Brainstorm: The Neon Snooze Interview

BRIANA FEOLA AND JASON SNYDER, THE ART SUPER-DUO BEHIND BRAINSTORM, DO WHAT THEY LOVE AND LOVE WHAT THEY DO—AND HOPE THAT YOU DO, TOO

Feola, left, and Snyder, right, taking a curious gander at their dog, Maple, on their living room couch. Photography by Alyssa Doust and Mason Burke

Briana Feola and Jason Snyder don’t always agree. In fact, they disagree—a lot. Talking to the married-couple-art-duo in the living room of their Dover, New Hampshire, home, they frequently challenge each other—on whether they’re beholden to retailers, if Jason’s baking or Briana’s painting qualify as creative passion projects, the best way to eat chicken wings (Briana prefers dry-rub while Jason leans toward spicy-sweet sauces like buffalo honey). “We started our whole relationship by disagreeing about certain things,” Feola tells me in her office art studio on the first floor of their house, “and now we hold true to that.” The way they see it, pressure makes diamonds. “There is a lot of friction in the way that we work together. When we’re bickering about what we see on screen or on paper, we’re pushing each other to make it better. That’s when the best work comes out.”

Feola, 36, and Snyder, 39, first started disagreeing at Rowan University in Glassboro, New Jersey, majoring in graphic design and art education, respectively. When Feola created a magazine for her senior year publishing class and outsourced a handful of drawings to Snyder, they called it Brainstorm Magazine. The name stuck. The couple moved to Philadelphia after graduating in 2007 and 2008 and started selling screen-printed posters at craft fairs. In an alternate universe, Feola and Snyder would’ve gotten big-time jobs at serious design firms in Philly—but this was 2008. A serious American recession ravaged the job market, leaving the couple with a profusion of time and looming student loans. So, they worked on their art—just until they scored that big-time job, of course. They registered the name Brainstorm as an LLC in 2008, using it as an umbrella term for any and all art projects they tackled. Living with four roommates, sharing a car, and printing posters in their basement, they hit Etsy at its genesis and followed Shepard Fairey’s business model of accessible art and cheap multiples. It took three years until an Urban Outfitters’ buyer noticed their work at a craft fair and expressed interest, wanting to buy 5,000 posters for the lifestyle retailer’s home décor section. “Figuring it the fuck out,” as Feola says, the couple completed the order and learned what it would truly take to make – and be profitable making – art full-time. Twelve years later and they haven’t looked back. With posters, puzzles, and other original products selling at retail shops in 35 states, projects ranging from vast brewery murals to full suites of designs for festivals like Lollapalooza, and an illustrious collaborator list (including L.L.Bean, Timberland, Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival, Patagonia, Whole Foods Market, and North Country Hard Cider, just to name a few), it’s safe to say Feola and Snyder have ditched any desire of landing traditional jobs.

“We were always very intentional about it and very fucking grateful for each other and for the work that we were doing because it was ours. It was ours. And that mattered. So I wish for everyone to have something that they can grasp that gives them that anchored feeling. It’s freedom but it is also stability. I wish that for everybody.”

Their style – focusing on science, nature, and travel – is clean and whimsical, as approachable as it is detailed. They make colorful state maps, art prints of mountains and horizons, blankets, hats, totes, and towels all chock-full of precise-but-wonky intricacy. Feola handles layout, color, and bigger-picture creative direction while Snyder focuses on art direction and brass-tacks illustration. In conversation Feola is warm and inviting, while Snyder taps into a more quippy, ironic vein. Their disparate dispositions meld into a singular vision and unassailable devotion; they exude a dogged dedication to their craft and a refusal to bend to conventional wisdom. As much as they squabble over particulars, their ambitions match stride-for-stride.

“We subscribe to this idea: freedom versus stability mentality,” Feola says. “We didn’t have a lot of stability in the early days. We were deeply in debt, and we were figuring things out along the way, and we always just wanted to do our own thing in our own way, so we just kept saying, ‘Freedom versus stability. We’ll say yes to everything, live with a thousand roommates, do whatever it takes to make this work.’ And eventually, the stability came because we stayed the course with this dedication, and every day we would have to wake up and say, ‘Okay, how are we making money today? How are we gonna make this work?’ And eventually we realized, we make as much money as hard as we work. We have this deep understanding with each other. There’s just a deep trust. We’re willing to dedicate what it takes.”

