March 15, 2023
The Minds and Methods Shaping Craft, Career, and Culture

This week, we revisit our first interview ever, with Halli Thorleifsson who was in the news in a big way this past week, offer a taste of our upcoming Storyteller-in-Residence program, and find joy in a book about the history of keyboards. Plus, Chuck Close on why inspiration is for amateurs.

The View From Here

When I started Creative Factor, I got turned down for interviews a lot. But Ueno founder and Iceland native Halli Thorleifsson, a fast-rising star said “yes” and that led to both a compelling interview and validation of our publication. We returned to him to learn how he designed the first Santa Tracker for Google and just for his general musings (He has great musings.) Thorleifsson would go on to build Ueno into a 100-person agency, sold it to Twitter in January 2021 and then went on staff there as a Senior Director. For the deal, he negotiated the acquisition price to be paid as a salary so that he could pay the 46 percent taxes in Iceland, rather than what would have been 22 percent. Thorleifsson, who has muscular dystrophy and uses a wheelchair, paid the most taxes of any individual in the entire county that year. He paid that high rate in a nod to the benefits he has received over the years from the Icelandic social system. 

Thorleifsson came back into the news in a big way this past week when he was unceremoniously fired in this bizarre new era of Twitter under Elon Musk. When Thofleiffsson took to Twitter to publicly ask the company’s Head of HR about his exit (because he hadn’t been given any departure details by the company), all hell broke loose. You can find most of it via Thofleiffsson’s own Twitter, but, in short, it led to a public conversation on Twitter with Musk who publicly ridiculed Thorleiffson about his disability, breaking a zillion HIPAA laws in the process. Later that day Musk publicly apologized to Thofleiffsson, a rarity for Musk, but what can happen after your lawyers get through to you. 

From my interactions with Thofleiffsson over the years, I can say he is nothing but kind. In fact, one of his top musings about how to be a better designer is to be a better person. To end this week’s note, I want to take you back to that first interview ever, with Thorleifsson, which we feature below. It’s about how to break down silos between creative teams. Fitting. Here’s to surrounding ourselves with more people like him who display grace, professionalism, and kindness. 


Have a great week.
Matt McCue

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“One way to see if a company thinks about themselves first or their customers first is to look at the company website. You can often see their organization chart is almost directly mapped onto the website. It’s not tailored to fit user needs; it’s tailored fit the internal teams, This is the part of the website the finance team owns; this is the part of the website that another team owns; and this part of the website was created because everyone needed a place to put their stuff. It’s a problem with the web, because, in theory, it’s limitless. You get these areas where people at companies think internally, It’s not worth the fight. Give them what they want. There is no prioritization.”
–Halli Thorleifsson, Desinger and Founder 

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