fall in love with the clean doingness of AI, it has become more and more important to ask “okay but what does it do.” Design is the opinion-making process for answering that question. I sorta think this is what trust the process means. At the start of every project I’m a little dumb—at the end I’ll be a little smarter. If I’m doing my job right, the work will be a little more than me—kinder, smarter, more true to its purpose—leaving me in my state of stupor for the next project.

And maybe because I see myself as a little dumb, I think of most design problems as interpersonal problems. I still haven’t found a good enough idea, a plan so god-tier that it’s self-convincing. And the subjectivities that get in the way of those smart plans are only a problem because we say so.

If you made it this far, let's talk — that's the interpersonal part.

Category Link
Social Very Cool Studio Instagram Bluesky Substack
Colophon Font is VC Nudge SemiNormal Hosted on GitHub Pages Built on Jekyll with tailwind
Contact hello@verycoolstudio.com