On a windy November day, Feola and Snyder invited us into their home to talk shop. Meandering around their living room and art studio, we picked their brains about creative process, the myth of work-life balance, and how many third-graders they could defeat before becoming overwhelmed. Later that afternoon we stopped by their Garrison City Beerworks pop-up shop in downtown Dover to munch on some tacos and drink a few brews. The following conversation has been lightly edited for content and clarity.

Markers, pencils, and paints meticulously organized in Feola’s home art studio.

Neon Snooze: Who were the first people to inspire you creatively? 

Jason Snyder: I was almost more inspired by people’s business practices than their work. All these people were super inspiring to me—someone who was our age, dealing with the same struggles, trying to make a living on the internet which was evolving at the time. It was more inspiring to hear a really good bit of advice than looking through these fucking classical books or going to a gallery in New York and being like, “This is great, but this is not my path at all. I have no fucking idea how to get from here to a gallery in the city. But I do know how to get into the same craft show as this guy, and he seems to be making it work.” 

Briana Feola: Our contemporary printmakers and poster designers were so open and ready to collaborate and share information, and there was just this melting pot of information. People wanted you to succeed. We learned very quickly that there was no such thing as selling out. Because people – when they would see success, or when we got into Urban Outfitters – there was always this, “Ugh—you’re selling out! You’re not a true artist.” But we were like, “We’re trying to fucking eat! We need to do something where we’re still making things that we want to make, but also making money.” And the people that were our age out there at these shows were doing that and super supportive.

NS: You walk into a gas station convenience store and find an unexpected $8 in your pocket. What are you buying?

BF: Lottery tickets. You found $8? That’s a gift from the universe, you gotta go give it back—to the state. Take a chance man!

JS: I’m thinking a packet of M&M’s, so that’s $2. Maybe some kind of caffeinated beverage. Sweets, caffeine, and uhhhhh . . . Actually, you know what? I’ll scratch all that and just say a bag of gas station beef jerky. Car snack.

NS: You guys live and work at home. How are you dividing up that time? What habits are you creating to set a schedule for yourself?

“Every choice that you make affects a thousand other choices. Everything is interconnected. Your decision today is going to affect everything. That can feel either really daunting, like a really heavy weight, or it can feel like, ‘Oh, fuck yes! I have a little bit of control in this world and I can make little micro-adjustments. I can say yes over here and no over here and I can adjust in this department or this place.’ The tide keeps coming and going. You can’t stop the waves but you can learn to surf.”

JS: There is no work-life balance. That’s kind of fake. I mean, I think people who try to establish a work-life balance initially say that work has a negative connotation because they may not like it, so they say, “You have to set up this balance for you time.” But if you like it, and this is what I would do with my time off, what’re we talking about? It’s all kind of blurry. Some people come home and they’re like, “Oh, my fucking boss, my co-workers, my commute.” All these friction points that people don’t like about their job, and they have this idea that, “When I’m 65, I can stop working, because working sucks! That’s the goal: You just have to work real hard, and then not work.” I’m not gonna subscribe to that at all; I think I’m gonna keep doing this as long as I’m alive, with the same kind of balance. It’s still a very tricky, circular question. People who are striving for a work-life balance are misaligned, with either their work or their life, and are trying to figure out, “How can I make this better with these fake fucking productivity hacks?” or whatever the internet’s trying to tell you. “Don’t check your email before 12 o’clock so you can have your personal time.” And I get all that, but I think people who have trouble with the work-life balance just need to identify their friction points and make them go away. We chose to make them go away by running our own company. You don’t like your boss? Well, be your own fucking boss. You don’t like your employees? We don’t have any. We did—we had two, at one point. Didn’t like that dynamic and who it made us, so we don’t do that anymore. You don’t like your commute? Great, I fucking intentionally moved into a town where I could walk one mile to our studio when we had it. So all the things that people need to balance—you can get rid of them. It’s gonna be hard—

BF: —and it could take a long time. It’s taken us a long time to figure that out.

JS: So now we’re at this point and it’s all just one thing. I recognize where people could struggle with a work-life balance, but you can change it. Don’t use it as an excuse and just identify your fucking problems and fix it.

NS: It’s impressive to be able to take something you’re passionate about and make it your lifestyle—or make it the way you earn money and not look at it like a chore. Because I feel like a lot of times, people go through life thinking, “Oh, do I take my passion – like, art – do I make that my life? Or do I go into something else that I know isn’t going to be as difficult to get into? Am I gonna turn something that I was really passionate about—

JS: —into something I fucking hate.” That’s totally real.

