Hi, I’m Josh; a creative technologist with a background in art, a love for design, and a decade of experience helping brands grow without losing the focus on creativity.

I studied Art History at Sonoma State University with a minor in Painting, focusing on contemporary art, the Baroque, and Mannerism. Before all that, though, I started an art blog in 2007 that unexpectedly took off—leading me to curate gallery shows, write a weekly column for SFWeekly.com, and fall hard for the intersection of creativity and community.

After college, I tried to break into the Bay Area museum world (not easy). I ended up designing shirts at a store that licensed UC Berkeley merch — think “My Grandkid Goes to UC Berkeley” on repeat. I snuck in my own creativity and one of my off-hours parody designs, Mordor University, went viral. That sparked a long-running obsession with shirt design and led to successful experiments selling on shirts and commissions for various brands.

Studying a painting by Paul Chatem

From there, my path zigzagged between museums like the Exploratorium and the Contemporary Jewish Museum (where I handled email and web work), teaching a year-long graphic design and coding program in my hometown, where I developed coursework on apparel design and print-on-demand, helping students get their work on platforms and start selling. Eventually, I joined Redbubble full-time in 2014.

What began as a Community Manager role at Redbubble evolved into a multifaceted position focused on artist education and engagement—through nearly 200 blog posts, downloadable templates used by tens of thousands of artists, an expanded social presence, and three years co-leading the Artist in Residence program in San Francisco. I also rebooted my old personal art blog on Instagram, growing it organically to over 300k followers.

As my skill set evolved, I moved deeper into email marketing and martech. I helped manage artist communications, led multiple platform migrations (Sailthru to Iterable, Attentive to Iterable for SMS), built modular email systems, and launched countless landing pages. At our peak, we were sending around a billion emails during holiday — not to a billion customers, but you get the idea.

In 2023, I became a one-person email department. I handled everything: briefing, segmentation, project management, coding, reporting, design, QA — the whole pipeline. I also leaned heavily into AI tools to streamline workflows, solve problems, and accelerate my learning. Iterable even invited me to speak about AI in marketing at an offsite in Palo Alto, and featured me in a case study about how I used AI to manage the program solo and stay profitable.

These days, I’m continuing to explore where creativity meets tech. I still design shirts, build websites, write about the things I learn, and run a growing community for creatives. I believe in sharing what I know, experimenting, and helping others find their way through the noise.

Teaching and sharing knowledge has always been at the core of what I do, whether it’s helping students break into print-on-demand, writing resources for artists, or documenting systems for my teams. I believe creativity grows when knowledge is shared freely.

Tools & Skills

Marketing & Messaging
Email strategy, segmentation, deliverability, campaign ops, SMS, push, customer journeys, lifecycle marketing

Platforms & Tech
Iterable, Sailthru, Attentive, Klaviyo, Flodesk, Google Postmaster Tools, Digioh, Segment, Contentful, Confluence, Jira, Linear, WordPress, Shopify, Bigcartel, Looker, Branch.

Design & Development
HTML/CSS, MJML, Figma, Photoshop, Illustrator, Procreate, Canva, modular email systems, landing pages

Other Skills
Copywriting, blogging, SEO basics, knowledge base creation, community building, artist relations, content strategy

AI & Automation
Workflow building, AI-assisted email and content creation, educational and ethical use of AI tools. ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini.

Certifications

  • Contentful Certified Content Manager – (Credential)
  • Canva Graphic Design Essentials – (Credential)
  • Google Tag Manager Fundamentals
  • Google Analytics (GA4) Certification
  • Iterable Foundations Certified – (Credential)
  • Iterable SMS Marketing Certified – (Credential)
  • Iterable AI Marketing Certified – (Credential)
  • Klaviyo Product Certificate – (Credential)
  • Klaviyo Deliverability Certified – (Credential)
  • Klaviyo SMS Strategy Certified – (Credential)

Published & Presented

  • Interview – “Stages” by Jason Edmiston (2011)
    A featured interview in Edmiston’s art book documenting the progression of his works.
  • Foreword – The National Portrait Gallery of Kessa: The Art of Arabella Proffer (Cooperative Press, Dec 2011)
    Wrote the foreword for this genre-defying collection of portraits by Arabella Proffer.
  • Keynote – Iterable Active Tour, Palo Alto (Nov 8, 2023)
    Gave a keynote on how AI tools can support lifecycle marketing, especially for small teams.

Interviews & Podcasts

  • Dark Art Society Podcast, with Chet Zar — “Social Media for Artists,” Ep. 110
  • Dark Art Society Podcast, with Chet Zar — “Social Media for Artists Pt 2,” Ep. 167
  • Dark Art Society Podcast, with Chet Zar — “Email Marketing for Artists PT 2,” Ep. 278

Awards

  • 2nd Place – “Electronic Music”, MJC Celebration of the Humanities
  • 1st Place – “Digital Art”, MJC Celebration of the Humanities
  • 2nd Place – “Painting”, MJC Celebration of the Humanities

Curatorial Work

  • “Attack of the B Movie Art Show” – Space Gallery, San Francisco CA (April 14–21, 2008)
  • “This is the End” – Alternative Cafe, Monterey CA (March 9—April 13, 2009)
  • “Fables and Follies” – Alternative Cafe, Monterey CA (June 11—July 5, 2010)
  • “Under the Gun” — Articulated Gallery, San Francisco CA (June 3—July 1, 2011)
  • “Marvelous Humans” — Articulated Gallery, San Francisco CA (April 7—May 3, 2012)