# Blake Spiegel – Crop Conference, Tattoos, and Visual Rhyming – Ep47

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/students-of-design-6919521/blake-spiegel-crop-conference-tattoos-and-visual-rhyming-ep47
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/students-of-design-6919521/blake-spiegel-crop-conference-tattoos-and-visual-rhyming-ep47.md
Podcast: [Students of Design](https://stenobird.com/podcast/students-of-design-6919521)
Published: 2026-04-22T16:15:00+00:00
Episode link: https://studentsofdesign.simplecast.com/episodes/blake-spiegel-TAhbgIuo
Audio file: https://cdn.simplecast.com/media/audio/transcoded/0af7ec5a-00ea-471c-94f8-b49bb34f25de/5954491d-d744-4a5d-915b-2920e8739545/episodes/audio/group/eae70091-f28f-4d9d-9e2a-ba2701f41505/group-item/14bba616-9402-4ba8-be78-93258d11ac96/128_default_tc.mp3?aid=rss_feed&feed=zkHtwz13
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/students-of-design-6919521/episodes/blake-spiegel-crop-conference-tattoos-and-visual-rhyming-ep47
Duration seconds: 4044

## Resource

Blake is a designer and art director in Minneapolis with over 10 years of experience working at the intersection of brand strategy and identity. He's the most heavily tattooed person I've interviewed, and he literally traveled across the world to Australia to get tattooed by one of his tattoo heroes—RESPECT. After growing up with computer games, doing kickflips, and helping his grandfather tap trees for maple syrup, he studied graphic design at the University of Wisconsin-Stout. After college, he found himself working in corporate packaging design, and a year later, he took a calculated risk by leaving his full-time job for a design internship at Sussner, a branding firm in Minneapolis. Like us, Blake's been through burnout, low-paying gigs, and he's sacrificed more of himself along the way than he realized. Thankfully, he has a portfolio of strategic design work that helps offset those sacrifices. Blake's stepfather is a tattoo artist, so tattoos have always been a part of his life, and they are quite literally THE reason he pursued graphic design—more on that in the interview. Tune in for a talk about Crop Conference, the benefits of using Framer vs. Squarespace to build your portfolio, takeaways from designing brand identities for private clubs and golf courses, and the story behind a logo he designed for a former mobster. Follow Blake on Instagram @blakespiegel and check out his Framer website spiegeldesign.co. "Deep down, we're all just a bunch of bones. What really makes us different is what we do with them."

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## Transcript

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