Kevin Twohy
@kevintwohy
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Founder and principal, Twohy Design Works: zero-to-one product design, brand and strategy for ambitious toys and serious business. Ready? Let’s begin.
California
Joined February 2008
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Today marks 10 years since I started doing independent design work.
Last year I made a decision: I’m not going back. I needed a new, sturdier home for my design practice, for the next decade and beyond.
I’d like to introduce you to it now: please meet Twohy Design Works.
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very cool how we all got our moms addicted to Facebook and now we’re just going to leave them there
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Started flipping this over the weekend and now I can’t put it down. Bring industrial design back.
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Two Ex-Googlers Want To Replace Your Local Ice Cream Parlor With A Shrieking Void That Uses Your Fears As Training Data
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A project I've been working on for over a year launched today. Mirror is a nearly-invisible interactive home gym. I designed the interface for the Mirror display and the companion app.
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Repurposed the numpad on my keyboard and now I’m drunk with power.
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product design: I estimate this will take between 2 and 2.25 hours to complete.
brand design: it's either the first thing I draw or we're doing this for six months
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When consulting on a logo project, these are the books I go to right away — both to get the spark of an idea, but also to check “…someone must have done this…” (links below)
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Favorite easter egg of this app is that it contains the INCREDIBLE passport stamps for each National Park Visitor Center. 😍
New digital work for the National Park Service. My longest-running project and one of the ones I'm most proud of.
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New studio is up, running, and open for business. Inquire within…
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I've been working on Mirror for the past three years, almost to the day. It's probably the most challenging and rewarding thing I've designed for.
A few highlights:
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Launch day.
@mill
is a kitchen bin that keeps food out of landfills, sends it back to farms, makes your kitchen smell awesome (and more).
I worked on designing the digital interface and hardware interaction model.
More:
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Having a detached home office that I genuinely enjoy spending time in has been one of the biggest quality of life improvements I've ever made, by far.
Happy Monday, everyone.
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First whiteboard and wireframes for what would eventually become the National Park Service app, supporting all 429 National Parks.
These are both from 2016. Be patient.
New digital work for the National Park Service. My longest-running project and one of the ones I'm most proud of.
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I’m usually the first Kevin on a project so it’s easy to establish dominance when a New Kevin joins, but this new project has an Existing Kevin and it’s exhausting to have to undermine and consolidate power to destroy him
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Google interview design task (2010). It was a wild time…
Reposting after accidentally deleting:
This is my Google interview from 2017. I created an entire ecosystem, hardware and software. Seen here is the hardware, cyclical implementation of the experience, and some icons I made that I surprisingly still love.
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I feel like more designers should know about this app - I use it sometimes to make quick color palettes.
It’s called Adobe Capture:
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I had never heard of a young Jewish designer named Peretz Rosenbaum until today, and that’s because early in his career he decided to create a more “Madison Avenue-friendly” identity for himself.
“Four letters here, four letters there, would create a nice symbol.”
Paul Rand
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@dmcgco
I think a lot of us never got over the initial state of Apple Maps when it launched (which was Bad), even though it's now Good
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We're in this awkward transitional phase where half the important things are Files and half the important things are URLs and there's no coherent/good way to organize them together.
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New digital work for the National Park Service. My longest-running project and one of the ones I'm most proud of.
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For the past year, I’ve been hard at work on a very ambitious project: designing the digital/customer experience for a brand new restaurant model.
Web, iOS, Android, animation, prototyping, interface w/ culinary/ops, marketing, hardware interaction, and more.
Meet Kernel.
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My muscle memory is so deeply tied to this mouse I had to order refills for when they inevitably discontinue it.
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Design is not just how it looks: it's about quietly fixing an egregious mistake in Figma and then gaslighting developers that it was correct all along.
