How do you become an effective creative director with AI?

That’s what today’s episode with Jamey Gannon is all about.

There's clearly a moment in time right now where if you get comfortable with these tools you can really stand out in the market.

So Jamey gives us a behind-the-scenes of her process and it totally changed the way I think about the importance of prompting.

Some highlights:

• What it takes to build a "daily taste practice"

• Why direction is more important than prompting

• Why consistency is the #1 marker of AI tool mastery

• Sneak peek of her work for the new MagicPath brand

• How she thinks about positioning herself in today's market

• + a lot more

🤝 WITH RAYCAST

AI is making it a lot easier to contribute to the Inflight codebase, so I’m knocking out polish tickets all the time.

And now AI agents inside of Raycast make that easier than ever.

Like let’s say I see something I want to fix…

In a single hotkey I can launch a Cursor background agent, add a screenshot or any context that’s needed, and then manage the entire process directly inside of Raycast ✨

You can ship code as quickly as it would take you to type up a new issue in Linear.

It’s a big deal for designers and you can start using it today 👇

🔑 KEY TAKEAWAYS

AI Creative Director

1 — Consistency is the real skill marker

It’s not hard to create something beautiful with AI. The true sign of mastery is consistent, repeatable results.

2 — Direction > Prompting

I’m pretty convinced “prompt engineering” won’t matter in the long run. And honestly it’s relieving.

Jamey puts way more emphasis on strong creative direction (reference photos, mood boards, etc.). She showed me her setup for MagicPath’s new brand and she’s at the point where she can simply prompt “dog” and get something really unique.

3 — Work in tiny, surgical steps

She uses Flora to set up image-gen pipelines where she’s editing a single variable at a time. For instance she’ll grab a specific pair of shoes she wants her model to wear from Google images and then feed that into Flora.

4 — Daily taste practice

The reason I found this conversation encouraging was it really wasn’t about the tools… Jamey is seeing success as a brand designer with AI because she has impeccable taste and at the end of the day that’s all that really matters 🤷‍♂️

Taste comes through reps. Jamey showed me her Pinterest setup and she has over 15,000 pins 😮

5 — Window of opportunity

There’s real alpha in calling yourself an “AI designer” right now. Jamey thinks there’s only ~100 people doing it.

But eventually this will be the same as saying “Figma designer” or “Food chef”.

If you want to go even deeper:

1. I asked Jamey to share a discount code that Dive Club listeners can use for AI Creative Director

2. The full episode is available on Youtube

👥 FEATURED RESOURCE

How to get hired at today’s top startups

Whenever companies I like start hiring, they usually ping me to see if I know anyone great…

So I put together a list of the most talented designers and builders to recommend to my favorite companies (including some seriously cool stealth startups).

You only talk with companies you want to meet and the whole thing is designed to be an easy way for talented designers to see what’s out there without having to be public about it.

So if you’re open to new opportunities, take a second to claim a spot in the new talent network 💪

Meet the Dive partners 

I made a list of my favorite products and asked them to come on as sponsors of the newsletter/podcast. They said yes 🥹

The #1 way to support Dive Club is to check them out👇

Framer​ → How I build my websites

Genway → How I do research

Granola → How I take notes during CRIT

Jitter​ → How I animate my designs

Lovable → How I build my ideas in code

Mobbin → How I find design inspiration

Paper → How I design like a creative

Raycast ​ → How I stay in flow while I work

Thanks for reading! I'm working hard to bring you the best design resources on the planet 🫶

If you want to go even deeper you can always:

☞ Read all ​ideas​

☞ Watch all ​episodes ​

☞ Learn ​advanced design tactics​

See you next week ✌️  - Ridd

P.S. if you were forwarded this email you can ​subscribe here

A few weeks ago, Stripe launched their new site and reminded everyone who the 🐐 of web design is…

So I asked their Head of Design, Katie Dill, to walk us through some of the tiny design decisions that make it so special.

But we also did a deep dive into how the practice of design is evolving at Stripe and everything they’re doing to push past the status quo.

Some highlights:

• How the “call for a new aesthetic” is influencing design culture at Stripe

• How their internal tool Protodash is changing the way designers prototype

• The most important signals that Katie looks for when hiring designers

• What the concentration of craft looks like in an AI era

• + a lot more

Listen on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts 👇

🤝 WITH JITTER

Jitter just released Image to Video and it’s a pretty big deal.

