2026 Intentions

Design, Life, and Everything in Between

Jan 11, 2026

How’s it going, everybody?
Hope you have been well and are getting into the swing of things for 2026 with everything you want to do.

I know, as you’re reading this, it’s probably already the 11th of January or so, but I still wanted to share with you all some of my goals and ideas for 2026.

I’m super optimistic about 2026, It just feels like an exciting year overall.

- It’s the 14th or 15th year I’ve been a designer (if ya let me count high school)
- the sixth year I’ve been creating content
- the 28th year I’ve been a human on this planet.

I’m looking forward to seeing what unfolds this year and I wanted to take some time to share some stuff with y’all.

Some goals I have for design, for life, and for other various interests in my life.

Goal 001 - Design more stuff for fun/good

The first big goal I have in 2026 is to create more design projects for fun and using my design skills for good.

I don’t mean changing the world or creating Instagram infographics about some big political situation going on, but more using my talents to help people with small passion projects and just making cool stuff.

Like I recently just designed a T-shirt graphic for me and my homie’s trivia team that we go to every Thursday at this brewery.

Something that isn’t going to make me any money and I’m not even charging my friends to get the shirts printed or anything.

Just for the freakin’ love of the game.

I’m so excited to just pull up with a box of shirts and give them to the homies who make my Thursdays a little bit better every day.

I also want to help out with graphics for my homies if they end up starting this band that they’re working on.

I also want to use my design skills to help my wife with her different crafts or sending out Christmas cards or just all these little things that sometimes as we get so heady in our graphic design career and feel so proper and professional, we forget to do the little small things that can bring other people joy.

Overall, I’m hoping to just make more stuff for myself this year.

I feel like I slacked a little bit on that in 2025 and I’m excited to re-energize that aspect of my practice.

Goal 002 - Learning how to fix sh*t

The next thing is I want to learn how to work on my truck and fix things more myself.

I have an old 91 F-150 now and I absolutely love it (probably to an annoying amount.)

Everything about it, the super clean black paint, the short bed, the red interior, and the sound system I just got that I can blast some sick hardcore music in.

However, I’m slowly learning that with these old cars, there’s always something broken.

Every little thing leads to something else and I don’t want to be wasting all my money at the mechanic this whole year.

So I’m learning a little bit more about trucks and just cars in general and how to fix them.

I ain’t no pro or anything yet, but it does feel nice to do simple things like switch out your air filters, change your oil, fix a headlight, just small things that won’t completely break the car if I mess up.

I also just want to know how to fix more things around the house in general, but the vehicle is the main big project for that.

Goal 003 - Learn More Spanish

Another goal I have is I really want to learn how to speak Spanish.

I barely know any Spanish.

It’s pretty limited to basic answers and ordering food and stuff like that.

Maybe some slang words here and there.

But I’ve been looking into this app, Speak, and then I also know there’s Duolingo, but I’ve heard mixed reviews about it.

But being half Mexican and being so light skinned/white in this world, it does slowly feel like sometimes I lose my identity as a Mexican American in this country.

I want to learn more Spanish so I can hopefully reconnect with that more and connect with other people in my community who speak the language.

If anyone has any advice on learning Spanish or language speaking apps, feel free to drop in the comments. I would love to know.

Goal 004 -Glue.fm

The next big goal is weekly uploads of my new podcast, glue.fm

I’m so excited about this project and it’s something that I’ve been wanting to do for a long time.

Creating content about graphic design, freelancing, and art on the internet for a while now has been so rewarding, but has also sparked my interest in wanting to expand more into the other stuff that makes me a human and hopefully people mess with it.

It seems like it’s gotten a pretty good reception so far and I’m really excited to stay consistent with it.

I hope anyone who’s reading this that’s listened to an episode has gotten some value out of it.

If you want to check it out, you can do so on YouTube or on Spotify.

Goal 005 - Design more Album Art

My next design-related goal is I want to work on some more official album art music projects.

I was lucky enough to work on 4 album art projects last year, most notably this Bloom project that was really rewarding.

It’s so cool to get that official vinyl and CD in your hands after you’ve done all the hard work.

This year in my freelance design practice with Cuesta Studio, I’m really prioritizing those type of projects and excited for any that come my way this year into my inbox.

I love graphic design and I love music, so it’s pretty freaking awesome when I get paid to combine those things.

Goal 006 - Stay Healthy

The last goal I have is just to overall be a little healthier.

It doesn’t have any specific guidelines or rules.

I just want to stay consistent with trying to eat healthy, drink a lot of water, and continue to go to the rock climbing gym/doing the sauna few times a week.

A lot of those things combined, as well as going to therapy for my mental health, has seemed to just overall benefit my life.

I know that sounds obvious…

“like what do you know, doing good things for yourself makes you feel better.”

But it’s hard to imagine that sometimes, when you’re sitting around feeling lazy some days.

But yeah, that’s pretty much it.

I’ve been super busy, so I obviously haven’t been as consistent with this newsletter.

But I appreciate all of you who read it nonetheless and I’m super stoked to hear about what kind of goals and visions you have for 2026.

So please drop them in the comments.

I’d love to read them.

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