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Don’t worry NYC, I will see you often (next week!), but…we bought a house in Berkeley! Look forward to reconnecting with old friends/enemies in the Bay Area. 😎
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When I finally launch a project and proceed to post about it repeatedly to the point of cringe, it's because I'm genuinely excited for you all to see it. But also for this reason.
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I’m only learning one more design tool before I retire so you nerds better make it good
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📢 NYC friends:
For the past year, I've been working very hard on the design of a brand new, radically different restaurant experience. More to share soon, but for now:
If you'll be near Flatiron this/next week, DM me for a link to stop by for a free meal ahead of the opening.
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This display technology will enable a whole new class of devices that are suitable for creativity, work, and leisure – but delivered with much more human ergonomics and less ability for software to mistreat its users.
Launching on Thursday. 💫
Eink go brrrrr ⚡️
6 years to get to 60fps
👀 Coming Thursday
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very interesting how as a child you use a glue stick like every day of your life and then one day you just stop forever, not knowing it was your last time gluing things with a stick?
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Check out these old brand riffs for Twohy Design Works by
@mikesmith187
– they all make me smile.
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Who's looking to hire freelancers? For years I've been slowly building a large database of great freelance folks:
-UI/UX
-brand
-illustration
-motion/animation
-art direction
-copywriting
-3D
-...etc
Reply here with details of what you're looking for, and I'll DM you a list!
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When I worked with larger startups + corporate clients, a common refrain was:
"I can't believe how fast we got it done – there's no way we could've done this internally."
It's because you hired talented designers and then forced them to be Meeting Attendees and Slack Operators.
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I never went to design school. Don't have a formal design training. So this is a big one for me.
Excited to share that I'll be teaching a masterclass in Graphic and Digital Design with LABASAD in Barcelona this spring.
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For years, I've been meticulously building a huge database of the best creative freelancers and small studios.
It's the type of roster that agencies charge exorbitant fees to access (my clients get it for free). Every day I use it to make referrals.
🔗below to submit yourself.
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Can you see my screen.
I never went to design school. Don't have a formal design training. So this is a big one for me.
Excited to share that I'll be teaching a masterclass in Graphic and Digital Design with LABASAD in Barcelona this spring.
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This Figma plugin will import an HTML page as live layers/objects. It's a "best effort" first pass, but can save a ton of time for quick prototypes, etc.
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Big day for the National Park Service as Apple announces offline mapping support, and made the iOS app App of the Day (again). I've been working on the design for this app on/off for the past six years. More to come!
Adventures lie ahead in our national parks and Apple Maps will help even more people navigate them with offline maps available this fall on iOS 17.
#NPSBirthday
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New brand and product work. More to come soon on this one... 👀
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Designers! I'm helping the folks at
@getthemirror
build out the design team and we're looking for great product designers (all levels). Unique opportunity to create great fitness experiences at the intersection of hardware and software. Interested? DM me for a low-pressure chat.
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David Foster Wallace on Zoom fatigue — or what he calls “videophonic stress.”
Infinite Jest, 1996
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This book was recently recommended to me by a longtime Apple design veteran and it’s stuck with me more than anything else I’ve read recently. Who’s read it?
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Might not get another chance in my lifetime to be completely alone inside the Met.
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Please meet Roman James Twohy: born 12/8/21, 8lbs, 21" - perfect in every way.
Nicole and I are deliriously happy, over the moon. We struggled for years to conceive and we are so thankful to end this year with the gift of new life.
Happy holidays and see you all next year. ❤️
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Toward the end of last year, as Milk Bar was about to turn 10 years old -- I worked with them to rework their digital experience from scratch.
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This was such a quaint and sweet time in our collective past. "Oh let me see, what shall I access today? How about I browse some Photos for a minute in the Photos area before checking in on my One (1) Request."
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For those asking: I used to create the key mappings and used this template as a starting point for the icons/layout:
template via
@WendelFelius
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Just walked past a person trying to edit their Squarespace site and I stopped to help them; I am now a digital Boy Scout
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Having a kid is the most amazing gift of learning how to see again. My 2 y.o. started pointing at this crumpled tissue and excitedly yelling “A BIRD DECORATION!!”