All you have to do is upload an asset and Jitter will instantly generate a short video clip from it with the help of AI ✨

It’s an easy way to add motion and depth to static backgrounds, create little clips for brand visuals and make any scene feel more alive with subtle movement.

It’s super fun to play with and available today, just click the link to get started 👇

🔑 KEY TAKEAWAYS

The concentration of Craft

Katie and I riffed on an idea that has been rattling around in my brain ever since…

It’s becoming clear that AI is going to give even non-designers the ability to crank out a 7/10 interface. “Good enough” is getting cheaper by the day.

So you have a choice:

• do you use this technology to produce more 7/10 work, faster?

• Or do you obsess over the moments in your products that deserve to be 11/10?

I’m referring to this as the “concentration of craft.” More so than ever before I don’t want to spread my efforts evenly.

Katie actively encourages designers to “identify when the status quo is holding you back”. She told a story of when the team was designing the UI for Stripe’s financial accounts product. The first pass used Stripe’s standard dashboard patterns and I’m sure they were incredibly clean and functional. But leadership wasn’t afraid to say “this doesn’t feel as magical as the product actually is” and encouraged the team to invent a new type of panel interaction.

The same thinking shows up in how Stripe uses AI-generated imagery for customer stories 👀

Katie says these images were reviewed in CRIT and every single inch was covered in comments lol. What ships is AI plus hours of manual work in Photoshop and 3D tools to get the realism right.

There's a great video from The Cultural Tutor that Katie and I both love. It compares old London lampposts to the sterile ones we build today. The old infrastructure was built with a level of care and ornamentation that made places feel good, even if nobody consciously noticed why.

Modernism optimized all of that away in the name of efficiency and clarity. Sometimes that was principled, but Katie wasn’t shy about calling some of it “laziness” 😅 

Digital product design is having this same moment. As efficiency skyrockets, are we just going to let “beauty for the sake of beauty” fade into history?

Stripe definitely is not.

One of my favorite examples is how the gray dividing lines on their new website rotate on hover:

Is this level of detail necessary? Definitely not. But it’s a moment of beauty and it made me pause and smile.

And for the first time, designers aren’t reliant on others to bring this level of care and attention into the world. Can you imagine begging your engineer to make the dividing line twist on hover lol?

It’s clear AI is accelerating the way we prototype and explore ideas. But this speed should be used to raise the ceiling of ambition, not crank through more baseline work.

👥 FEATURED RESOURCE

How to get hired at today’s top startups

Whenever companies I like start hiring, they usually ping me to see if I know anyone great…

So I put together a list of the most talented designers and builders to recommend to my favorite companies (including some seriously cool stealth startups).

You only talk with companies you want to meet and the whole thing is designed to be an easy way for talented designers to see what’s out there without having to be public about it.

So if you’re open to new opportunities, take a second to claim a spot in the new talent network 💪

Meet the Dive partners 

I made a list of my favorite products and asked them to come on as sponsors of the newsletter/podcast. They said yes 🥹

The #1 way to support Dive Club is to check them out👇

Framer​ → How I build my websites

Genway → How I do research

Granola → How I take notes during CRIT

Jitter​ → How I animate my designs

Lovable → How I build my ideas in code

Mobbin → How I find design inspiration

Paper → How I design like a creative

Raycast ​ → How I stay in flow while I work

Thanks for reading! I'm working hard to bring you the best design resources on the planet 🫶

If you want to go even deeper you can always:

☞ Read all ​ideas​

☞ Watch all ​episodes ​

☞ Learn ​advanced design tactics​

See you next week ✌️  - Ridd

P.S. if you were forwarded this email you can ​subscribe here

As software becomes easier to create than ever, what does it look like to truly differentiate with design?

Today's episode with Julien Martin is an attempt to answer that question.

He was the Head of Design at Zenly, Snapchat, and Amo which is some of the most uniquely impressive consumer design I've ever seen.

Some highlights:

• Behind the scenes of early Amo explorations

• How the composition of design orgs is changing

• The unlock that led to Amo's unique visual language

• Julien’s advice for how to succeed in today’s job market

• The untold story of how Julien joined in the early days of Behance

• Why side projects are now the strongest signal when hiring designers

• + a lot more

Listen on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts 👇

🤝 WITH FRAMER

Don’t be the person with the portfolio that still doesn’t have a custom domain.

