107 • MATTHEW HOFFMAN

Our guest is Matthew Hoffman, the artist and custodian behind You Are Beautiful — the Chicago-born project that has placed over 10 million stickers and more than 100 public installations around the world since 2002.In this episode, Matthew speaks with host Christian Solorzano about the long, unplanned path that led him here. He traces his story from taking apart radios in the basement as a kid and falling in love with making things by hand in middle school wood shop, to a final-year high school graphic arts class that opened the door to photography and design, to moving to Chicago in 2002 with no network of family or friends — and turning the feeling of being lost in the city into a message that now lives in over 100 languages.Matthew shares his philosophy of being a "slow builder," why he prefers the word custodian to founder, and how the community has carried this project far beyond anything he could have on his own. He talks about mental health as an undercurrent in the work and the wall of letters in his space that people have been sending in since 2003.The conversation also explores how he finds his voice by simply putting things out into the world, why he believes that "over perfection is procrastination," and his guiding mission statement for designers entering the field: make things that matter.