A curious mind that knows truth can be found in the margins.
Truth is hard to find. It shifts depending on where you stand, who you ask, and what you’ve experienced. Good design recognizes this. It listens for the truths that matter to different people and holds them together long enough to shape something better. Jordan Julien’s career has been built on that skill: seeking out overlooked perspectives, finding the patterns that connect them, and challenging the easy answers. It's the same instinct that led to the creation of Hostile Sheep. Its practice is built to serve those at the edges, whose needs are too often ignored by the systems around them.
The willingness to trust that someone will do right by us is an act of vulnerability, but also one of strength. - Roxane Gay
Trust was never something Jordan Julien took for granted. Growing up, he was curious about why some relationships felt solid and others fell apart, why trust could be so easily broken but so hard to repair. That curiosity stayed with him and only deepened as he grew older. In his career, it became the thread running through everything he did. He saw organizations not as machines with parts, but as living, interconnected systems shaped by relationships and context. His instinct has always been to build trust first, knowing that clarity and change only happen when people feel seen, heard, and willing to lean into uncertainty. Even before design was in his job title, Jordan approached problems like a systems thinker: observing how pieces interact, noticing what gets overlooked, and finding ways to strengthen the whole.
From managing projects to shaping experiences
At first Jordan thought he was destined to be a project manager. He was good at it, and he liked the challenge of keeping complex work moving forward. But what really caught his attention wasn’t the schedules or the milestones, it was the people. He noticed how trust shaped the way teams worked together, and how even the best plans could fall apart without it. Over time, his interest shifted from meeting deadlines to understanding the human experience behind the work. That curiosity led him to user experience design, where he could move from managing the process to shaping the result. It opened his eyes to how people think, feel, and interact. It proved to him that the best solutions start with empathy.
From agency life to independent strategist
Jordan left agency life in search of answers to a simple question: did the world care about trust and relationships in design, or only about increasing revenue? Many of the shops Jordan worked at cared more about how UX could increase sales, it was a means to an end. The focus was on the revenue-drivers, the majority who drove the numbers, over the minority who might need the design the most. Stepping away as an independent consultant, gave Jordan the chance to work with organizations that valued trust and relationships as much as financial results. This set the stage for an opportunity that would change the course of his career.
The fateful contract
A huge opportunity emerged when General Electric's research and development team hired Jordan as an independent consultant. What started as a contract for a specific project quickly grew into something more. Jordan’s ability to build trust, navigate complexity, and see connections others missed made him more than a hired pair of hands, he became a trusted partner. Before long, GE proposed deepening the relationship by making him a vendor. It was a way to bring on more work, take on bigger challenges, and form a team to match the scale of the projects ahead. For Jordan, it was the moment to take an idea he had been carrying for years and bring it to life. The idea was a collaborative practice that could serve those at the edges. He called it Hostile Sheep Research & Design.
GE became more than a client. For nearly four years, they retained Hostile Sheep for project after project, offering not just work, but a place to learn, experiment, and collaborate with some of the brightest minds in the world. It was where the practice found its footing and proved what was possible. How it evolved from those early days to the Hostile Sheep of today is a story for another time.
Introducing the new Hostile Sheep
We’ve always been here to challenge what needs challenging and protect what matters most. What’s changed is how clearly we see the systems we’re part of and how intentionally we choose to engage with them. Hostile Sheep is no longer just our name. It's our stance. If you'd like to know what we stand for, we wrote it down.