With Framer’s latest release you don’t have an excuse anymore.

They partnered with Hover to provide a seamless flow where you can select free or discounted domains that will automatically be connected to your Framer site after purchase.

That’s right, Framer is offering free custom domains for the first year when you upgrade your site to a yearly plan.

So definitely don’t miss out on this offer. Click the link to claim your domain today 👇

🔗 FEATURED RESOURCE

Turning a ~6 week design project into a 2 hour Claude Cowork session

There’s a lot of AI hype right now so it’s important to separate signal from noise.

Outside of owning more of the frontend, how are designers actually leveraging AI in their work?

Josh Armantrout recently shared an example of how he condensed ~6 weeks worth of work into 2 hours and I thought it was definitely worth sharing.

It’s insane this is possible now 👇

🔗 FEATURED RESOURCE

Now THAT is how you prototype

So I recently recommended Jason Marsh for a role in the Dive Talent Network and check this out…

I asked him + Yarn if I could share the prototype walkthrough and they agreed. It’s the perfect combo of sweating the details while demonstrating big picture thinking👇

Jason’s prototype walkthrough

How to blow a company away in 130 seconds

🔗 FEATURED RESOURCE

Agent Orchestration UI

I think we’ll look back on the majority of AI products today as stepping stones to more agent-native UX.

It’s not that these products are bad… familiarity helps usher people into new paradigms.

But I do enjoy when people imagine what these products should look like from first principles.

🧃 INSPIRATION JUICE

3 things I saved this week

1️⃣ Simile 404 page

This has gotta be one of the most creative 404 pages I’ve ever seen.

ICYMI Simile just came out of stealth and announced $100M in funding to work on simulation software.

They’re hiring a founding designer in NYC to work alongside Mihika from Figma Slides. If that’s interesting hop in the Talent Network and lmk ✌️

2️⃣ Knowledge Base Cards

I really like the subtle hover states for these Profound cards.

Check it out →

3️⃣ Delightful permissions screen

Love this concept and everything about the Ditto visual language.

Check it out →

Meet the Dive partners 

I made a list of my favorite products and asked them to come on as sponsors of the newsletter/podcast. They said yes 🥹

The #1 way to support Dive Club is to check them out👇

Framer​ → How I build my websites

Genway → How I do research

Granola → How I take notes during CRIT

Jitter​ → How I animate my designs

Lovable → How I build my ideas in code

Mobbin → How I find design inspiration

Paper → How I design like a creative

Raycast ​ → How I stay in flow while I work

Thanks for reading! I'm working hard to bring you the best design resources on the planet 🫶

If you want to go even deeper you can always:

☞ Read all ​ideas​

☞ Watch all ​episodes ​

☞ Learn ​advanced design tactics​

See you next week ✌️  - Ridd

P.S. if you were forwarded this email you can ​subscribe here

Today's episode is with Tommy Smith who recently landed a new role as a part of the Dive Talent Network.

So we're doing a deep dive into what makes his portfolio so effective:

• Making his side project a first-class citizen

• Positioning himself as a new design engineer

• Adding personality by experimenting with Rive

• Highlighting what matters most in his case studies

• Flexing his craft muscles and nailed the finer details

• + a lot more

Watch on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts 👇

I’ll share some of my favorite details below 👇

🤝 WITH MOBBIN

Big news: Animations just launched in Mobbin

So you can see how world-class apps use motion to guide, delight, and create seamless experiences

It’s just another reason why Mobbin is an absolute cheat code for your entire design team. We use it all of the time and I can’t wait to start sending animation ideas to the rest of the team.

Click the link to check it out 👇

🔑 KEY TAKEAWAYS

Why Tommy’s portfolio works

1 — He pushes past “clean”

Tommy admitted the previous version of his website was trying to do too much. So he stripped things back and landed on a more minimalist layout.

But there are a lot of designers nailing the minimalist aesthetic right now.

That’s why Tommy’s little Rive avatar goes such a long way. It gives the page instant personality.

2 — He leads with his side project

Tommy treats his side project Chrono as a first-class citizen on his website (with 3 separate entry points on the home page!).

This way he can position himself for the kind of work he wants to get hired for next:

👆 if that sentiment resonates, I have good news: side projects are now more than enough to get you noticed.

