AJ Estrada

Before AJ Estrada was a product designer, before he built brand identities for America's Test Kitchen or illustrated concert posters under the name Apple Juice Magic, he was Ajax—a teenager with a lightsaber and an AIM window open past midnight. He co-founded RPG World, the roleplaying community where this whole circle began. He was the Prophet of Fotoshopseva—the person who could actually make things look good, who built the forum signatures and avatars and character art that gave the group its visual identity. He spammed "BOWLING IS ART" into group chats until the phrase became a declaration of principle. He remembered his Geocities password years later like finding a key to a house he'd moved out of. The creative instinct was already there, restless and loud, looking for surfaces to mark.

What makes AJ exceptional isn't any single discipline—it's the triple threat. He designs products (UI, UX, the whole system), he illustrates (bold, textured work with a feel for old-world printmaking and saturated color), and he writes and records music. Each practice feeds the others. The illustration work carries a designer's sense of composition; the product work carries an illustrator's comfort with visual risk. His portfolio at applejuicemagic.net reads like a cabinet of curiosities: Koi King next to Tempestheads next to Famous People Music—each project in its own visual register, none of them safe.

He describes himself as "forever-curious" and "in love with the power of good storytelling." His favorite things—music, film, good shapes and old world textures, comedy, short stories, home cooked meals—form a taste profile that privileges craft, warmth, and surprise over polish. A native New Yorker who moved to Cleveland, he carries that particular NYC-to-Midwest energy: the ambition stays, the pace shifts, and the work gets more personal.

Twenty years ago, AJ was recommending The Raw Shark Texts and asking Tom to go see Muse when they came through the city. He was drawing things he'd "always wanted to draw" and remembering the old forums. Today he's building those same instincts into professional practice—the curiosity, the cross-pollination, the refusal to stay in one lane. The through-line from Ajax to AJ Estrada isn't a transformation. It's a long zoom-out.