Take a look from toddler-level.
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Here's a simple app that saves me a ton of time. You take a bunch of screenshots of a view that's taller than the viewport, and it stitches them together perfectly. You don't even need to select the photos - It Just Works.
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One reason it is so powerful for brand and product design to be fully integrated is that the brand contains the emotional center, but the product experience is what people interact with every day – it is the most powerful way to reach all the way to the human on the other end.
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Clemente: new cocktail lounge from Daniel Humm above Eleven Madison Park. I need to know which one of you maniacs did this logomark.
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Two weeks from today, I'm ramping down all client projects fully for the first time in five years.
Soon after, we're expecting a baby boy.
I'll be back at it in a few months, but feels like the marking of a chapter. Looking back, looking forward.
See you in the spring.
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Here's some info on prototyping physical interfaces for hardware/software products, including how, why, and the reasons it's not done as often as you might hope...
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Very fortunate to be booked up and unlikely to be able to take on anything new until second half of next year – which means I'm going to be making a *lot* of referrals coming up.
Looking to expand my list of talented "generalist" designers. See below. Who should be on my list?
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Here's something (controversial?) that seems obvious to me now, but took me a while to realize:
The vast majority of early-stage, pre-product/market-fit startups do not need 40h/week of product design output, and often benefit from having less.
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For the past year, I’ve been working with Dr. Becky and the fantastic team at
@GoodInside
on something new. It’s a completely novel approach to supporting the most difficult job that no one teaches you how to do: parenting.
Meet your 24/7 parenting coach: Good Inside
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Portfolio site of Vasilis Marmatakis (title/type/poster design for The Favorite, The Lobster, etc etc), is just Google Image searches for his work and it's....extremely good.
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PSA: if you work in a small/enclosed space for many hours per day...get one of these monitors that measures CO2. Initial levels were well over 1,500ppm, dropped down below 500 within a few minutes of opening windows.
Apologies to all who have experienced my cognitive decline (no
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Tip of the day: Figma Mirror works in your web browser. Go to and then click on an artboard to load it in your browser window. Super handy for demoing web designs in a way that feels more "real" than the Figma prototype viewer.
(
@sfranklin_co
taught me)
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"How do I get clients?"
The true, long term answer to this question is to turn every single project you take on into a source of future inbound leads/referrals. In order to do this you have three jobs:
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Four years ago I worked on the design for an app for the National Park Service. They recently extended that design framework to support all 420+ national parks, and today Apple made it App of the Day.
Hoping to have more updates to come on this one.
I designed this app for the National Park Service a few months back and just realized it got released.
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I've been building this database of design resources for over 10 years (😬). Should I release it?
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Looking for a freelance product design lead to fill in for me on a client project while I go on paternity leave (!) for 4 months starting in Dec.
- experienced, versatile product designer (UX+UI)
- mostly native mobile, bit of web
- great team, love working with them
DM me!
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If you meet someone in a work setting and they’re suspiciously tan, give them a quick google. Good chance their great grandfather owned the railroad
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I wanted to share something personal. Five years ago today, on February 19, 2016, my brother died.
I want to share a few things here, with you all, because this is one of the main places I spend time online and I don't want him to be invisible here.
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Instagram:
-launch app, post appears for .3s and is immediately replaced with a post from 4d ago. you’ll never find the original post.
-do the circley-horizontal instagram
-do the squareish-vertical instagram
-oh, friend from elementary school sells exercise milkshakes now
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The thing they don’t want you to know about logo design is that you just write the word in a shitload of fonts until something cool happens and then you’re in business 💫
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I had three people email me last week asking "how do you structure your work with clients?" – and I realized, I should probably make the answer to that question more obvious/public. Bullet points below.
