{"id":92078,"date":"2026-03-19T18:16:30","date_gmt":"2026-03-19T23:16:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bricktowntom.com\/blog\/?p=92078"},"modified":"2026-03-19T18:16:30","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T23:16:30","slug":"sam-schick-neversink","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bricktowntom.com\/blog\/03\/sam-schick-neversink.html","title":{"rendered":"Sam Schick: Neversink"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sam Schick operates Neversink, an agency based in Coastal Maine that offers a range of services that include brand-building and web design. Follow Sam on Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

The who:<\/h2>\n

The website you built for your <\/strong>cousin\u2019s pizzeria<\/strong><\/a> is so legit. Do you often get the opportunity to pitch creative ideas like that to your clients? How does the conversation go?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I think we always<\/em> have that opportunity \u2013 often enough those pitches might even be expected, or at least hoped for \u2013 but it\u2019s still a question of teasing out just how good a fit they are for the client\u2019s vision and their own ability to see it through.<\/p>\n

In every event, we begin all work with what we see as the \u201cblue sky\u201d questions: Where are we really<\/em> trying to go? Wouldn\u2019t it be amazing if \u2026 ? We\u2019ll measure, SWOT, and try to identify possible breakpoints later, but we start by exploring the really big, unique possibilities, what we call the \u201cget this\u201d ideas: concepts that may take some explaining, exploring, and stress-testing, but \u201chear me out,\u201d this could be good…<\/p>\n

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If they\u2019re that exciting to us, and <\/em>can survive some conceptual stress-testing, we know they\u2019ll be stickier and more valuable to the client.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

That concept does still have to deliver on functionality, and extensibility, and selling the client on delight the value of delight and seemingly gratuitous discourse can be a challenge, but we must at least begin from that more aspirational place.<\/p>\n

With some brands, where you came up is a key component. Is there anything about New Jersey (and the Boss) that contributes to your own brand?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Everything about New Jersey (and Springsteen) contributes. The New Jersey I came up in \u2013 nearly every town off Exit 9 (of the Turnpike, of course) \u2013 was teeming with characters, like a mashup of Bellow, Dickens, Stephen Crane, and Springsteen, come colorfully, forcefully to life. Nobody worked the same job as their neighbor and the jobs they could get, find, or create for themselves were endlessly fascinating to me \u2013 the different hustles, the ways some were (and had to be) on the make, how everybody was trying to walk many fine lines.<\/p>\n

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I came to love and deeply appreciate people who were true characters<\/em>, stories that were inimitable and natural, and a willingness to ask, as my friend Kostek would when someone was shining another on, \u201cBut what are your reasons<\/em>, man??\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Springsteen fits into that. I didn\u2019t find my way to him until I was a teenager, though I grew up just up the road. He seemed like a documentarian to me; his characters\u2019 lives matched those around me exactly, they worried over getting caught on the wrong side of the same lines I still feel like I\u2019m jumping over. They drank from that same mixture of audacity, desperation, vital impulse, and a sobering recognition of the stakes.<\/p>\n

All of that becomes a design ideology when it leads to a fascination with different occupations, different ways and needs to tell one\u2019s story, different needs from<\/em> stories. I left my New Jersey with an abiding preference for earnestness<\/strong> and yearnestness (if you will) over being \u201ccool.\u201d I don\u2019t want to waste time but get right to it. To delight.<\/p>\n

How would you describe your professional experience and background?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I came into design through the side door, for sure, and had to break some locks to do it. I wasn\u2019t without any tools \u2013 my brilliantly, sparklingly skilled mother practically raised me to understand hand-lettering, illustration, and how to think through the processes of making<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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That and my New Jerseyan inclination to be on the make, saw me with my first business card in hand I was 13.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

On the other hand, I pursued every \u201ccareer\u201d but<\/em> for design. I was always doing commissions, from event posters to identity work, but it never crossed my mind that it could be my career. Instead, I threw myself into non-profit policy and outreach, managed bookstores from Seattle to Krak\u00f3w, worked in oceanography on the high seas. Even my formal studies were merely design-adjacent; of my majors, Rhetoric & Discourse (essentially applied linguistics) was about as close as I got.<\/p>\n

