Zach Stevens
Designer in San Diego. Twelve years of brand, website and product work, a co-founder at Conversion Factory, and a long-running argument that the best brands are stolen rather than invented.
Born in San Diego
Never left, give or take a few deliberate trips.
My parents bought a house in Clairemont
Sequoia Elementary
Became the kid who loved to draw somewhere around kindergarten. My teachers liked me because I could read their sarcasm early, and hand it straight back.
Marston Middle School
Where I met my best friend Caleb Sherwood. Still talk to him every week.
Started training jiu-jitsu
Only a year of it before high school wrestling took over, but it was a taste of what would come back later and become a core part of my life outside work.
Clairemont High School
Still the kid who liked to draw. Until I was about 17 I was an underdog at pretty much everything, but everyone knew I could draw. Captain of the wrestling team my senior year, two years of swim, and probably one of two kids in the school who stayed sober the whole way through.
San Diego State, graphic design
I was sitting in a Marine Corps recruiter's office the day before my acceptance letter arrived.
The front office at Chula Vista PD
No, I was not a police officer. I worked the front office of the police department where my dad was a cop. It is deeply strange to walk into the bathroom at work and find your father there, as though the two of you are on the same pee schedule.
SDSU Career Services
First professional design job.
Picked up a camera for the first time
It stuck. I wasn't anywhere without it for the rest of college.
Lavin Entrepreneurship Center, SDSU
Where I met Bern Schroeder. He coached me out of being somebody who was just good at pushing pixels and into someone who could articulate the importance of branding within the scope of marketing strategy. Pivotal moment of my career.
A year of big trips
The John Muir Wilderness
A backpacking trip through part of it. Nothing like leaving your desk for something tactile and outdoors.
Mexico
A mission trip, building a house for a family who needed one. Why it matters to give, and to steward money wisely if you have it.
Ireland
November, for a close friend's wedding. America is genuinely great at a lot of things, and there are still other beautiful parts of the world worth seeing.
Graduated SDSU
Bright Ideas
An LED manufacturer startup, and a one-man design show. Spec sheets, website, collateral, brand identity — whatever it was, I came up with it.
Went solo
Learned that networking with other business owners, marketing yourself, and how you operate a shop is just as important as the actual design work — if not more important than it. The founder of Bright Ideas became one of my first clients.
My own studio
Running my own business shaped a lot of the operational procedures Conversion Factory uses today. It's the part of my life I'm proudest of: completely independent, six figures a year without anybody handing me a salary, doing good work, forming my own opinions about how that work should be done — and paying off my student loans myself, with money from a business I built.
Great brands aren't created, they're stolen
The ethos formed here. Nothing is original; everything is a remix of past success. It became the backbone of how I run a branding project.
Met my wife
During COVID.
Diagnosed with Crohn's
This beast announced itself in the form of shitting blood and vomiting while on a backpacking trip through the John Muir Wilderness. The diagnosis came later, and it has been a defining part of my life since — mostly for what it forced me to see about what stress and bad eating and no exercise actually do to a person. No flare-up since.
Got married
Met Corey
Through his Indie Hackers group. We think about marketing and design the same way, and the skill sets are complementary rather than overlapping — a top-notch marketer and a top-notch designer. His words, not mine.
Started Conversion Factory
With Corey and Nick. Zero to $36,000 in recurring revenue almost immediately.
Loss
My best friend's sister took her own life. It was the worst day of my life, and it taught me the importance of family ties, staying close to the people you love, and the impact of abdicating your responsibility and neglecting the truth.
Bought a house
Four minutes from my parents, four minutes from my in-laws. We were getting ready for the baby.
Became a dad
Our first designer
We hired Andre, and I started sharpening a set of skills I had never needed: handing over seven years of running my own studio and ten years of practising professionally to somebody else. Learning to make clones of myself — who could not only design like me, but design better than me and think like me.
Grew the design team from one to three
New revenue milestones, month after month
Larger clients staying longer, which is what freed the founders up for other things — this site, my design-skills repo, Corey’s marketing-skills repo, and finishing the book.
The year we adopted AI properly
Not just on the marketing side. Fully entrenched, AI-capable designers.
- Tokensoft
- CurePath
- DragonGlass
- Maple Blue
- Enwoven
- Collective Ventures
- Communion Church
- Devstats
- Crypto 101
- Humbl
- Alloy
Around forty in five years. These are the ones worth naming.
- Jiu-jitsuBlue belt, training at Victory MMA
- Barbell training and calisthenicsI'm aiming to hit the GBRS standards for tier 1 operators, and I spent a year refining my Murph to get it to 34 minutes without a vest.
- PhotographyAmateur, and rarely without a camera
- Guitar
- Snowboarding
- HikingWith my wife and family
- Beach volleyballI suck at it, still love to play.
- Critiquing movies and musicAt length
- The perfect steakA permanent pursuit
- CookingMy go-to dishes are chicken shawarma pitas, balsamic meatloaf, and sesame beef tacos.
- Greek yogurt experimentsFor someone with a serious sweet tooth, Greek yogurt is a hack I keep finding new recipes for. Latest and greatest: coconut cream pie with lime zest.
After twelve years of designing brands, I've come to one universal conclusion: the best brands are not created, they are stolen. Nothing is original — everything is a remix of past success.
Stealing well is not copying. Copying is taking a competitor's surface. Stealing is going to the things you genuinely love — outside your category, usually outside software entirely — and taking the structure underneath them.
Definition
By detailing your ideal user, your competitors, your story, and the things that inspire you, we define your brand and position the company to authentically stand out. The best part: we steal creative ideas from the things you already love.
Foundation
We bring the brand to life by crafting the fundamental pieces of your design language — logo, colors, typefaces, graphics — and the guidelines for using them. These are the building blocks for the website, the product, and the marketing.
Application
Armed with a design language and a new identity, we apply it across the company's assets. Deliverables vary, but generally include the website, the product, social templates and pitch decks.