What questions do you have?
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I remember watching the artists paint this by hand in the freezing cold, directly from a blown up Illustrator file. Walking past it never got old.
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As someone who found my way into design through software and technology, it took me a while to come to terms with the fact that just designing a great product isn’t enough. Not even close.
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Please meet the new
@WithOtter
.
I've been working with the Otter team for the past 8mo on a new version of the product, new market, and updated brand.
More below, but I don't want to bury the lede: we are HIRING a Senior Product Designer to come on board and continue the work.
Hi world, please re-meet ! We help parents find reliable kidcare in their community, on demand! The new Otter may be coming out of stealth today, but this change has been months in the making. Curious about the process? Read on! 🧵 🦦
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Officially OOO on paternity leave (for the first time fully “covered” by Twohy Design Works 🙃). Prepare for baby tweets and the occasional incoherent rant.
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So many amazing freelancers out there that should be getting more visibility for their work.
Next week, I’m going to start featuring individual freelancers who I think are underexposed.
What type of folks do you want to see? Brand, motion, typography, packaging, 3D, etc…
Who's looking to hire freelancers? For years I've been slowly building a large database of great freelance folks:
-UI/UX
-brand
-illustration
-motion/animation
-art direction
-copywriting
-3D
-...etc
Reply here with details of what you're looking for, and I'll DM you a list!
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When thinking about what projects/clients to take on, here are a few of the things I'm looking for.
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Here’s a good UX challenge for you all (from a real project):
You’re working with an art museum to build a database of their collection. Design the UI to input the dimensions of a new work.
I’ll be impressed if anyone nails it on the first try (no cheats). Deeper than it seems.
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I'm going to be hosting a small group over at my home studio in Berkeley one night next month. It's not a "book club" but we'll be discussing a book. What creative people (in any field) do you know in the area that might be interested to attend?
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not a single one of these notifications involves me directly in any way
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@dialmformichele
You didn’t ask for advice but this is part of why I decided to become an S-Corp and start paying myself a regular salary. Even if you have very steady income for years, “life institutions” don’t really care unless it’s W2 (silly).
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No way around this sounding like a brag but it's something I'm really proud of: Twohy Design Works will donate more in charitable contributions in 2023 than I made in my first year of freelancing.
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I've been working on a big project for 3+ years that will never be public. Niche tools for a tiny, idiosyncratic group: there will only be a few dozen users, ever.
It’s an odd feeling, but refreshing: no surveys, no analytics, no synthesis. Just talk with people then fix things.
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I reworked my site a bit over the holiday: I wanted to add a bit more color/excitement, focus more on plain-english descriptions and less on tons-of-mockups, and be a bit more explanatory/descriptive about the type of work I do.
👀🔗
✌️
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In three days, the studio shuts down for about a month. Christmas lights stay on though. ✌️
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When you mistreat someone who works for you, you put them in "coin operated" mode. They will do what they're told, but they're no longer driving. Impossible to reverse.
Inverse is true, too: if you treat your people well and they feel looked after, they will go to bat for you.
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If you meet someone in a work setting and they’re suspiciously tan, give them a quick google. Good chance their great grandfather owned the railroad
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🚨👀
Hello, Twitter. I’m hiring a Junior Designer part-time (in NYC) to work with me on some fun client projects. See below for details. If you know someone amazing, please send them my way.
A RT never hurt! 🙌
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I know this is corny as hell to post but today on the eve of a big and challenging launch, client left me this voice memo. And this is how you create team members who will walk through walls for you
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Something I see a lot in orgs with a Charismatic Leader: "babying the boss" e.g. "Boss doesn't understand X, HATES seeing Y, so we must present to her in exactly Z way!"
Typically, Boss finds this utterly ridiculous and just wants to be treated like an adult and told the truth.
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For the past year or so I've been working on something brand new and very personal. I can't wait to share it with you all next week. Obligatory teaser:
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