Matthew Muñoz

What were you doing before you came to the MGXD program?

I was working for a PR and design agency doing what you would expect from a graphic design or visual communication perspective: working with all kinds of clients; dabbling in advertising; doing a lot of websites,. My main client was Red Hat, the big open source tech company. They were growing, but they were a lot smaller at that point. During that time, my boss, David Bernie, became my client. He became their VP of Brand Communications so basically 80% of my work was for Red Hat. It was a blast. I learned a lot. I really loved the people. They were all about culture, about community building. And design was really important.

I was working a lot of late nights and I started to really think about the big stuff that I was doing and was questioning if this was what I really wanted to do. And I was thinking, what role can design play in improving government? In voting? In shaping public policy? Why don’t we engage in these ways outside a commercial context? What I realized through my initial startup time was that there were aspects of business and commerce that were often used for competitive reasons and I wanted to see how else they could play out.

You started a company right after you graduated. How’d that happen?

Just before I went to grad school, I met with some of the people I worked with at Red Hat about doing what we’re doing there, but for other companies? I was the only one from outside the company. The rest were executives at Red Hat. And at that time, I loved the idea but I felt I needed to go to grad school first and that turned out to be good timing for everybody else, who started at Red Hat and started plotting with Bernie. So we actually officially opened in February, 2009, but we had been planning it since March 2008. So Bernie and I were the first ones out and we started it together and then three other partners joined us over the next two years. And now that’s been about 13 years.

Can you talk about how that grad school experience shaped how you run a business?

My thesis was called “Designing Conditions for Democracy.” I was meeting with politicians. I was meeting with heads of the UNC School of Government.

I was meeting with policymakers. So for example, you can talk about immigration: it’s an economic issue for some people, for others it’s social or ethical. How do policy makers think of these things and how do we visualize it?

The work was about saying there are various dimensions to a topic and we have to make sure that if one person is talking about this, then there is more to the picture. This idea that visuals can help ground a conversation, help be a prototype for thinking, help be a skeleton that we can actually all gather around, much like a journey mapping process, is really important to me.

At our company, I started as Chief Design Officer. Over the years, through partner transitions, I became CEO in 2018. It’s like nested dolls where I need to broaden my scope. But it’s still bringing this idea of mapping; of visualizing and designing conditions for a company to manage different interests, incentives, power struggles, and cultural values.

It’s interesting how you’re still talking about being a CEO through the lens of design. How has your understanding of what design is and can be changed over your career?

I haven’t opened up Adobe Creative Suite in about six years but I still think I’m designing. I think about it as levels of scale. I still feel like the verb is the same: forming with intent. So the question is, what are we forming and with whose intent? That is something that you negotiate and clarify to move beyond assumptions. That’s design.

What are you working on now?

I’m currently at an advertising, marketing, and consulting firm called SEEZ. We just re-branded before the pandemic; we were formerly The Stone Agency in Raleigh for 10+ years. I’m in the creative department and I do a little bit of everything. It could be video editing, concepting for TV spots, radio spots, digital banners, social media assets or front-end web development. I really enjoy the variety that comes with mixing it up and not just hammer and nail every day.

What kind of clients are you working with?

We have four main areas we work in: transportation and mobility; financial services; food services and sustainability; and health and life sciences. We work with small, local banks and big credit unions, information technology firms and local offices. It’s never the same thing so it makes for interesting days.

You graduated from the MGXD program in 2005. Can you just talk a little bit about how you’ve seen your work change since then, whether that’s through technology, culture, or the types of clients?

My first job after I graduated from NC State was as a digital art director for a mobile company called Oasis Mobile. We made mobile game applications. I was doing UI and game graphics for flip phones. There were no smartphones yet. Every time you think you understand one technology, whether it’s front-end design or back-end development, there’s going to be something brand new around the corner. You just have to learn how to adapt because your skillset may have to evolve but you still have basic design principles, basic design education that won’t go away.

Fast forward to today, where we’re still using the Creative Suite, but Canva has become this go-to for many people. It’s not a bad solution; we actually use it on some of the social media templates we handle for clients. That’s an example of a new technology that has design baked into it, but its use still requires a certain set of skills. Not everything is plug and play.

Aside from the skills and tools, what other challenges have you had in your now 15-year career?

In this space — marketing and advertising — the work can get a bit repetitive sometimes when you’re designing banners and social graphics. When I moved to North Carolina, I got involved with a social partner dance called Chicago Style Stepping through some friends. What I’ve been able to do is work within this community and design everything for them. I’ve actually used that as a creative outlet to counterbalance what I do during the day. I create content and digital graphics during the day and fun videos, flyers, and social media assets at night. To me, it’s always been about a balance and that’s how I’ve managed to navigate it.

Does the work that you do for fun ever find its way back into the work you do during the day? How do these influence each other?

Sometimes it does. It’s interesting because a lot of times it may not be for client work. We’ll often do internal projects and I’ll pull in what I’m doing over there and find ways to be creative inside the tight briefs and guidelines.

Alysa Buchanan (MGXD presented preliminary visual studies to 18 soldiers at Ft. Stewart, Georgia. The soldiers in the group varied in age, rank, ethnicity, and experience. She did not disclose that her project meant to address mental health care until after the planned group activities. The proposed designs sparked a conversation about mental health and the opportunities that technology can offer to address their concerns while being deployed.