I had never heard of Bally Live (his previous employer) so his resumé didn’t exactly jump off the page. But all it took was one look at Tommy’s interaction work in Chrono for me to confidently put him in front of teams.

3 — He demonstrates care + attention to detail

One tiny design detail that stood out to me was the hover state on his page navigation 👀

This blur transition and X translation doesn’t come out of the box. That’s the mark of someone who cares.

4 — He showcases his ceiling

We talked about the interactions in Chrono, but even in his website there are details that show me Tommy’s craft abilities.

First is the theme switcher. I had a visceral reaction clicking this for the first time.

Second is the progress component in his case studies. It’s a clever component to begin with, but he made it feel good. The way he staggered each animation is what makes this impressive imo.

5 — He focuses on what matters in his case studies

If you haven’t been listening to Dive Club, I’ll give you a spoiler: hiring managers are tired of bloated process case studies. They want to see the work.

Tommy knew this, and it shows:

His Chrono case study is packed with interaction details that I can easily click to view full screen. Videos go a long way here.

Even when he showcases static mockups for Bally, he uses consistent device frames + makes it easy to view all of the work in a full screen carousel. Genius.

And when Tommy does lean on text, he keeps it clean with only two font sizes and enough color contrast to ensure the headings pop.

He even made a little Highlight component to draw attention to specific achievements:

6 — He positions himself as a generalist

Hiring managers want people who are curious and can wear as many hats as possible.

So not only does Tommy showcase his frontend and animation abilities…

He even has a case study dedicated to his own icon set, “Space Icons”.

By this point, I know if I hire Tommy, I’m getting someone who can move the needle across the board.

If you want to go deeper, Tommy walks us through his process and his journey growing as a design engineer in the full video 👇

👥 FEATURED RESOURCE

How to get hired at today’s top startups

Whenever companies I like start hiring, they usually ping me to see if I know anyone great…

So I put together a list of the most talented designers and builders to recommend to my favorite companies (including some seriously cool stealth startups).

You only talk with companies you want to meet and the whole thing is designed to be an easy way for talented designers to see what’s out there without having to be public about it.

So if you’re open to new opportunities, take a second to claim a spot in the new talent network 💪

Meet the Dive partners 

I made a list of my favorite products and asked them to come on as sponsors of the newsletter/podcast. They said yes 🥹

The #1 way to support Dive Club is to check them out👇

Framer​ → How I build my websites

Genway → How I do research

Granola → How I take notes during CRIT

Jitter​ → How I animate my designs

Lovable → How I build my ideas in code

Mobbin → How I find design inspiration

Paper → How I design like a creative

Raycast ​ → How I stay in flow while I work

Thanks for reading! I'm working hard to bring you the best design resources on the planet 🫶

If you want to go even deeper you can always:

☞ Read all ​ideas​

☞ Watch all ​episodes ​

☞ Learn ​advanced design tactics​

See you next week ✌️  - Ridd

P.S. if you were forwarded this email you can ​subscribe here

Ryan Stephen is a product designer at Microsoft, but the reason I wanted to interview him is because he's the man behind some of my favorite design experiments on Twitter.

So in this episode Ryan gives us a behind-the-scenes look at his creative process, the tools in his stack, and how he approaches effective storytelling in design.

Some highlights:

• How Ryan sparks creativity

• The power of putting your work on Twitter

• How Ryan thinks about investing in his career

• Ryan’s mental model for fidelity and prototyping

• The lessons Ryan’s learned about effective storytelling

• The tools and techniques Ryan uses to make ideas feel real

• + a lot more

Watch on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts 👇

🤝 WITH PAPER

Everybody knows about Paper Shaders…

It feels like every time I open Twitter I see somebody creating a new beautiful halftone effect.

But did you know Paper uses real CSS as you design? That means your layouts are already code.

You can just one-click copy as React and paste into your coding agent of choice.

Paper is shipping more of their core editor every week and it’s becoming so clear to me that this is what the future of design tools should look like.

So if you haven’t tried it yet, click the link and start designing today 👇

🔗 FEATURED RESOURCE

Software is still about thinking

In “Design Careers in the Age of AI”, Hannah Hearth talks about the potential risks of compressed shipping timelines.

So I want to share this article from Ryo Lu (Cursor’s Head of Design).

