Flood is the CEO of Operating System ($OPSYS), a design and development firm with a primary focus on projects within the Base, Farcaster, and Clanker ecosystems. His work centers on creative direction, with core strengths in graphic design, UI/UX, brand synthesis, and 3D modeling.
With nearly two decades of experience in design and over ten years in the crypto space, Flood's journey began with a $20 purchase of ETH in 2014 — a small decision that ultimately shaped his entire career, specialization, and life's work.
My creative superpower at this point in time is probably the ability to code-switch between a number of client projects (~10 atm) and their different styles/directions/trajectories - most of which I have a large part in crafting myself.
I keep lists everywhere (textedit, Linear, Slack, waterproof paper in the shower - shoutout @derek) - these include dreams, inspiration, tasks and goals. It's kind of schizo, but it works for me. I think what people really notice and enjoy about Operating System's work is our collective ability to pour our whole heart and soul into every project (shoutout @phragg @vuisall - the other two founders of OPSYS). We try to share this with the Farcaster community as best we can through work in progress posts and token updates, though it never feels frequent enough.
Recently, my favorite partnership projects push at the edges of what we think is possible within the context of Base, Farcaster and Clanker, breaking out of the box of "solved problems" that a lot of UI/UX and branding typically gets shackled to. cc: design twitter.
Thinking about the food+bev sites/architecture portfolios we used to work together on many moons ago feels incredibly easy in hindsight compared to the complex problems and design patterns we are solving for now. And I wouldn't run it back/trade it for a thing even though the net income delta is a bit more ‘uncharted’ here. Working in emerging tech/crypto/onchain social whatever we call this shit now is more attractive ~because~ of the unknowns. I wake up doing shit I love with people I care about every damn day and I wouldn’t trade it for any other fork in the road.
Anyway, it's hard to pick just one, but my top three-ish would be Clanker @dish, Native @derek, To Be Determined @clfx.eth, and The Network Company @lght. All of these projects continue to give OPSYS boatloads of creative freedom. The collaboration with the founders and everyone involved from the ‘key decisionmaking’ perspective has been a delight beyond expectation.
These projects let us explore new bleeding-edge archetypes that need to emerge from ‘the fog’ by our hand, rather than just pushing stale pre-existing patterns. Use the supernormal as a template but embrace the grit + the unknown unknowns. Long may these sorts of partnerships continue.
relume.io has a fantastic suite of tools for quickly iterating on web-based designs in figma. womp.xyz has been a real banger for a lot of the jumpstart 3D work I need to get out the door with haste and taste(Gaby Trueba the founder is a friend and she is killing monetization atm). Unicorn.studio is sick if you need a quick webgl ‘hood-ornament’ or a fun ‘fidget spinner’ on a website/spa/miniapp/etc.
The real workhorses tho: Claude for handling a lot of the mechanical/admin stuff that comes with running a creative business, and believe it or not, Illustrator and Photoshop - they're still the baseline tools that just work. Meaningful ‘elbow grease’ design work done by a truly skilled hand is exponential stratospheres above what most people think is acceptable from the slop machines w/ no sense for taste, symmetry or actual grit/emotion.
textedit is also huge for me. If people saw my textedit docs, they'd assume ‘dudes a tire fire’ or ‘ngmi this list is fucked’, but i thrive in controlled chaos and it works for my process.
I head over to Are.na and Cosmos, then kind of take it from there. Usually I just rely on my taste and intuition built up over the years I've spent scrolling feeds/magazines/books/whatever. That accumulated taste guides me where I need to go. I could go way deeper here and I have - ask around and you can find a whole well of info in the [ d e s i g n c a b a l ] on FC :*
Because this text is going to live primarily in the FC eco, I'd pick Farcaster branding. I think it needs to be more expansive for the surface area it has to cover. There can be a lot more fun + exploration within the general aesthetic palette. I'm not saying it's going/gone in the wrong direction foundationally, but there's a whole lot more that can be discovered and unlocked within the primitives that currently exist.
Brands should be constantly evolving, ‘pushing’ - a whole palette of flavors + forks for every user's taste profile living within the greater brand ID - just like code is constantly being ‘pushed’. We can treat design in a similar way to how we treat a healthy GH repo of an active product. Brands should live, adapt and constantly evolve, they should not be something that is ‘completed’ or ‘finished’.
