Daniel Shuster shared their story and experiences with us recently and you can find our conversation below.
Hi Daniel, thank you for taking the time to reflect back on your journey with us. I think our readers are in for a real treat. There is so much we can all learn from each other and so thank you again for opening up with us. Let’s get into it: What is a normal day like for you right now?
Things are busy at the company right now! With 12 issues of WDW Magazine each year, quarterly issues of DLR magazine, and the recently launched trial issue for our upcoming DCL Magazine — focused entirely on Disney Cruise Line — there’s always something going to the printer. But we are more than just a magazine company, we also have our beloved Wall Calendar currently shipping to customers and have launched a brand new companion app, Rope Drop Guide, helping users make the most out of their visits to Disney as well as keeping up with our daily posting for our social media channels and our online content.
With so much happening we rely on a combination of Slack and Asana to keep the team organized and on track for all their deadlines. A typical day for me starts with coffee while I check in on my Slack notifications, and then look at upcoming deadlines in Asana. Next up is emails, which to be honest, I find to be stressful and time consuming and I purposefully limit myself to checking my email once or twice a day at most. I strive to get in and get out of my email as quickly as possible and keep my inbox as close to zero as I can manage.
Once the morning check-in is complete I will move onto any meetings I have scheduled for the day. Whenever possible I like to stack my meetings together in blocks on my calendar. I am at my best when I can focus on one task at a time and I don’t like to split focus or bounce back and forth between design work and meetings. Once those are complete I like to put on some music and settle into my favorite part of the day: design work. This typically includes reviewing photo selections for the magazines, reading article drafts, and actually getting to work in InDesign preparing page layouts.
Our company has been a remote organization since day one and I take advantage of the flexibility this provides to step away from my desk if I’m not being productive or feeling creative. I am not rigid about a traditional work schedule and find I produce better results if I can leave a task alone while I marinate in new ideas. I’ll regularly take breaks and purposefully leave my desk, sometimes to step into the backyard and watch the bird feeder, maybe to go to the gym or a yoga class, or simply relax out on the couch for a little bit. I can get more, and better, work done when I’m focused and feeling creative than by forcing myself to stay at my desk and work on set tasks during set hours.
Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
At WDW Magazine, we’re not just Disney fans. We are a team of professionals in our respective fields—leaders, photographers, writers, editors, and artists that have come together to focus our skills on bringing you the very best news, advice, information, interviews, and behind-the-scenes stories to celebrate our collective obsession: all things Disney.
Since 2013 WDW Magazine has been a trusted resource for our readers and we’ve grown our company from being the only monthly Disney-focused magazine to become an award-winning media outlet that publishes two high quality, oversized, glossy Disney magazines: WDW Magazine and DLR Magazine, and have recently launched a trial issue for our third magazine focused entirely on Disney Cruise Line. Our collectible magazines are delivered to happy subscribers around the globe and are also available in newly-revamped digital edition that offer a superior reading experience for those who prefer to subscribe on mobile device. Our online content and social media channels keep our audience up-to-date with daily stories from Disney parks around the globe, Disney signature experiences and products, and Disney entertainment.
Most importantly, we’ve cultivated a warm, positive, and helpful community of over 658,000 fans who just love Disney and want to talk about it, share their experiences, and help one another. They’re just as excited about Disney as we are and we love to provide a space for the community to connect.
As the Creative Director and co-owner, my job touches on all aspects of the business making sure our vision is consistent and lives up to the highest possible standards. I do have a particular passion for our print products and take pride in the layout and design of every single issue we produce.
Amazing, so let’s take a moment to go back in time. Who saw you clearly before you could see yourself?
My wife and co-owner of the magazine, Stephanie, was the first one to really see me clearly. We met near the end of our time at McMaster University and she immediately saw I had potential to achieve more than I was on my own. Stephanie is fiercely dedicated to everything she attempts and has always been successful at whatever she sets her mind to. I was doing moderately well in my university studies when we met but content to coast along. She saw that I had potential to achieve more and pushed me to break out of my plateau and separate myself from my peers; I graduated with honors and she definitely deserves credit for that. As we started our professional careers she saw ways to translate my creative skills into marketable job opportunities and helped me build a career, not just find employment.