He says that “coding with AI today creates a new trap: the illusion of speed without structure” 🎯

AI doesn’t replace systems thinking — it amplifies the cost of not doing it.

Ryo has always been one of my favorite systems thinkers to learn from so this breakdown is definitely worth a bookmark 👇

 🔗 FEATURED RESOURCE

If I had to rebuild my design career in 2026, I’d do this

Adrian from DesignMe shares a decade of lessons that are perfect for freelancers, solopreneurs, or designers who want to advance their career by putting themselves out there online.

His story is one of perseverance and it’s a good one :)

🔗 FEATURED RESOURCE

The case against conversational interfaces

Remember when we got to hear from Julian the storytelling lead at Linear?

He’s one of my favorite writers in all of tech and I want to share one of his articles from last year that makes the case against conversational interfaces.

There’s a lot of hype on Twitter right now about how UI is dead (🫠). So I think it’s important to have a more well-rounded perspective :)

🧃 INSPIRATION JUICE

3 things I saved this week

1️⃣ Wabi orb cards

Everything that is coming out of Wabi right now is ridiculously well-designed.

Just look at the orbs on these cards 👀

I finally got them onboarded to the Dive Talent Network so if you’re interested in joining a stacked team in SF I can probably help :)

Check it out →

2️⃣ Creative footer

I did a double take on this footer when scrolling Twitter the other day. Incredibly creative work from Fred and team.

Check it out →

3️⃣ Glowing icon

Mike Rundle is one of those designers who I will probably never be as good as and I’m ok with that.

But at least I can copy the tips he shares on Twitter 😅

Check it out →

Meet the Dive partners 

I made a list of my favorite products and asked them to come on as sponsors of the newsletter/podcast. They said yes 🥹

The #1 way to support Dive Club is to check them out👇

Framer​ → How I build my websites

Genway → How I do research

Granola → How I take notes during CRIT

Jitter​ → How I animate my designs

Lovable → How I build my ideas in code

Mobbin → How I find design inspiration

Paper → How I design like a creative

Raycast ​ → How I stay in flow while I work

Thanks for reading! I'm working hard to bring you the best design resources on the planet 🫶

If you want to go even deeper you can always:

☞ Read all ​ideas​

☞ Watch all ​episodes ​

☞ Learn ​advanced design tactics​

See you next week ✌️  - Ridd

P.S. if you were forwarded this email you can ​subscribe here

How do you future-proof your design career when everything is changing so quickly?

I get asked that question a lot so I interviewed Hannah Hearth (the new Head of Product Design at Vercel) to talk about design career strategy in the age of AI.

Some highlights:

• Hannah’s #1 trait for great designers

• The most underrated storytelling tactic

• Doing more with less while not burning out

• Examples of how AI is changing the design process

• How design orgs should think about adopting AI tools

• How much coding is happening on the Vercel design team

• Preserving craft and design thinking with collapsed timelines

• + a lot more

Watch on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts 👇

🤝 WITH LOVABLE

An even smarter version of Lovable just released…

It’s 71% better at solving complex tasks which means it can do more work, more autonomously.

There’s more intelligent planning and prompt queueing so you can stack requests while Lovable works.

And my favorite part: automated testing.

Lovable now tests your apps like a real user. It opens its own browser, navigates flows, investigates edge case and catches bugs for you. And when it finds problems it fixes them on the spot.

I genuinely believe Lovable is the easiest way to build software. Click the link to try the new release👇

🔑 KEY TAKEAWAYS

In with the new, out with the old

1 — New era of design leadership

When interviewing at Vercel, Hannah had to do a take-home assignment for the first time in 10 years. Gone are the days of pure people managers who just hire smart people and get out of the way. Hannah says we’ve entered into the “new era of design leadership”.

2 — Mandated AI adoption is a “necessary evil”

Every company of a certain size will be disrupted by AI. The only real choice is whether you proactively disrupt yourself by leaning in early. That’s why you see AI usage is showing up in performance reviews. Eventually the market will settle, but in the short run we can expect more aggressive adoption tactics.

3 — The design sprint is dead

I used to work in an agency that specialized in the traditional weeklong design sprint. Those days are pretty much over. We’ve taken the five days of theater and compressed it while creating ample space for deep work.