Job’s actually not finished in design… ever, really - through that lens.
Ask any designer/studio and if they’re honest they’ll reveal they only actualized about 3% of the ideas they wanted to create + see in your ‘finished’ brand ID kit/design system. In most cases not because they held it back - but because design is often seen as a contracted ‘thing we do’ for a short budgeted moment to get the bare minimum.
Founders who are reading this: Reconsider your design partnerships and the resources you afford them - we want to give you the world. Let designers actually dream big with you + execute at scale just like you are. All we want is to work on a timeline comfortable enough to open the firehose and build it big, strong and beautiful for the long term with you. Hard to achieve that in days or weeks. It takes quarters and years just like the long backlog of features/releases you’ve got tee’d up for quarters and years down the road. Easier to think of the ideal synergy between design/dev/bd/etc this way imo, we dream big just like you.
I love working on small engines - dirt bikes, mopeds. I cook 2-3 meals a day for my family in between work. I make sauce on sundays - shoutout to my Italian grandmother for that tradition (also for the garden I keep every year). I'm really into ice climbing/hiking depending on the season and try to do that as much as I'm allowed to.
++ forever exploring the gritty edges of electronic music - shoutout KETTAMA, DJ HEARTSTRING, SVVIM and LIL TEXAS. Nothing like watching an artist come up from playing sets to 50 ppl at a local bar in Austin to playing in front of absurdly massive crowds at DEFQON. (view that amazing set here)
+++ but fr as insane as it sounds - I love staring at a wall when I'm not working - sometimes the best ideas come from doing absolutely fkn nothing. Been rawdogging flights for decades before there was even a name for it - absolutely blissful imo.
PS: Would love to approach something in olfactory design someday - once you break through the seemingly stiff/unapproachable facade of fragrance, it gets a whole lot more fun at its core and in-turn the edges re: indie fragrance. A great designer can map their skills to any sense or niche. @ me if you are working on this - bonus points if it's generative / based on social graph data.
Don't take things too seriously. Show more ‘work in progress’ (wips) because people love to see the gritty, dirty work that's part of the whole process - allowing people to see you go from the shitty low res/high concept sketch to something they use as THE hood ornament of their product is everything. PPL love to see a success story - it’s easier when they can ‘watch the full season’ vs a no buildup brand activation by the client w/ no context - and most def a missed opportunity for a wip cycle on your part. Let it all rip - WIPS WIPS WIPS.
Related: just work instead of procrastinating - that's the fastest way forward even though it sucks. Stop looking at what other people are doing and just make something, do the work. Create. Have the time of your life.
++ Designers on FC reading this (green + vets): make posting (progress/screenshots) a real ritual and send that shit. IDC lol. Be a ‘live player’ in the community. Post like no one is watching. People will love it and you’ll dump gas on that internal fire - it’s addictive. Do it. Right now. Literally screenshot whatever you’re working on, write a few words and cast it. You’re actually the only one in the way of this happening… (and i fkn know its not all under NDA - no excuse)
+++ Evangelize: we all want to see design wips/completed/case studies/etc take more mindshare here. We can shift the discourse one fleeting wip screenshot at a time.
I'd give myself more time to explore what creative automation has to offer. We're on the bleeding edge of that petri dish and it's about to really explode in the next couple of months (alpha: a true godmode ‘cursor for design’ is closer than most creatives/designers think it is).
Greater cause: I want to spend more time thinking + writing about how to solve the issues within creative hiring/staffing - mainly because @jordanisgreen and I are working on something (probably big) around that - TBA…
+ anyway, keep the sand off the sidewalks and watch the riptide.
++ now go take a shot of something and stare at a wall/the sky/a horizon for five minutes or five hours. It’s probably friday somewhere, and if it isn’t… who’s actually watching anyway?
—
much love + godspeed you,
Flood
$OPSYS CEO
OPSYS CEO
Operating System provides design and development services through a proven process to take your web3 project to the next level.
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Jordanisgreen is a graphic designer, creative director, and self-proclaimed professional lurker. Currently freelancing and working quietly with a few teams, Jordan stays curious and inspired. Most recently, Operating System has captured her love and attention.
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