Behind the Scope

Daniel Triendl is an illustrator based in Austria and someone whose career has been shaped by the people around him. In this episode we talk about how working alongside other creatives in New York pushed him to start illustrating seriously, and what his ongoing collaboration with fellow illustrator Birgit Palmer looks like in practice. We also get into the design community, why creatives tend to keep to themselves even when they don't need to, and why reaching out is always worth it.

Guest links:
Website: https://www.danieltriendl.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/danieltriendl

A McDonald's Christmas ad made entirely with AI. A Porsche ad drawn completely by hand. Both dropped around the same time. Only one of them got pulled from the internet. In this episode, we get into what these two examples actually tell us about where the market is heading. We're seeing the beginning of a real split: AI is becoming a signal for cheap, and human-made is becoming a signal for quality, craftsmanship, and even prestige.

Where did all the emos, skaters, and indie kids go? And where are we finding meaning behind what we wear and who we belong to? The algorithm telling us how to think, AI homogenizing our research habits, 2025 was officially called the year of overwhelming okayness in brand identity. It's all connected. In this episode we get into why everything looks the same right now, in branding, on social media, in our homes, on our feeds, and what's driving it.

In this episode we sit down with Eva Christ, founder of Unmuted Collective, a Vienna-based platform making mental health visible in the workplace. We get into why creatives are statistically more prone to burnout than other industries and why loving your work actually makes you more at risk. We talk about our own mental health crises and how we got through it. One of the more honest conversations we've had on the podcast.

Guest links:
Website: https://www.unmutedcollective.at
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/unmutedcollective.at

What does success look like to you, and where did that definition come from? In this episode we get honest about how our answer to that question has changed, why we spent years chasing a version of success that wasn't actually ours, and what it felt like to scale down when the world around us treats growth as the only valid metric for success.