4 — The cost of speed

Hannah isn’t worried that craft will suffer as timelines compress. Craft is a product of people who care, not process. The bigger risk is skipping alignment on “are we solving the right problem?”

5 — The #1 trait of the best designers

I asked Hannah for the #1 trait of the best designers she’s worked with… she said “sharing work early and often”. Waiting for the weekly critique or Friday sync is too slow in today’s world. Strong ICs are comfortable showing half-baked ideas with clear context (which ties directly back to #4).

6 — Technical fluency is table stakes

Vercel’s designers regularly use Claude Code and Cursor. Hannah even shipped a PR in her first week on the job!

Sometimes that means owning the final 1% of polish before a feature goes out the door. Or maybe it means creating a functional prototype that jumpstarts engineering.

7 — It’s time to rethink the portfolio

We spent years viewing portfolios as a static catalog of case studies. Following that playbook today is a surefire way to get passed over.

Hannah echoes Matt Seller’s belief that your personal website should be an experience and an expression of who you are (not just a list of case studies).

Like many other hiring managers right now, Hannah is hunting for curiosity:

There has never been more alpha in side projects 🔥

8 — Design systems are having a quiet renaissance

Turns out, that documentation your design system team made was actually for LLMs. The teams that invested in guidelines, usage rules, and anti-patterns now get outsized leverage.

Meet the Dive partners 

I made a list of my favorite products and asked them to come on as sponsors of the newsletter/podcast. They said yes 🥹

The #1 way to support Dive Club is to check them out👇

Framer​ → How I build my websites

Genway → How I do research

Granola → How I take notes during CRIT

Jitter​ → How I animate my designs

Lovable → How I build my ideas in code

Mobbin → How I find design inspiration

Paper → How I design like a creative

Raycast ​ → How I stay in flow while I work

Thanks for reading! I'm working hard to bring you the best design resources on the planet 🫶

If you want to go even deeper you can always:

☞ Read all ​ideas​

☞ Watch all ​episodes ​

☞ Learn ​advanced design tactics​

See you next week ✌️  - Ridd

P.S. if you were forwarded this email you can ​subscribe here

By now you know that I’m pretty obsessed with growing as a builder this year 😅

So I asked Karl Koch from “Become a Design Engineer” to come on the show and share some practical tips for pushing past what AI gives you out of the box.

We go deep into:

• Adopting the design engineering mindset

• What the job market looks like for design engineers

• The difference between frontend and design engineers

• Specific language to create better interaction design

• The details Karl is sweating in his role at Duck Duck Go

• + a lot more

Watch on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts 👇

🤝 WITH GRANOLA

You know what I’m excited about?

The Granola MCP 😏

It allows you to connect your AI tools directly to your Granola meeting notes. And as someone who has been vibe coding a lot of tools recently… this release is a big deal.

My meeting notes are some of the most valuable context I have and now I can find specific topics, pull out action items, and get any question answered based on my meeting history.

This is all available today and I’m already building with it like crazy.

Click the link if you want to get started 👇

🔗 FEATURED RESOURCE

I (finally) fixed my biggest problem with AI coding

I can crank out 10+ prototypes a day but somehow sharing my work is harder than its ever been.

The multiplayer canvas is gone.

Now it’s desktop folders, screen recordings, and PRs.

We’re back in the final_v4_updated era. Stephen from Paper nailed it in the AI Design Field Report:

Thankfully those days are over.

I have a new workflow for sharing AI prototypes and it's changing everything about how I design 👇

🔗 FEATURED RESOURCE

Recently Kyle Zantos showed us how he trained a UI motion design skill in the Designer’s Toolkit for Claude Code episode.

It’s basically a way to audit your animations through the eyes of three of his favorite design engineers.

It’s genius so I asked him if he’d be open to sharing the skill publicly and he agreed 👇

🔗 FEATURED RESOURCE

Claude Code tips from the creator

In an all-time “I can’t believe this app is free” moment, Boris Cherney (the creator of Claude Code) shared an epic set of tips sourced directly from the Claude Code team.

A few takeaways on my end:

• I am somehow still radically underutilizing my claude.md file

• I need to get more comfortable not micro-managing Claude. Sometimes leaving things more open-ended is best vs. nudging them down the route I think is best.

