Every month, we recognize a different person at Swim who is doing something awesome. Instead of keeping these interviews to ourselves, we decided to share a little bit about our people with all of you. First up: Ben Luoma.
1. What is your favorite part of your job?
Summed up, my job is designer, developer and director. Because that encompasses so much, I’m fairly fickle in regards to a favorite part of my job.
Most days I’d say I love working with a team and helping people succeed with their work or accomplish their goals. Then I should say first and foremost being a director is the best part of my job.
But in my heart, I know I love art and technology. In whatever form, be it design or music, software or programming, they are my two passions in life. They feel like the closest things that exist in the real world to “magic.” And what is more wonderful than being able to do magic for a living. Then I should say the best part of my job is designer or developer.
2. What is a quote or motto you live by?
I really have grown to live by these words from Winston Churchill:
To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.
I love that the ever-evolving nature of design, technology and the industry I work in forces me to be an active, lifelong student. Always learning, always improving. That desire to change and improve extends into every part of my life. In fact every New Year’s, as many close to me are aware, I develop a pretty thorough list of resolutions and goals for both my work and personal life. While failing at most (if I’m going to be honest), I do feel like along the way, my life gets more fulfilling with each endeavor. Sometimes, I even end up making significant changes in my life for the better.
3. Something your fellow Swim peeps might not know about you?
I cry at movies. Like a baby.
I can’t remember the last one to make me cry but the one that made me cry hardest was The Fault in Our Stars. Jesus! What a heartbreaker! Augustus! I’m literally welling up thinking about it right now.
4. Favorite hobby outside of work?
I love board games. Not so much classic games—e.g. Monopoly, though I do enjoy a game of Clue—I’m really into more indie games or games from smaller publishers. The most notable of which is The Settlers of Catan, or if you are a real tabletop gamer simply Catan. My collection of games is ever expanding, but I’ll say my favorite game of late is actually A Game of Thrones The Board Game, from Fantasy Flight Games.
5. What’s on your work playlist?
Hold on, let me open Spotify quick 😉 So I have literally no playlists, only songs that I’ve saved on Spotify. It is really diverse though. I’m currently listening to new stuff from M83, Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats, Alessia Cara, Baio. I’ve also peppered in I have older stuff from ELO, Paul McCartney & Wings and literally the last song I saved to my list was Whiter Shade of Pale by Procol Harum. And of course because I grew up in the 90s, you’ll find stuff like Nirvana, Beck, Biggie and some one-hitters like Spacehog or Eels. And I’m proudly embarrassed to say that indeed Lisa Loeb’s 1995 hit Stay is also in my list.
