Matt Hayes

Where are you originally from and how did you hear about MCAD?

Michigan and Wisconsin. I heard about MCAD from my high school art teacher.

How do you feel about the Twin Cities?

Great in the summer.

What city do you live in now?

Washington, DC

Why did you choose the bachelor of science program?

There was an interactive CD-ROM that really spoke to and inspired me.

Name your biggest takeaway from the program?

Life is learning, becoming. Not to be too cheesy but it's like art: a simultaneous act of discovery and creation.

Did MCAD prepare you for life after graduation? In what way?

I think, like a lot of private art school graduates who did it all on student loans, I was surprised by the size of my monthly payments—but the network and project-based work that I did in school was what got me a job that allowed me to make those payments

Briefly describe at least one of your internships.

I interned at B-Swing and spent a summer building an AJAX and XSLT-based HTML table editor.

What advice do you have for current MCAD students?

Burnout is real and harder to identify (in yourself) than you might think. Make sure to hang on to and keep in touch with your community of artists and creatives. Never stop learning. Figure out what makes you excited to work and do as much of that as possible.

Describe what you do for work and how you feel about it.

Creative coding, data visualization, games, and game-like interactive experiences on the web.

How did you get your job?

By treating my engineering work as an artistic practice; constantly reading, learning, studying, experimenting; keeping my skills sharp and diverse with "passion projects" and side-hustle.

How do you network yourself and your art?

Meetups—lots and lots of meetups.

What inspires you/your work?

Emerging technologies, the internet, video games.

Favorite project you worked on for a client?

While working at Tumblr, I convinced them to rebuild their entire web frontend from scratch as a progressive web app (PWA) and first-class API consumer.

Current obsession?

Rust -> WebAssembly