Sophia Chang on Hoarding Skills and Staying Busy

03/30/20 • 74 min

Overshare: Honest Conversations with Creatives

Sophia Chang hails from the borough of Queens, New York and in less than a decade managed to champion a name for herself in the art, design, and streetwear community worldwide. With her BFA from Parsons School of Design coupled with a natural acumen for business, she has collaborated with A-list names across multiple fields such as Samsung, Nike, Refinery29, Adidas, Apple, Footlocker, HBO, and the NBA.

During this conversation with host Justin Gignac, Sophia describes herself as a skill hoarder. As she explains, “Teach a man how to fish and they’ll eat for the rest of their lives.” It's an approach that has prepared Sophia for evolving in an ever-shifting creative industry, and she is already considering how to draw from that well in the current climate. There’s something really refreshing about how forthright Sophia is in her creative mindset. Not only does that help her frame her own practice; that decisiveness translates easily for potential business partners and clients.

In this episode, you will learn to assess and repurpose your skills in new ways for people who may need them. And you’ll learn ways to be proactive when work starts getting slow.

Follow @OvershareTalks on Instagram.

SHOW NOTES:

Sophia Chang (Instagram / website)
Sophia’s Skillshare classes
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (There's free versions you can find online)
The 5 Love Languages
Gallup StrengthsFinder
UNDO-Ordinary
UNDO Lab
Common Ace
Jim Kwik (website / podcast)

In this episode, you will learn to assess and repurpose your skills in new ways for people who may need them. And you’ll learn ways to be proactive when work starts getting slow.

Follow @OvershareTalks on Instagram.

SHOW NOTES:

Previous Episode

Archie Lee Coates IV Can't Believe He Did That

Archie Lee Coates IV is a founder and partner at PLAYLAB, INC., an extremely multi-disciplinary creative practice. With no particular focus, Archie and company simply explore things that interest them by initiating and working with others on ideas. Like + POOL, an initiative to build a water-filtering floating pool in New York’s East River.

During this conversation, recorded live at On Air Fest, Archie discusses the roles that exploration and adventure play in aptly named PLAYLAB, INC's creative approach. "We don't have any goals as an office that are that specific. There's no financial goal. There's no size goal. There's a happiness and quality of life goal."

Archie also talks creative belief systems, the feelings he's chasing to measure how far he's come and what he still aims to accomplish, and how he visualizes his legacy as a coffee table book. If his son would leaf through the accomplishments of his parents and say, “Our family is tight,” that would seal it.

In this episode you will learn how to dream bigger, how to seek out that feeling of "I can't believe I'm doing this," and the importance of knowing when to check yourself when you're going through the motions.

Follow @OvershareTalks on Instagram and Twitter.

SHOW NOTES:

Archie Lee Coates IV (Instagram / website)
+ POOL (Instagram / website)
Grown Up Flowers public art exhibition
Virgil Abloh "ARTWORK" book

Next Episode

Jonathan Jackson Will Not Be Constrained to a Singular Expertise

It’s funny how there are some things you don’t know about your friends until you interview them for a podcast. Overshare host Justin Gignac has known Jonathan Jackson since 2006 after they both won the ADC Young Guns, but Justin learned a lot about his friend during this conversation that he never knew. Hopefully you listeners will learn a lot from this interview as well, and then go get to know Jonathan’s work.

Jonathan Jackson is the co-founder and partner at Bushwick design studio WeShouldDoItAll, which he started with his wife Sarah Nelson Jackson. The name is born out of a simple intention, that designers should not be confined to a singular expertise. In the words of Robert A. Heinlein, “specialization is for insects.”

WSDIA has dabbled in everything, including branding, spatial, environmental, interactive, and print projects. They’ve collaborated with Nike, The National Museum of African American History and Culture, Spotify, Samsung, and ESPN. "I think it's human nature that people want to put a title on you or put you in a box in a certain way. We are constantly trying to fight that. Constantly trying to hold a mirror to ourselves and see how the world sees us and try to combat that."

In this episode, you will learn the power of not having a self-limiting mindset, and how important it is to have diverse voices in the room when creating design and culture.

Follow @OvershareTalks on Instagram.

SHOW NOTES:
Jonathan Jackson Instagram
WeShouldDoItAll ( website / Instagram )
Usher's "U Don’t Have to Call" music video
Sol Lewitt “Structures”
Michael Sorkin ( Wiki / Sorkin Studio )
Archea
Frank Lloyd Wright
Le Corbusier
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Adrien Menard WSDIA's first hire
Former Virginia Governor Doug Wilder
Kendrick’s Control verse
Men of Change, The Smithsonian traveling exhibition
The National Museum of African American History & Culture
Scope of Work ( website / Instagram )
Ralph Appelbaum Associates
Studio Lin
PLAYLAB, INC.
OK-RM London
OMA
Herzog & De Meuron
Peterson Rich Office
So-iL