• “After a mediocre fix, say: "Knowing everything you know now, scrap this and implement the elegant solution””

• I need to enable the "Explanatory" or "Learning" output style in /config to have Claude explain the why behind its changes

Definitely bookmark this 👇

🧃 INSPIRATION JUICE

3 things I saved this week

1️⃣ Stripe’s card to modal transition

This would be a failure of a design newsletter if I didn’t lead this week’s inspiration juice with the new Stripe.com

There are some incredible details (hint: play with the gray dividing lines).

But the thing I most appreciated was the pattern of going from bento → modal.

It’s the reason they’re able to keep the page tidy and not rely on a bunch of subtext under each card heading.

Check it out →

2️⃣ Craft agents

Remember the episode on Craft about what it takes to design an award-winning product?

Well they just released a new product called Craft Agents and I’ve been following along closely and saving bits and pieces to my taste library.

Check it out →

3️⃣ Shop web drawer interaction

I freaking love this interaction from Taras (great follow on Twitter btw). I’m not sure I’ve seen this pattern for a nested drawer that blurs the sidebar behind it. Slick stuff 👌

Check it out →

Meet the Dive partners 

I made a list of my favorite products and asked them to come on as sponsors of the newsletter/podcast. They said yes 🥹

The #1 way to support Dive Club is to check them out👇

Framer​ → How I build my websites

Genway → How I do research

Granola → How I take notes during CRIT

Jitter​ → How I animate my designs

Lovable → How I build my ideas in code

Mobbin → How I find design inspiration

Paper → How I design like a creative

Raycast ​ → How I stay in flow while I work

Thanks for reading! I'm working hard to bring you the best design resources on the planet 🫶

If you want to go even deeper you can always:

☞ Read all ​ideas​

☞ Watch all ​episodes ​

☞ Learn ​advanced design tactics​

See you next week ✌️  - Ridd

P.S. if you were forwarded this email you can ​subscribe here

You might’ve heard me mention that I’ve been using Rive a lot for Inflight lately.

It’s quickly become the backbone of our “boosts” which are little interactive experiences designed to help you get better feedback on your work (here’s our latest exploration if you’re curious).

But up until recently I pretty much thought of Rive as a more advanced Lottie format—something specifically used for motion.

I was very wrong 😅

After hearing Luigi and Guido Rosso’s vision for the future of interactive software, I’m convinced Rive will be a very big deal for designers 👀

So this episode is a deep dive into the Rive story and why it’s perfectly suited to power experiences like Spotify Wrapped, next-gen car dashboards, and so much more.

Watch on YouTube, Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts 👇

🤝 WITH FRAMER

Don’t be the person with the portfolio that still doesn’t have a custom domain.

With Framer’s latest release you don’t have an excuse anymore.

They partnered with Hover to provide a seamless flow where you can select free or discounted domains that will automatically be connected to your Framer site after purchase.

That’s right, Framer is offering free custom domains for the first year when you upgrade your site to a yearly plan.

So definitely don’t miss out on this offer. Click the link to claim your domain today👇

👥 FEATURED RESOURCE

How to get hired at today’s top startups

Whenever companies I like start hiring, they usually ping me to see if I know anyone great…

So I put together a list of the most talented designers and builders to recommend to my favorite companies (including some seriously cool stealth startups).

You only talk with companies you want to meet and the whole thing is designed to be an easy way for talented designers to see what’s out there without having to be public about it.

So if you’re open to new opportunities, take a second to claim a spot in the new talent network 💪

Meet the Dive partners 

I made a list of my favorite products and asked them to come on as sponsors of the newsletter/podcast. They said yes 🥹

The #1 way to support Dive Club is to check them out👇

Framer​ → How I build my websites

Genway → How I do research

Granola → How I take notes during CRIT

Jitter​ → How I animate my designs

Lovable → How I build my ideas in code

Mobbin → How I find design inspiration

Paper → How I design like a creative

Raycast ​ → How I stay in flow while I work

Thanks for reading! I'm working hard to bring you the best design resources on the planet 🫶

If you want to go even deeper you can always:

☞ Read all ​ideas​

☞ Watch all ​episodes ​

☞ Learn ​advanced design tactics​

See you next week ✌️  - Ridd

P.S. if you were forwarded this email you can ​subscribe here

One of the biggest parts of my design practice is knowing which tool to reach for when coding with AI.

