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When the Path You're On Stops Feeling Like Yours — Max Young

Max Young

Max and I came to this conversation from the exact same spot — two senior creatives, a decade-plus in, standing at the same crossroads and asking ourselves the same questions. What kind of work do we actually want to be doing now? What should we be focusing on? And is the path we're on still the right one?

Max Young is a designer and art director who spent years in the sports world, most recently at the Seattle Mariners. He runs Love Machine, a gravel cycling project rooted in Vancouver that's become one of the most distinct voices in the local outdoor scene.

  • Self-doubt at a creative crossroads
  • The leap from designer to creative strategist
  • Coming up through punk, DIY, and zines
  • The pull toward physical objects in a digital world
  • Untangling your identity from your job title

“I just wanted to create some work that was a little bit more out there and weird, that's more reflective of the people who actually like to go outside, rather than this homogenous visual language that everything seems to use.”

“Rather than saying I'm a cyclist, I'm trying to say I'm a person who likes bikes. Disassociating myself from my work, even my hobbies, untangling those two things has been really helpful in my life.”

“It's not telling me to buy anything. You can have these personal guided projects that don't necessarily have a monetary goal attached to them. They're just something that you should be doing.”

“A physical object is a lasting thing. People hang onto those. With digital stuff, you just flip through it. They're so few and far between now that they're almost a special thing.”

“I think people who are friends from the music scene tend to be friends longer, because they share such similar values and experiences. They tend to stick around more.”

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Creative at the intersection of design, technology, and the outdoors.