At some point, after years of traveling, I was back in Seattle, helping a few non-profits, and consulting businesses in development when a client asked if I would replace their designer. That project was even more of a \u201cget this\u201d concept than Dino\u2019s, but it went over so well that commissions started coming out of the blue. It took more than two more years for me to trust it, but soon enough I\u2019d hung out a funky little shingle and was full-time.<\/p>\n

Could you describe the scope of your operation?<\/strong><\/p>\n

My shorthand for it all is \u201cexperience design,” though brand storytelling is true enough. Typically, we (Neversink) or I come into a project after a client sees something else we did, really<\/em> likes how it made them or others feel, and thinks it would probably be great if their project were able to communicate its value with an authentic resonance, impact, and earned lovability<\/p>\n

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As for what that entails, it\u2019s been everything from packaging design to designing and <\/em>developing wildly custom ecommerce platforms, architectural wayfinding and signage, or systems for Responsible AI documentation and toolkits.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

We\u2019re equally comfortable with and jazzed by hand-painting signage or crafting custom typefaces, as we are running website audits and talking through platform development. All of it feels like the work that goes into launching a new ship and is (almost) equally satisfying as a practice in \u2018making.\u2019<\/p>\n

Your website skills are obvious, but prior to that you were an intelligence analyst and worked on an oceanographic research vessel. Could you describe your professional journey? What could up-and-comers learn from it?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s been a journey across<\/em> professions, at least: Instead of charting a clear path through a single career, for better or worse I kept moving toward opportunities that I could learn from, that satisfied some curiosity or other, or simply fed my hunger for and interest in stories<\/em>. I\u2019d come up poor, and in bad schools, with no career counseling whatsoever; \u201cgood stories\u201d and experiences were the entirety of my concept or expectation of wealth, maybe still what I value most, so I lit out in those many, many directions.<\/p>\n

That hedonistic hunger for stories combined with a desperate desire to avoid getting caught on the wrong side of those lines, led to my seeing almost any \u201cadventure\u201d as a lead worth following. I worked in theaters, non-profit housing development, somehow even cryptography, all before I finally figured my way to a great college.<\/p>\n

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Somehow, I understood that each new and usually unpredictable turn in my path was greatly expanding my toolset.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I learned about curation and how critical it was to say \u201cno\u201d from a stint in literary editing. For a minute, I maintained the projection equipment for the Wachowskis, and saw a professional value to losing myself in the building of impossibly detailed little worlds. I learned about improvisation from a short career as a sous chef. And as the publicist for a thrilling and buzzed-about educational center, I learned the critical importance of speaking to potential. I learned HTML, CSS, and JavaScript for the fun of it<\/em>, and found myself designing that first wild website that ultimately changed my life.<\/p>\n

It would take forever to connect all of those experiences (40+ jobs now) to different design projects, but design \u2013 and the running of my own studio \u2013 seemed the perfect synthesis and use of all of those experiences: I went into almost every project with a personal connection, preexisting values, at least a modest number of tools, and an earned enthusiasm for exploring possibilities<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The what:<\/h2>\n

Not every project can be an homage to the early days of the internet\u2026 How would you describe the kind of work that keeps the lights on?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I wasn\u2019t the first analog-inclined \u201cvisual\u201d designer to find that it was the digital work, the UI design, platform development, systems designs \u2013 the more complex projects that may not clear a long runway for \u201cget this\u201d dreaming \u2013 that kept the lights on, and the next clients finding us, for that matter.<\/p>\n

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But that\u2019s only half-true. Our reputation was being made by and we were gaining visibility for our more characteristic, quirky, lovable, often enough lower- or no-paying projects.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The better paying projects that kept and keep us in business? In almost every case, they\u2019ve come our way borne on the ripples made by the quirkier, more inimitable projects. Every project of ours that feels like it has so much more cereal in the box will ultimately be a win, and directly and indirectly keep the lights on, inkwells full, devices charged. Just something I have to trust in.<\/p>\n

How do people find you, and how do you evaluate potential clients?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Seventeen times out of 20, our client found us after seeing something else we did, feeling unexpectedly responsive to it, and delighted to find that we had as much technical facility as creative drive.<\/p>\n

As for how we evaluate, it\u2019s usually a run through three main concerns:<\/p>\n