BF: That’s a risk. That’s a true risk. And there are times when we feel burnt out, too. That’s a very real thing. But we have enough variety. We built Brainstorm as this big umbrella where we can do whatever we want underneath it, and that gives us flexibility and variety, and again, this is all the privilege that we’ve earned ourselves to be able to pivot and do weird things.

NS: It seems like you’ve both thought a lot about work-life balance and come to a pretty unique stance on it. How’d you evolve to that thinking? 

JS: It’s all about how you frame work and how you frame life. Why do you need the balance between the two? It’s like, “One sucks, and one doesn’t suck.”

BF: And that’s the story we’ve been told. From our parents and the previous generations. It’s like, “You’re supposed to complain about your job.” We come from families where that’s all they did, complain and commute and then not be around. And everybody has their things that they learn and instill in their younger generations and grow up with these ideas, and either you follow suit or you rebel. And I think we rebelled and we’re very intentional that we did not want to hate our jobs and we did not want to have a commute.

JS: Just fucking turn on the news: “Well here you go, look at I-95, it’s a parking lot.” Like, everybody’s upset! We need to figure out how to not do that! It might not happen tomorrow. It took us fucking how many years, but you can set a plan, an intention, and be like, “I am not gonna do this, because this is horrible.” And figure it out along the way.

BF: With all that in mind, we were still able to do the things that are expected. We were able to buy a house.

JS: However, if I just got a job a long time ago . . . 

BF: We might’ve had a house a long time ago!

JS: Right. There are a lot of things that we have delayed because of this lifestyle. Y’all are interviewing us now, fifteen years in. We would’ve had a very different interview seven, eight, nine, ten years ago, where we’d be like, “We’re broke. We’re never gonna get out of this hole, but at least I’m doing what I want!” And that’s worth a lot more.

BF: We were always very intentional about it and very fucking grateful for each other and for the work that we were doing because it was ours. It was ours. And that mattered. So I wish for everyone to have something that they can grasp that gives them that anchored feeling. It’s freedom but it is also stability. I wish that for everybody.

NS: Can I just say, you’re saying seven, eight years ago—I feel like that’s us. That’s where we’re at right now. My commute’s long. I’m broke. It’s inspiring to hear you talk about this.

JS: I know—I’ve been there, dude.

BF: Every choice that you make affects a thousand other choices. Everything is interconnected. Your decision today is going to affect everything. That can feel either really daunting, like a really heavy weight, or it can feel like, “Oh, fuck yes! I have a little bit of control in this world and I can make little micro-adjustments. I can say yes over here and no over here and I can adjust in this department or this place.” The tide keeps coming and going. You can’t stop the waves but you can learn to surf.

NS: Would you rather be a teeny tiny silver dollar or a big penny?

JS: Big penny.

NS: What’s your ideal time of day?

JS: Early morning. Like 5 a.m. East Coast. It feels like the rest of the country hasn’t woken up yet, like you have this advantage on the East Coast. I don’t know what it is, like some sort of ephemeral feeling. It feels quiet but not in the actual audio sense, just quiet as in no one’s gonna bother you at 5 a.m. so you have time to yourself.

BF: Peaceful, meditation time, early morning. Nothing has happened yet and you can set the intention for the day. At the end of the night my mind is just racing, constantly, and it’s a reset in the morning. Clean slate. You get to choose whatever version of yourself you wanna be, as much as you can control. The potential is there for a brief moment. 

NS: You’re getting wings. Dry rub or sauce? Boneless or bone-in? Blue cheese or ranch?

BF: Dry rub, bone-in, no sauce. Respect the wing! Anything with a lot of spices and flavor.

JS: Sauce, bone-in, blue cheese. With celery and carrots—I like the crunch. For sauce maybe a spicy-sweet, like a buffalo honey.

NS: You guys have such a consistent, honed style. Does it always feel consistent?

BF: No, not at all! This feels like fucking chaos to me! It works and I don’t understand it. We’ve changed our logo a thousand times—fucking changed it a thousand times, like never, ever landed on something. We’ve been so many different things and done so many different kinds of creative projects, it’s not like we’re just one thing. We’re a design studio but we’re illustrators but we’re artists and we’re also—we do so much. We’re not screen printing anymore because we have a company that’s doing that for us now, which is weird, because it’s the thing that we started with. It’s like, if you don’t write every day, do you still consider yourself a writer? It’s a tough question, right?

