hi, i'm kevin. kevs is my fun name, and also one of the many nicknames my mom came up for me. if you have a filipino mom too, you probably understand.

i'm 100% sure i'm a designer. as for being a writer, i'm not sure i'd go that far, but i do find myself enjoying it more than i probably should.

if there's any universal truth about work, it's that most of us are trying to find something we care about, do it well, and maybe even get paid for it. for me, good work comes down to whether you can be honest with yourself. it requires persistent and disciplined self-examination, self-awareness, and the ability to communicate that truth in a way that gets people and teams on your side. that's how design actually makes a difference, at least from what i've observed.

somewhere along the way, i realized that getting anywhere i wanted to go takes a mix of honesty, negotiation, and sheer stubbornness. when i first transitioned from architecture to product design, my new school wouldn't let me take a class that even used figma because i didn't have the prerequisites. i hated that. so i taught myself as much as i could, and in a few months, i presented an app i prototyped at startup exchange summit at georgia tech.

i was 1 of 25 presenters demoing, and the first person to show up. i went all out, but looking back, it was a terribly designed app. i still walked away with multiple technical co-founder applications, resumes, and as a first-year in product design, that feeling was exhilarating. ever since then i always believed in myself, and got my first internship at carmax still without having taken a single product design class at school. now, i consistently convince myself that mild delusion is the perfect strategy to get me to the next goal. i think this mentality has been responsible for my growth in life so far, and i don't plan on stopping.

there's a strange harmony between what i do for work and my personal life: they're both fueled by the same cycles of trial, error, optimization, and creative thinking. most of my so-called free time ends up getting poured back into projects. the two sides keep feeding each other, for better or worse.

beyond all that, i share my life with four cats, a dog, friends who specialize in making me laugh at the wrong moments, and a partner who somehow puts up with all of it. every few months, i get into my head to try something new—lately it's been long-distance running, surfing, and cooking.

getting here wasn't exactly a straight line. i've done time as a construction laborer, spent about 2-ish years in architecture, logged about 10,000 hours in video games, and even mined cryptocurrency. all of it, one way or another, has left its mark on how i see design, technology, and for that matter, just about everything else.