One of the most challenging aspects of working with folks all over the world, as we do at Automattic, is finding a time for everyone to meet together, “face-to-face.” After throwing out a couple days and a bit of timezone wrangling, the Photo.blog team managed to hop on a Zoom together and get to know each other!

Our team consists of:

• Abby, a Senior at Painstville High School in Kentucky
• Min, a Graphic Designer in Bangkok
• Mel, a Product Designer at Automattic in Boston

Abby took the lead of the interview, asking Min about her background in design and photography. Abby hasn’t done a lot of graphic design yet, but she loves photography. She wanted to know how photography impacts graphic design. Photography is one of Min’s passions as well, and the reason she chose photo.blog.

Abby then asked about what Min does and doesn’t like about working from home, which sparked an interesting conversation about traffic, and how living in a high-traffic city means that you save so much time working from home. I personally value how working remotely means I don’t need to have an awful commute every day 🙂

Abby followed up with a question about equipment, wondering if Min’s tools and cameras were funded by anyone, or if she had to purchase them herself. We chatted about Min’s love of analog photography, and how knowing how her cameras work makes her a better photographer. This is a great point about how mastering our tools helps us become better at our craft.

After that, Abby moved on to some more informal questions. It was fun to get to know each other a bit more and have some fun.

We also bonded over our cats 🙂 Min has three cats, Abby has two indoor cats (and a troupe of strays her family takes care of), and I also have two cats, both of which kept interrupting our call!

After that, we learned a bit about Abby’s plans for the future. Min encouraged Abby to stick with the problems she’s eager to fix and won’t get bored thinking about all the time.

Doing a group interview was a great way for us to get to know each other a little bit, and help Abby learn a little bit more about what it means to be a graphic designer. Honestly, it was pretty amazing getting to watch Abby interview a master designer like Min. Being able to connect and work with them on this project has been an enormous privilege. I hope we’ve inspired a future generation of designers!

Stay tuned for more information about Min and Abby on this blog ✌️