NS: It’s an interesting thing because every time you go back, it’s like, “Can I still do this?”

BF: And I hate to say that feeling doesn’t go away. It’s that deep—I don’t want to say doubt, but it’s a little bit of a fire that keeps you guessing. No, we’re not screen printing every day, but I still consider myself a screen printer because I know how to do it top-to-bottom and I do it really well. And I am a painter even if I don’t sell my paintings.

NS: You’re in a gauntlet-style arena and an endless flow of third graders are coming to attack you, one every five seconds. How many third graders do you defeat before becoming overwhelmed?

JS: I could go for awhile. I’m thinking at least fifty. One kick to the face. Every five seconds? That kid’s fucking done. That’s a slow rate. Use one to fucking defeat the other one. Just pick them up and bash them together. And then I’d get tired at around fifty kids, probably.

BF: Also, why are they so rabid? Rabid children, I could take sixteen.

JS: Third graders are what? Nine years old? I’m trying to picture their height. One shot as they come right at me—it’s over, next.

BF: I don’t know—they could take you over.

JS: They will, eventually. I will get tired. But I’m gonna fucking kill a lot of third graders. I’ll stick with fifty, at least.

NS: Would you rather fight one-hundred duck-sized hippos, or one hippo-sized duck?

BF: One-hundred duck-sized hippos because I think they’ll be about the same height and weight as a third grader. Right? Is this all in the same day as the third grader situation?

JS: It’s the next level of hell. After you die, you go to another level of hell. A hippo-sized duck, you are fucked. That’s like one snap of the beak and you’re done. I’d have to do the hundred. That beak is gonna ruin you. You have no chance. I mean, duck-sized duck, also a problem. You have a fucking duck coming after you? That’s not cool either. I’m dead either way. This is a lose-lose for me—Brainstorm is done. Ducks, hippos, whatever it is, I’m done. Sorry, I would rather take some more third graders if you’re offering.

Brainstorm stickers for sale at their Garrison City Beerworks’ pop-up shop that ran October through December, 2022.

NS: What projects are you proudest of?

BF: I think I’m most proud of the totality of this business because the business has been the art. I don’t want to say our life is a work of art, because that sounds so shitty and braggy, that’s not what I’m trying to say, but the journey has been the art. The whole thing is like a beautiful creative pursuit and that’s the thing that I am proudest of, that we’ve stayed on this course, whatever that course is. Even when things were tight and things were hard, we just kept creating, and I’m proudest of that.

NS: It’s really admirable that you never compromised how you lived your life.

BF: I mean, I wouldn’t say we didn’t compromise. We’re very dedicated and we didn’t go out a lot in our 20s. We were very much like, “We have to make rent and have to be very dedicated and work really hard,” and we did sacrifice fun times and travel and things, but like I said, that came later and we can have fun now. It’s all just choices—and I’m proud of where we landed.

“We subscribe to this idea: freedom versus stability. We’ll say yes to everything, live with a thousand roommates, do whatever it takes to make this work . . . And eventually, the stability came because we stayed the course with this dedication. We have this deep understanding with each other. There’s just a deep trust. We’re willing to dedicate what it takes.”

NS: Creating a brand for yourself can almost feel like, “Why am I doing this? What’s the purpose of this?” So then when it gets to other people and you hear the feedback, you realize that’s why you’re doing it. For people to say, “Oh this is cool, thank you!” They make you feel like you’re not crazy. Because just toiling away, doing your thing, sometimes it’s like, “Am I fucking crazy?”

BF: But you are! But you are crazy! When you finally realize and embrace the crazy and are grateful for the path that’s being laid out in front of you, you just attract more of that into your life. You attract the good stuff that comes along with following your curiosity, following your passions. That’s why I just say keep going. Whatever it looks like right now, it might not look like what you want it to look like or it might not be a thing that makes sense to people, but you’re doing it. And just keep going. Just keep going. That’s all I can say. It’s brave to put things out in the world. You just throw spaghetti at the wall and you hope that it sticks. I mean, that’s really what we’ve been doing for the last fifteen years, too, and sometimes it sticks.

NS: What was the thing if you could when the time was right but it wasn’t quite exactly the way it could be but you dreamed. Would you?

JS: Yeah, I mean why not? I think so.

BF: Absolutely! The answer is always yes. Yes, fuck yes!

Brainstorm’s Yosemite National Park Map, selling on their website for $50.