Unorthodox Blend Conversations

Kenwyn Forgenie’s career has taken him from teaching kindergarten in Canada and China to working in advertising with R/GA and brands including Beats, Timberland and Amazon Prime Video. He is now building Kaiso, a wellness brand for men, bringing together his experience of teaching, culture and community. Starting with monthly dinners, he is exploring how familiar activities can create space for people to connect and look after themselves.What does wellness look like for people who don’t recognise themselves in the usual version of it? We talk about creating environments where men feel comfortable letting their guard down, and how connection can happen through movement, a haircut or simply spending time with people who understand you.There is a generosity to the way Kenwyn approaches what he is building, ensuring he is building from his own experiences to stop and hold the door open for someone else. Get full access to Unorthodox Blend at unorthodoxblend.substack.com/subscribe

Stijn Druyts is a Belgian brand leader, graphic designer and educator whose career has taken him from running an agency in Antwerp to spending 17 years in China, working with brands including Converse and Timberland. Now based in Brussels, he teaches brand design at AP Hogeschool, helping the next generation find their feet and develop their own point of view. We first met through Converse around a decade ago and have stayed connected, most recently through our annual lectures for his students.—Moving from the brand industry in China to teaching in Belgium brought a considerable change of pace. Stijn describes it as stepping off a high-speed train and onto a train that stops at every station. That experience opens up a conversation about speed in creative work: the pressure to keep up, the possibilities technology creates, and the pleasure of doing something slowly, with your hands. For students preparing to enter the industry, there is a difficult balance between developing their ideas and learning to work within commercial deadlines.We talk about taste and what it takes to develop it. When everyone can access the same references and generate ideas in seconds, how do you find something that feels like your own? Stijn recalls discovering music through basement shows, small ads and sending cash overseas for records that might take months to arrive. The effort became part of the experience. We also consider what gives us hope for younger creatives. They are entering an uncertain industry, but they have tools and perspectives that could help them change it.—The question of effort stayed with us. We spend a lot of our working lives making things easier, faster and more accessible, and there are good reasons for doing so. But some of the things we value most carry a memory of the work involved: finding them, making them, fixing them or learning to appreciate them. Convenience can remove something we later realise mattered.There is a responsibility here for our industry, too. As experienced teams become more capable with AI, the commercial argument for bringing in junior creatives gets harder. We still need to create opportunities for people to learn, contribute and eventually take the work somewhere we would never have thought to go.Stijn’s relationship with his students offers a hopeful place to finish. He is helping them develop their identities while remaining open to what they can teach him. We have experience to share, but we also have plenty to learn. Get full access to Unorthodox Blend at unorthodoxblend.substack.com/subscribe

arcia Caines works in PR and communications across design, architecture and innovation. English and based in Turin, her career has taken her through textiles, publishing and consumer technology. She is the founder of Rot Comm, bringing that experience to brand communication and reputation management.We first met Marcia during her time as Head of Brand at Punkt., the Swiss technology company known for its pared-back mobile phones designed by Jasper Morrison. It was work that prompted plenty of conversations about our relationship with technology. Catching up again, we found those important questions hadn’t gone away.—Marcia talked her shift to being self-employed about the satisfaction of putting her energy into something she feels responsible for, alongside the less enjoyable business of getting paid and understanding tax.From there, we move into the everyday encounters with other people that are disappearing as more of life happens through a screen. We talk about shared spaces, community and whether social confidence needs practice just as much as any other skill. Education comes into it too. How do we prepare people to handle unfamiliar situations, rather than simply learn the right answers?AI gives those questions another dimension. Experience can help us use it well, but where will the next generation gain that experience if the work they would have learnt through is automated?—It was lovely to reconnect with Marcia and pick up a conversation that has been running, in different forms, since our work together at Punkt. She asks direct questions and gives us room to think, but also pushes when an answer feels incomplete. Being able to work faster is useful - whether that actually makes the work better takes becomes a much more complex consideration.What stayed with us was the tension between adapting and choosing. We use new tools, we see their value and we also care about the learning, relationships and character that can get lost along the way. Marcia’s perspective kept bringing the discussion back to what those changes mean in the real world - something we should all be challenging ourselves with more often.https://rotcomm.com/ Get full access to Unorthodox Blend at unorthodoxblend.substack.com/subscribe

