People often ask me where Echo came from.

The truth is, Echo wasn’t created because I wanted to invent a character.

He was created because I needed one.

Years ago, while working as a designer at Alo Yoga, I constantly questioned whether I deserved to call myself a designer.

I would compare myself to everyone around me.

Some of my coworkers were designing twenty or thirty products each season, while I might have been responsible for five.

Even though my work was being manufactured, sold around the world, and worn by thousands of people, I couldn’t see it.

All I could see was what I wasn’t doing.

The voice in my head kept telling me I wasn’t enough.

That I wasn’t talented enough.

That I hadn’t earned the title.

Looking back, none of it was true.

But it felt true.

Instead of trying to ignore those thoughts, I started drawing them.

I imagined those negative thoughts as a character.

Something I could look at instead of letting it quietly live inside my head.

At first I called him Inner Demon because that’s exactly what those thoughts felt like.

But over time something interesting happened.

The more I drew him, the less frightening he became.

I realized he wasn’t actually a demon.

He wasn’t evil.

He wasn’t trying to destroy me.

He was simply a reflection of the conversation I was having with myself.

That’s when everything changed.

He became Echo.

Echo reminds me that not every thought deserves to be believed.

He reminds me that fear, doubt, confidence, hope, curiosity, and resilience can all exist inside the same person.

The goal isn’t to silence those voices.

It’s to learn which ones deserve to be heard.

Echo was the first character.

Since then, an entire world has slowly grown around him—Alex, Balloon, The Weight, The Witness, portals, butterflies, flowers, deserts, and countless symbols that continue to evolve with every sketch and every painting.

I’m not building a fictional universe.

I’m documenting a human one.

Echo World isn’t finished.

It’s growing as I grow.