"Home is where my feet are" (Pablo Honey bonus episode)

0:00Radim Malinic:Hey, welcome to this bonus episode of the Daring Creativity Podcast. This is where I revisit the interview published earlier in the week, giving me an opportunity to zoom in on a few stand-down moments for extra value and meaning. This week, I released a conversation with Pablo Honey, an educator, designer and a creative director at Automatic, who are the makers of WordPress and many other web applications. If you listen to more than one of my episodes, you can easily notice that I do not have any questions prior to the recording. I like to ask an opening question, find a few dots and look for ways to join them.

0:41Radim Malinic:And my conversation with Pablo is a perfect example of just that. I show up with two blank pieces of paper and a pen. And with this method, it helps me to have the guest guide the answers and actually let them to find their own moments from the past they may have not thought about for a while. And this conversation with Pablo produced so many standout moments, but I had to narrow it down to four. So let's start here. This has been a theme for my entire life. There's this concept that maybe you've heard of called third culture kit, which is basically this state of mind of people who were born in one place but were raised in a different culture.

1:28And they leave in between those, and there's almost like a limbo space where they develop their own, which is a mix of both. in my case is even a little bit more drastic because beyond that duality of Spain or Galicia and Switzerland, then I moved into different places. I lived in Barcelona many years before moving to New York City, where I've been 12 years. New York City has been actually the longest I've been in a place. So there's all these tensions in between cultures that ultimately have formed my own profile, my own way of thinking, and my own way of being. But it has, to be honest with you, been always a challenge too, because I was too Spanish to be a Swiss, and I was too Swiss to be a Spanish, and I was too Galician to be in Barcelona, and I'm too Spanish to be in New York city translated to disciplines and perhaps we get to it but i also understand the profession of design in less of boxes and more in between so i find also myself too interactive for the graphic designers too graphic designer for interactive folks i never heard of the term

2:54Radim Malinic:third culture kid and I had to find out a little bit more about it because this quote encapsulates the core struggle of third culture kids. Individuals who grow up outside their parents' culture and develop a blended identity that doesn't fit anywhere. Pablo's experience reveals how this constant otherness initially feels like a rejection and displacement but ultimately becomes a creative superpower. In design and creativity, this perpetual outsider perspective is invaluable. Whilst others see the world through one cultural lens, Pablo sees through multiple, allowing him to create work that transcends cultural boundaries.

3:37Radim Malinic:His inability to be fully anything means that he can be partially everything and is making him uniquely equipped to design for global audiences, especially now in his role at Automatic. What could be seen as the pain of not belonging, it can transform into a gift of belonging everywhere. And this moment from the conversation matters because it also validates the experience of millions of global creatives who can feel culturally homeless, showing them that their displacement can become their greatest professional asset. The second moment I like to feature is this one. What I learned at the working at the restaurant, which is still my family, actually I call them my Catalan family, and every time I go to Barcelona, of course there, the whole neighborhood is appreciative of me being there and vice versa.

4:37So I have a love story with that restaurant still today. The restaurant, by the way, is called Cinco Hermanos, Five Brothers. It's in one of the larger neighborhoods in Barcelona, in the north of the city. And the two things perhaps that I learned is, first of all, hospitality, being welcoming, nice to people, comforting, and it quite connects to the work I do in design, and we should be thinking about design and how you guide someone through experiences, how you make someone understand communication and so on. So walking and working with people to have wonderful experiences. So I think ruthless hospitality, almost, that's one learning.

5:30The other learning is that you gotta work hard. And perhaps that's something I'm still inheriting from my parents as a mental program, where you have this survival mechanism that makes you propel forward constantly.

5:51Radim Malinic:As you may have heard in the conversation, I have recently finished Unreasonable Hospitality, the book that focuses on doing one thing unreasonably well and doing it better than anybody else. I absolutely adored Pablo's concept of ruthless hospitality when he talked about the experience of working in restaurants and how he still has community connections to the neighborhoods, to the restaurants and to the people connected to Five Brothers. His concept of ruthless hospitality bridges service industry wisdom with design philosophy in a way that revolutionizes how we think about user experience. Most designers focus on aesthetic and functionality.

6:38Radim Malinic:Is that you, right? Or is it not? Because Pablo understands that design is fundamentally about making people feel welcome and guided. His three-year restaurant experience wasn't just a survival as he was building his design career. It was a graduate school in human psychology and experience. Every interaction taught him how to read people's needs, anticipate their confusion, and create comfort in unfamiliar situations. The word ruthless, and I absolutely love that word, it's hospitality with intention, purpose, and relentless focus on a human experience. And this matters because it reframes designs from creating beautiful objects to creating experiences for real people with real needs.

7:26Radim Malinic:Now let's feature a quote number three. Success is such a tricky concept. And you're right and agree that it means different things to different people. The more I talk with friends and family even, whatever it means for them, it changes over time. So at any given time of my career, maybe having or creating a project for my portfolio, that was success. So the creative endeavor was success. Some other times was certain financial thresholds. Other times, it's really connecting to people or reconnecting with friends and family. It really changes. For me, it has changed. And it keeps changing every maybe season.

8:27And I'm currently in a phase where I'm appreciating a lot, connecting and reconnecting with friends. people that share certain fears and curiosities and also people that don't agree with me so I'm in this process of maybe coming out of my cave a little bit because I've been quite shy and focused on my own work that I forgot that there's a world out there that I can be part of and share story.

9:08Radim Malinic:Pablo reveals that success isn't a destination, but a moving target that should evolve as we grow. Early success careers might be a portfolio recognition, mid-career might be financial stability, and later might be human connections and mentorship. This seasonal approach to success prevents the common creative trap of achieving early goals only to feel empty, because those goals no longer align with your evolved values. So Pablo's journey from small village to global design leadership demonstrates how allowing success definition to change enables continued growth rather than stagnation. And this matters because it gives permission for creative professionals to regularly audit and adjust their definition of achievement.

10:00Radim Malinic:It suggests that feeling dissatisfied with previous successes isn't failure but it's actually an evolution and the last quote is potentially the one i love the most i asked pablo where is home home to me is where my feet are and at the same time it means that I feel at home in motion. And I feel at home on a plane where I'm very creative and feel very comfortable, unlike other people. But it goes by stages, I suppose. I can call New York City home. It's the place I lived the longest in my life. And despite some distance with certain things, like I feel very comfortable here. And I'm lucky enough to be working with some freedom to move and I spend a fair amount of time back home in Galicia and Spain where I also feel at home.

11:11So it's a difficult question to answer when home is not a place but it's a state of mind and always in transition.

11:23Radim Malinic:It was a beautifully profound definition of home, and it speaks the reality of modern creative life, where talent is global, opportunities require mobility. Pablo transforms the traditional concept of home from fixed place to a portable state of mind, a philosophy essential for thriving in creative industries. For a third culture kid and a global creative, the traditional notion of home can be a source of anxiety and displacement, but Pablo's reframing liberates from needing to plan routes in order to feel grounded. Instead, home becomes an internal state of comfort with uncertainty and I loved when he said, I feel at home where my feet are.

12:07Radim Malinic:And I still think about it. I didn't know I would be asking Pablo this question about where home is but the conversation led us to this point and I really took to my heart and embraced his answer to this because the world is changing and people might struggle with the identity crisis but for people like Pablo and there's quite a few of those being a third culture kid and being at home in many different places is quite admirable if you found this bonus episode intriguing listen to the full conversation with Pablo thank you for joining me on this episode and I will see you again next week