What’s the worst project you’ve ever made—the one you almost cringe to think about sharing with the world? It’s a feeling every designer can identity. But what if you had a chance to fish it out of the proverbial trash can and pit it toe-to-toe against some of your peers’ worst-ever work live on stage, with the hope of having it named “Worst in Show?”
Did I Do That? Scrapes the Bottom of the Barrel did just that this past summer at Seattle Design Festival with special guests Isabella Medina and Maxwell Miller—and now you can hear it to celebrate our fourth anniversary and the end of our seventh season!
Both Isa and Max are former students of mine now based in the greater Seattle area. You can follow Isa on Instagram as @is.medina, or as part of the community event series ¡snack time!, which also hosted an event during this year’s Seattle Design Festival! You can follow Max on Instagram as @stoned_cold_316, or near you at your local LINE ski and snowboard reseller!
Bottom of the Barrel was presented live on stage at Seattle Design Festival in Lake Union Park on Saturday, August 16, 2025. Huge thanks to our competitors, Isabella and Max, for their generosity and good humor in being so game to be part of such a bizarre idea—you absolutely rocked it! Additional thanks to Seattle Design Festival for hosting us once again, and special thanks again to Adrian Pacheco and all our incredible SDF volunteers for helping to make this show happen!
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An audio note: This recording unfortunately has a few noticeable audio issues; while I’ve done my best to improve things, these issues were also present on stage which is most evident during my opening monologue. Luckily, this improves as the show goes on, but apologies for the more-than-occasional lost syllable here and there.
What work are they competing over? You can follow along using the slide deck with all the work our competitors brought here (PDF).
Rather watch than listen? Check out the full video of the event, along with images of the work being discussed, on the Seattle Design Festival YouTube channel.
Did I Do That? is a podcast about graphic designers—the ups and downs they face in creative practice, because making design means making lots (and lots) of mistakes.
Every other Thursday, host Sean Schumacher (Associate Professor of Graphic Design at Portland State University) is joined by a designer guest to share stories about their own mistakes starting out and how they ended up where they did. It’s very weird, pretty silly, and definitely not serious—but neither are designers.