Multi-disciplinary design combines an empathetic and curious way of seeing the world with rigorous methods of observation, ideation, and production.
I was born in San Diego, California but grew up in Orange County most of my life. My first love was drawing. I would watch cartoons and then figure out how to draw the characters. It wasn’t until high school that I finally got into graphic design. Making t-shirts, posters, you name it.
I moved on to study graphic design at California State University of Long Beach, and began to grow my network. Making flyers for DJs and clubs in LA and Orange County. Doing logos and branding work for friends and word of mouth clients. Going to school during the day and cranking on design work at night. Not only was I learning the basics of quality design during my classes, but I was also understanding what it meant to run a business doing freelance work.
My first “real” gig was interning at a marketing agency in LA called The Marketing Arm. It’s there I learned to grind…like REALLY crank out work and do it with some quality. We worked with brands like Nintendo, Cisco, and StateFarm to name a few. I helped with a lot of the print and marketing collateral, but also was able to work on projects for physical experiential events. I taught myself SketchUp (a 3D rendering software) and would help my creative director make physical event spaces so that our clients could visualize the experience.
After 4 years of that, I moved on to my second gig at a startup called Fullscreen. I worked on branding, marketing collateral, presentation decks for the head honcho, animated & cut videos for sizzles, and eventually landed a product design role with the product team. We made dashboard products for our video creators, and eventually went on to creating a rad subscription video streaming platform. Think: Netflix for millennials. The company is now at around 750 employees and disrupting the digital media space.
I finally got the urge to head up to Silicon Valley and get my feet wet in the scene up here. I landed a spot at the professional networking platform, LinkedIn. Where I worked on various enterprise products for our paying members. In October of 2018 I made the move to Lyft where I am working on the future of transportation with incredibly smart and talented people. I am passionate about electric and autonomous vehicles and am optimistic about a future where we build our cities for people rather than for cars.
I love what I do. The combination of business goals, mixed with human necessity, mixed with solid design is what gets me going every day.
Don't hesitate to reach out if you'd like to chat about design, life, or just have a good ol' fashioned conversation.
EXPERIENCE
2018 - PRESENT
LYFT · SAN FRANCISCO
Senior Product Designer
2015 - 2018
LINKEDIN · SAN FRANCISCO
Senior Product Designer
2007 - Present
STEPHEN CALVILLO DESIGN
Owner / Designer
2015 - 2016
SUBTRACT · LOS ANGELES
Co-founder / Product Designer
2012 - 2015
FULLSCREEN · LOS ANGELES
Graphic Designer - Senior Product Designer
2009 - 2012
THE MARKETING ARM · LOS ANGELES
Intern / Graphic Designer
Copyright · Stephen Calvillo Design Forever