When the opportunity to take over WDW Magazine came up in 2020 she saw the potential in our working together, my creative skills to compliment her leadership and organizational skills and how the sum of us working together was greater than our two individual roles combined.
What fear has held you back the most in your life?
Imposter syndrome has been a challenge for me. Despite the growth of the magazine, the awards we’ve won, the new products we’ve launched, and the opportunities we’ve opened up, I have always struggled with the fear of not being qualified or talented enough. I suppose at its core this is a confidence issue, you see what others are doing and assume they have already figured out more than you, or that they are achieving greater success than you are. This fear slows down progress and puts up roadblocks to trying new things. When we think long term about our goals this fear limits the scale of the vision, it can dissuade you from going after new and truly transformational changes. I won’t say that I have conquered this fear but I have learned to identify its presence and work to overcome it. To remind myself to pause once in a while and review my achievements to give me confidence to tackle whatever is coming next.
So a lot of these questions go deep, but if you are open to it, we’ve got a few more questions that we’d love to get your take on. Where are smart people getting it totally wrong today?
The rush to hand off so many tasks to AI in every facet of our lives. I am not denying the technological achievement or the potential uses of Artificial Intelligence but I do think too many are far too quick to let AI step in and handle a task for them. I also think that many are being blinded by the novelty of AI and not thinking critically about which jobs we actually want handled by artificial intelligence. I don’t want my art and entertainment being made by machines, I want AI to do the parts of my job that are boring and tedious.
Photography is essential to the work we do and we are known for our visually stunning layouts featuring the work of talented photographers. I have cultivated a team of individuals that know Disney parks inside and out and have the creative vision and technical skills to take compelling and artistic photographs as well as edit them. There are tons of applications that will leverage AI to sort, cull, and edit your photos but we don’t do that. AI will evaluate a photo based on how much dynamic range is present (the colors and luminance shown between the darkest and lightest parts of the image) as well as look to identify faces and check if a subject is looking at the camera and has their eyes open etc. I don’t want to trust this process to the machine, the best photos are not necessarily the pictures that show off the most dynamic range, controlling shadows and light is one of a photographer’s key tools to draw your eye into the image and tell the story of the subject. Parts of an image may be purposefully under or overexposed to create a meaningful composition. I think there are AI tools that are incredibly powerful and quick that can aid in a photographer’s job of editing photos — I’m constantly using Adobe’s AI powered tools to make faster and more accurate object selections so I can edit my work to better match my vision — but I won’t hand the process entirely over to AI. I’m happy to let AI handle renaming my finished files so I can later search for them when it comes time to layout the magazine but I would never leave the image selection or layout placement up to the computer.
Smart people are getting AI wrong because they are too quick to let AI execute the whole task. We are not being critical enough about where, when, and how much to incorporate AI into our lives.
Before we go, we’d love to hear your thoughts on some longer-run, legacy type questions. Are you tap dancing to work? Have you been that level of excited at any point in your career? If so, please tell us about those days.
The days when I’m tap dancing to work are the days where I get to be onsite experiencing new things. I was recently invited to a behind-the-scenes opportunity to visit Disney Cruise Line’s theatrical rehearsal space in Toronto, Canada. This facility is where Disney trains and rehearses all the casts who perform the broadway-style live entertainment onboard all the ships in the DCL fleet. Myself and a select group of journalists got to go backstage and meet the cast and crew of the brand-new production of Disney’s Hercules which will premiere on the Disney Destiny, the newest ship in the DCL fleet sailing out of Ft. Lauderdale in November. In addition to the interviews we got right into the action and learned some of the show’s choreography (no tap dancing, unfortunately) as well as suit up in the enormous Hydra puppets and learn first-hand how to bring theatrical puppets to life. This experience provided so much insight into the creative development process of the show but was also a genuinely fun day to be at work. Some days my job requires endless video calls, or the challenge of turning a blank page into a beautiful magazine article —I don’t always tap dance to work on those days. But some days we get the chance to do something truly unique, to be invited to places the public can’t go, to learn and engage with passionate experts, and then bring those experiences to our audience … Those are the days I find myself tap dancing to work.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.wdw-magazine.com/
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- Other: https://ropedropguide.com/
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