Get full access to Unorthodox Blend at unorthodoxblend.substack.com/subscribe

Tricia San Mateo is a brand and retail experience leader with a passion for bringing ideas, stories and emotions to life through physical space. Currently leading global retail brand expression at UGG, she has spent her career exploring how brands create meaning through the environments people inhabit and the experiences they share.Born in the Philippines and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, Tricia brings a culturally layered perspective to her work. Beyond retail, she is the co-founder of Tikim Collective in Portland, a platform celebrating Filipino food, culture and community, reflecting a broader interest in identity, belonging and the stories that connect people.—This conversation explores what becomes possible when we slow down enough to pay attention.We reflect on the way travel, culture and lived experience shape creative perspective and why the most valuable things people bring to a team are not always the ones listed on their CV. Tricia, Russell and Mark discuss patience, trust, disruption, ageing and intergenerational learning. We discuss the need for personal rituals, cultural exploration and letting go of convenience and control and how these details of our lives give rise to character and our individual thinking patterns. The conversation also looks at the value of friction in a world increasingly designed around speed and convenience.—Tricia’s belief that work becomes more interesting when we stop treating it as separate from the rest of life truly resonated with us. The places we visit, the people we meet, the meals we share and the cultures we encounter all become part of the creative material we carry with us. They give work texture, create unexpected connections and help us see beyond the most obvious answer.There is also a useful challenge here to counter our natural instincts to optimise everything. Efficiency has value, but when every inconvenience is removed, we risk losing the awkwardness, the unexpected and moments of discovery that make an experience more memorable and meaningful.Our conversation reminded us of the need to slow down and to allow the universe to come to us sometimes, to resist the urge to rush through them. This is a topic we care deeply about - and we are still trying to collectively figure out how we integrate these thoughts with our day-to-day work where budgets get smaller and deadlines tighter every year! Get full access to Unorthodox Blend at unorthodoxblend.substack.com/subscribe

Keith Taperell is a brand strategist, consultant, collaborator and industry connector whose career has taken him through some of the world’s most iconic fashion and footwear brands.More recently, he has spent over six years working within the music industry, joining the dots between music, fashion and sport and helping to bring some of their most interesting brand collaborations to life. His work is driven by a passion for brands, the products they create and the cultural stories they have the potential to tell.—This conversation explores what it takes to create relevant cultural moments in industries that move at dramatically different speeds. Keith reflects on moving from footwear, where product timelines could stretch to 18 months, into music, where having 18 days can feel like a luxury.From there, the discussion moves through collaboration, creative conviction, cultural storytelling and the relationships that make ambitious work possible. Keith talks about why the most interesting partnerships begin with a shared story rather than two names placed together, and why trust built over time allows people to make better decisions when time is limited.Our conversation also considers the changing ways we consume culture: the accessibility and freedom of moving between genres and communities, but also the depth, effort and sense of belonging that can be lost along the way. From bootlegs becoming official collaborations to the growing crossover between music, fashion and sport, we ponder on how we can make fleeting cultural moments more enduring.—Keith’s work often operates at an extraordinary pace, but the ability to move quickly is built on solid groundwork - relationships, conversations and accumulated knowledge - all done way ahead of even knowing what projects might come our way. His preference for having twenty conversations with one person, rather than one conversation with twenty people, captures the value of connection particularly well.There is also a clear distinction between collaboration and simple association. Bringing two recognisable names together may create attention, but the strongest partnerships uncover a shared story and produce something neither could have created alone. As Keith puts it, one plus one needs to become greater than two. Get full access to Unorthodox Blend at unorthodoxblend.substack.com/subscribe

Dave White is a Devon-based painter whose work is rooted in deep personal connection - whether to sneakers, popular culture, or the wildlife that now forms the central focus of his practice.After studying fine art, Dave became closely associated with the early days of sneaker culture, creating paintings that helped translate the emotional and cultural power of footwear into a fine art context. Over time, his work has moved back towards the natural world, with the last fifteen years focused on capturing the beauty, character, and scarcity of the animals we share the planet with.Octopus III (You are Beautiful) by Dave White, Oil on linen 42” x 57”—Our conversation follows Dave’s journey from fine art into streetwear and sneaker culture and then back towards a more nature-led artistic practice. He reflects on how his sneaker paintings emerged not from a commercial plan, but from genuine love and attention - beginning with an Air Max 95, a chance opportunity in Liverpool and a Creative Review cover that helped set things in motion.From there, the discussion opens into a wider reflection on culture, scarcity and memory. Dave, Russell and Mark talk about the early days of sneaker releases, when queues, local shops and shared rituals created a sense of community that feels harder to find in today’s more digitised, frictionless culture.The conversation then moves into Dave’s wildlife work, the importance of slowing down, the emotional pull of nature and the role of human experience in creativity - especially at a time when AI is changing how images and ideas are made.—What feels strongest in this conversation is Dave’s relationship with attention.Whether he is talking about sneakers, animals, music or painting, the thread running through it all is care: the care that comes from looking properly, remembering where something came from and staying close to the things that genuinely move you.There is also something quietly valuable in the way Dave talks about opportunity. His career does not come across as a perfectly mapped route, but as a series of moments he was open enough to notice and brave enough to follow. That resonates deeply with us and feels very true to many creative lives: a mix of instinct, timing, obsession, friendship and work.At its heart, this conversation is about staying connected, staying present to culture, nature, memory and to the slower, more human parts of creativity that are easy to lose when everything becomes faster, easier and more disposable. Get full access to Unorthodox Blend at unorthodoxblend.substack.com/subscribe

