Marks on Blank Pages
This year: a relaunched personal website, backed my first Broadway show, a promotion to Associate Director. Each one started as a mark on a blank page.
Some became real things. Some are still becoming. All of them taught me something about momentum: how one act of creation leads to the next.
I got promoted to Associate Director of Design at Blizzard.
Leading design for Battle.net across accounts, checkout, game services, support, and developer platforms. Our team shipped meaningful updates to our paths to pay and play, plus hundreds of refinements that work so well players don't think about them. Which is the goal. Good design eases into the user's intent. That Edward Tufte line keeps proving itself: "Good design is a lot like clear thinking made visual."
Real Women Have Curves, the Musical opened on Broadway.
The story mattered: working-class Latina immigrant women trying to achieve the American Dream, navigating dignity and belonging. Backing this show meant being part of something by helping creators realize their vision, watching performers make their Broadway debuts, and fulfilling my own dream of investing in my first show.
I will always remember the standing ovations night after night. The sound filling the room. The joy on faces. The energy in how people stood. I am so proud to have invested with family and friends and it all started with a friendship: Jack Noseworthy, the co-lead producer, who opened the door.
Now when the cast album plays, those feelings comes back. Entertainment Weekly ranked it #6 on their "Best of Broadway" Top Ten list, and people are still resonating with it. Read more in Entertainment Weekly → and Listen on Apple Music →
NextGen Spotlight sold out and raised over $20,000 for Broadway Cares.
As the chair, I helped raise more than $500,000 together for Broadway Cares through the NextGen Network over the past few years. It's time to pass the torch on leadership, but I'll be staying on to produce Spotlight going forward. The lesson keeps proving itself: we stand taller in ensemble. Read more in Playbill →
I taught myself to build for the web.
ChrisGuimarin.com is live. Learning git workflows, optimizing fonts, setting up RSS feeds. Not polished. But for the first time, architecting and structuring the site based on imagination, not constraints. No other builders dictating how their tool gets used, no product managers making decisions upstream. The site is my personal playground.
I started positioning for board advisory work.
Still early. Taking courses, figuring out how design becomes strategic counsel. When design gets brought in early to something thorny, where users have to learn a new concept or navigate an unexpected flow, design can soften the experience. When design arrives late, it's handcuffed by prior decisions. Clarity often doesn't emerge until thinking becomes visual. I want to be the voice that asks "is this viable, trustworthy, and delightful?" before decisions lock. More to come.
I got back behind the camera.
Taking more photos. Flowers, nature, life's moments. See below, a lily pad on a garden walk with Vincent and friends at the Madoo Conservancy. A sliver of time, captured.
Looking to 2026
A backlog is waiting. First iOS app: a design quotation app for sharing favorites like that Edward Tufte line above. Not to make money, but to learn, to practice. Physical products to make. 2026 is the year talk becomes shipped work.
Follow along at ChrisGuimarin.com.
Change isn't one big leap. It's the accumulation of showing up, the code commits, the creative attempts, the community work. One mark on a blank page, then another, then another.
To more of it.
Chris