About Me

Hey, I’m Zach. I am a designer and builder of things. I have always loved deconstructing stuff in order to understand them and then try to put them back together. When I was young, that was manifested primarily through Lego’s, but then the iPhone happened. I became obsessed with the idea of making my own apps, so I began teaching myself to code. Being homeschooled, I would wrap up my normal school work by lunch and then would code for the rest of the day. It took about a year, but I had my first app on the App Store at 14 (it was a little game, and is long gone haha).

I ended up going to college even though I wasn’t really wanting to, expecting to just get through it. Instead, I discovered a love for creative collaboration and a need to be surrounded by like-minded people. I spent two of my years there leading the marketing department for the student association and studying graphic design the rest of the time. That turned out to be the perfect complement to the programmatic mind I already had.

Today, I'm one of three partners at Nevermind Studio (NVM), an agency that Henry Ninde, Alec Vennerholm and I started this past year. For the past decade, the three of us have been friends and have worked together on and off in various capacities. For a time we all ended up at the same creative agency, but eventually we all left. We’ve worked together in various freelance capacities for a while, but we finally were able to come back together and build something of our own like we’d always wanted to.

We’ve kept NVM small on purpose. No account managers, no layers, just the three of us doing the work. From our time at the agency and with the larger companies that we work with, we found that when the layers of fluff and overhead are removed the three of us can move at a rapid pace that feels like we might have telepathy. I primarily handle the technical & web side of things, but because of our nerd-like tendencies, we’re all quite involved in everything.

I care deeply about intentionality, ingenuity and feel in design & function. Much like how Disney’s atmosphere adds to the immersion of the experience even when you're just walking between rides, or how an Apple device or UI behaves exactly how you naturally expect it to. Whether it is a button on a website or an interaction at a theme park, that type of thinking matters to me.

I live in Tulsa, Oklahoma, but I travel down to Florida, a handful of times a year to visit family and go to Disney. My family and I are Disney annual pass holders, I follow F1 religiously, and I mess with my home servers more than is probably useful. I also enjoy data problems, taking messy information and making it clean (have some 30 million records of wait times at Disney World covering the past few years).

I am calling this blog, “An Option” because I am a huge fan of options and because wanted something without pressure. I turned 30 and decided that I wanted to share the thoughts & ideas that I haven’t in the past, I would write or prepare something but they never felt "ready" to share. So, this is me doing it. Links to things, my photography, some longer thoughts and many shorter ones. No schedule, no theme. Just me sharing stuff I find interesting, in case you might too.

TL;DR

• Background: I taught myself to code at 13 and later studied graphic design & business in college.
• Work: I’m a co-founder at NVM, a three-person agency I run with my closest friends. We don't do layers or account managers. We’re just craft obsessed nerds who do the work.
• Philosophy: I believe intentionality is everything. I love systems that feel magical and intuitive, from Disney to Apple (at their best).
• Life: I live in Tulsa, OK, but travel to FL often. I’m a Formula 1 fan, a home server tinkerer, and a data nerd.
• Blog: I call this site "An Option." It’s a low-pressure space for me to share ideas before they feel 100% ready.