From Band Websites to Google Fonts Knowledge: A Conversation With Elliot Jay Stocks

Elliot Jay Stocks has worn many hats over a career spanning more than two decades: web designer, creative director, magazine publisher, typography consultant, and electronic music producer. In the latest Smashing Podcast episode, Vitaly Friedman sits down with Stocks to trace that winding path—from designing covers for a CD he released while working at Virgin Megastores to leading Google Fonts Knowledge, Google's educational hub for typography.

How a Music Shop Job Sparked a Design Career

Stocks describes his entry into design as a series of "happy accidents." After high school, he took a year off and worked at a music shop, where he and some colleagues released a CD. When the store managers allowed them to sell it, the job of designing the cover fell to Stocks—who had only dabbled with an early version of Photoshop. He also built the website for the CD using Homestead, a WYSIWYG editor.

"That whole thing was kind of my first experience of design," Stocks says, "Web design and print design. And that kind of ignited that interest." He went on to study at university, building websites for local bands on the side, and eventually landed a job at EMI working on music sites.

Stocks will share more about this journey and how side projects shaped his career at Smashing Conf San Francisco 2022.

Formative Influences: Flash, Web Standards, and Typographic Detail

Looking back at the early 2000s, Stocks points to the "wild west" era of Flash-based web design as a major influence. Sites by studios like PreyStation, tokyoplastic, and My Pet Skeleton were pushing creative boundaries, and the aesthetic had more than a touch of David Carson's grungy, type-driven style—something Stocks says he only recognized in retrospect.

As the industry shifted toward web standards, figures like Zeldman and Eric Meyer, along with Dave Shea's CSS Zen Garden, opened another exciting direction: building within new constraints. Around that same time, Stocks' aesthetic moved from flashy to cleaner, typographically focused work. He credits Erik Spiekermann with pulling him deeper into "the real specific geeky details" of typographic design—a path that eventually led to Google Fonts Knowledge.

Stocks admits he's mellowed in his perspective on roles. He once distrusted designers who focused only on one aspect rather than the whole. "Now I've sort of come round to being okay with just focusing on one part of it," he says, noting that others can handle design systems and development. "Web design is such a different beast these days anyway."

Defining His Role Today

When asked how he describes his current work, Stocks hesitates before settling on "typographic consultant." His work with Google is centered on typography education; he provides strategic, advisory input rather than hands-on design. Before the pandemic, he'd been holding creative director roles—at Adobe Typekit and later at London agency Maido, which disbanded in 2020.

That upheaval prompted introspection. "I don't really want to go back into that design leadership thing for a while," Stocks reflects. "I'd got a little bit jaded." He prefers work that's more insular and self-contained, a choice that led him further from traditional web design. For a while, he grappled with an "existential crisis" around defining himself, but has found some peace: "Ask me tomorrow, I'll change my mind."

Career Advice: Trusting Instincts and Finding Meaning

Friedman recalls a piece of advice Stocks gave him years ago during a Smashing redesign: "If something is different, you need to make it look very different. It can't be just close enough or a little bit different. It has to be bold and decisive and different enough, so people can notice that this is a decision and not a mistake."

In response, Stocks offers advice for his younger self: trust your gut. He remembers saying yes to projects he already sensed were wrong. A print by Erik Spiekermann, purchased from his shop P98A, now hangs on his wall: "Don't work with assholes, don't work for assholes." It's a mantra he wishes he'd adopted sooner.

Beyond that, Stocks champions following what you care about, even when your day job doesn't align. The hours spent at work are too significant to spend on things you don't love. But he's careful to stress that this doesn't mean blindly quitting your job. Side projects, he argues, are the practical outlet. "It's the side projects and just sort of going for them and not worrying too much about the consequences that have, later on, led to the really good work."

Several of his best roles have come directly from these side projects, creating a "snowball effect." His advice: "The times where things really worked or where I was really happy were because I sort of just followed what I was interested in, rather than what was the kind of sensible perceived route that I should take."

Productivity Routines and Letting Go

Stocks is candid about being easily distracted. His solution involves both rigid structure and paper-based lists. A few years ago, he took inspiration from Jessica Hische's calendar-blocking method; now, having two young children imposes its own structure on his day, with a hard stop at five o'clock for dinner with the family.

To stay focused, he's also switched to a low-fi, hand-written daily to-do list. Inspired by Jeff Sheldon's Analog project, Stocks created his own template: a small Moo card with tick boxes, printed and propped up next to his monitor. "Just having it written down… has really helped recently," he says. "There's something about writing it down."

His day-to-day still flits between Figma illustrations for Google Fonts Knowledge, Google Docs for writing and editing, Notion for planning, plus music projects and chats with colleagues. He admits that variety carries a risk of distraction, but he's learned to embrace it: "I'm not very good at just staying and doing one thing."

What has he deliberately let go of? Stocks has been saying no to most freelance work that comes his way, choosing to focus wholly on Google Fonts Knowledge. That decision aligns with what Friedman brings up: the importance of a "deleting or archiving strategy." Stocks, though, acknowledges a different kind of unproductive behavior. "I should do more sitting down and relaxing and just being okay with not doing much," he confesses.

The Music Comeback

Music, though, was never far below the surface. After releasing a couple of EPs in his late teens, Stocks stepped away for years. Around 2014-2015, two things pulled him back. He discovered a new wave of techno artists—Monique, Shifted, KiloWatt, Manny D—whose work felt genuinely innovative. At the same time, he bought some affordable Korg Volca analog synthesizers.

"They're really cheap, really dirty, and they're just really fun to play with," he says. The combination of hands-on knob tweaking, "happy accidents," and the influence of new artists made him take music more seriously—as did the arrival of his first daughter in 2015, which paradoxically increased his focus by severely limiting his time.

His first EP as other form came out in 2017, followed by a quieter period. In 2019, things picked up, leading to a live gig in Berlin before the pandemic disrupted plans. During lockdown, though, he doubled down, releasing more music and growing his label to feature other artists.

The two worlds, he notes, rarely intersect. "I run my design life and my music life on Notion, for instance," he says. "But in terms of like their creativity and the kind of label admin stuff, I think it's very different." For Stocks, the key principle is simple. "As soon as it stops being fun, I'm going to stop doing it."

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