Scott Denton-Cardew is the founder of Denton-Cardew Design, a Los Angeles-based creative consultancy he started in 2008 after several years working at Nike in Portland.Across his career, Scott has worked across design, creative direction, brand, retail, motion, photography and creative leadership - building the kind of wide-ranging experience that rarely fits neatly into a single job title. In the conversation, he describes himself less as one fixed thing and more as a “conductor of design and talent”, bringing together people, ideas, instinct and experience to make the work stronger.—Our conversation begins with a question that sounds simple but opens up something much bigger: what do creative job titles really mean anymore?From there, Scott reflects on the shifting language of creative roles, the value of being hard to categorise and the way experience across different disciplines can make someone more adaptable, more resilient and harder to replace. The discussion moves through early influences, magazine design, Nike, Ferrari, creative risk, online critique and the emotional power of design - especially in the way objects, spaces and brand experiences can connect with people in ways that are difficult to explain but easy to feel.Our conversation is also about longevity in creative work: how to stay curious, how to lead with compassion and how to keep finding meaning in the work after decades in the industry.—What stands out in this conversation is Scott’s resistance to being over-simplified, despite knowing that it might make life easier in some ways.In an industry that often wants people to be immediately legible - a title, a specialism, a neat box on a hiring form - Scott makes a strong case for the value of irregularity. The interesting people are often the ones with unusual edges: the ones who have crossed disciplines, taken odd routes, learned by doing and picked up the kind of judgement that only comes from lived experience.There is also something quietly generous in how Scott talks about creativity. He is interested in ideas, craft, emotion and brand authenticity, but also in the people behind the work - how they are led, supported, challenged and trusted. That gives the conversation a warmth beyond the usual design-industry language of innovation or excellence.At its heart, this is a conversation about the humanity in our work: how sometimes the most valuable people are not the easiest to define, and why creative careers do not need to be linear to be powerful. Get full access to Unorthodox Blend at unorthodoxblend.substack.com/subscribe

Mara Dettmann is an advertising and marketing strategist with a focus on cultural marketing, technology and the ways people use emerging tools to connect with one another.Her work sits in the space between digital innovation and human behaviour, looking beyond the technology itself to understand how it shapes culture, identity, work and the stories people tell about themselves.—This conversation explores the evolving relationship between technology, culture and human connection. Mara reflects on the future of work, the rise of AI, the changing shape of creative careers, and the kinds of human skills that may become more valuable as automation becomes more capable.The discussion moves from gig work and the “weird job economy” to the value of friction, imperfection, and difficulty in our lives. Alongside this, there’s a broader reflection on storytelling, optimisation culture, control, and the ways people try to find stability and individuality in a world that often feels increasingly chaotic.—What makes this conversation compelling is that it avoids treating technology as either utopian or catastrophic. Instead, it focuses on the behaviours forming around it - the ways people seek control, optimise themselves, simplify complexity and increasingly try to remove friction from everyday life.But throughout the discussion there’s a recurring question underneath all of that: what do we lose when everything becomes too efficient?Whether discussing AI, fitness culture, automation or storytelling, we kept returning to the idea that discomfort, unpredictability and even inconvenience are often the things that make experiences memorable, human and meaningful.Rather than resisting technology outright, Mara approaches it as something that reveals human nature more clearly - our anxieties, ambitions, contradictions and desire for connection. Get full access to Unorthodox Blend at unorthodoxblend.substack.com/subscribe

Ben Rayner is a photographer and director known for capturing the raw, emotional reality of people and culture. Originally from London and now based in New York, his work spans sport, music and lifestyle - always centred around human connection rather than surface-level image making.His approach prioritises feeling over perfection, seeking out the in-between moments where authenticity, energy and personality naturally reveal themselves.—This conversation explores the craft of capturing emotion and the subtle, often invisible processes behind it. Ben shares how his work has evolved over time, from instinctively shooting moments as they unfold to deliberately creating environments where spontaneity can happen.The discussion touches on the impact of COVID on creative relationships, the role of AI in image-making and the growing importance of human connection in an increasingly automated world. Alongside this, there’s a deeper reflection on process from reading people in real time, embracing imperfection, and understanding that the most powerful work often happens between the planned shots rather than within them.—What comes through is a quiet confidence in human instinct over control.Ben’s work is about creating the conditions for something real to happen and being present enough to recognise it when it does. In a moment where technology is accelerating rapidly, that idea feels increasingly important.There’s a sense that the future of creativity won’t be defined by precision, but by the ability to capture something that feels unmistakably human. Get full access to Unorthodox Blend at unorthodoxblend.substack.com/subscribe