There are a lot of options and they’re changing every week 😅

So in this episode, I break down:

1. The mental model I use to think about different types of AI coding workflows

2. How that model guides which tools I actually reach for day to day

3. The new AI coding product I’m completely hooked on right now

🤝 WITH RAYCAST

So I got a new computer recently… and what do you think was the first app that I installed?

If you’ve been listening to this show for a bit, you probably guessed that the answer is Raycast.

At this point it’s an extension of my fingertips and the core way that I use my computer.

And I’m not alone… I see this sentiment from people I look up to on Twitter all the time so if you’re still on the fence, just do it.

Download Raycast and thank me later. Click the link the get started 👇

🔗 FEATURED RESOURCE

Using AI as a design engineer

Remember Jakub that Kyle Zantos referenced in his Claude Code Toolkit?

Well he just released an awesome article about how he uses AI as a design engineer.

He covers everything from tools, commands, process, etc. Definitely worthy of a bookmark 👇

🔗 FEATURED RESOURCE

Perplexity intern’s portfolio

Remember a couple of weeks ago when Henry Modisett (VP of Design at Perplexity) shared they’re bringing on a design intern?

Well I was curious what kind of portfolio you have to have in order to get a team like Perplexity to take a bet on you.

As you can guess… it’s pretty good lol.

Emmi’s footer is spectacular 💯

🔗 FEATURED RESOURCE

2026 AI Design Field Report

ICYMI I shared my 6 takeaways from Stephen Haney’s episode in written form.

Doruk quote tweeted it and shared a take that I cannot stop thinking about.

I’m officially obsessed with solving this problem because it’s driving me crazy.

Here’s the full article👇

🧃 INSPIRATION JUICE

3 things I saved this week

1️⃣ Cutout card style

I stared at these cards from Nick Stepuk for way too long. I think the tiny dot grid surrounding the illustrations is what makes it.

Check it out →

2️⃣ Technical isometric style

One of my favorite styles I’m starting to see more of is this technical isometric composition.

Jeff Broderick nails it here 💯

Check it out →

3️⃣ Bouncy animated icons

I love the way these icons from Oguz move 👏 Feels so satisfying.

Check it out →

Meet the Dive partners 

I made a list of my favorite products and asked them to come on as sponsors of the newsletter/podcast. They said yes 🥹

The #1 way to support Dive Club is to check them out👇

Framer​ → How I build my websites

Genway → How I do research

Granola → How I take notes during CRIT

Jitter​ → How I animate my designs

Lovable → How I build my ideas in code

Mobbin → How I find design inspiration

Paper → How I design like a creative

Raycast ​ → How I stay in flow while I work

Thanks for reading! I'm working hard to bring you the best design resources on the planet 🫶

If you want to go even deeper you can always:

☞ Read all ​ideas​

☞ Watch all ​episodes ​

☞ Learn ​advanced design tactics​

See you next week ✌️  - Ridd

P.S. if you were forwarded this email you can ​subscribe here

Sometimes you open up a website and it's so good that you're left wondering... how the heck did they pull that off?

I had that feeling with the original Amie website (still visible in Wayback Machine). There’s a reason it took over Twitter for as long as it did.

So this episode is all about bringing web experiences to life with 3D.

We go behind the scenes of the original Amie website with Xavier Jack.

He even gives a mini tutorial on using Blender + Three.js.

A few years ago, this stuff would’ve scared the sh*t out of me lol.

But learning with AI has changed everything.

I genuinely feel like I can make sense of any tool or workflow now by using Claude as a companion app. Kevin Twohy’s“I know Kung-fu” mentality has never felt more accurate.

That’s why I invited Xavier on. For the first time ever, designers can realistically vibe-code 3D experiences that stand out in a sea of clean Shadcn.

All you need to do is get a little momentum and this episode is created to do exactly that.

So if you’re ready to step a little outside your comfort zone, here’s how to design websites that actually feel alive 👇

🤝 WITH PAPER

Everybody knows about Paper Shaders…

It feels like every time I open Twitter I see somebody creating a new beautiful halftone effect.

But did you know Paper uses real CSS as you design? That means your layouts are already code.

So you can just one-click copy as React and paste into your coding agent of choice.

Paper is shipping more of their core editor every week and it’s becoming so clear to me that this is what the future of design tools should look like.

So if you haven’t tried it yet, click the link and start designing today 👇

👥 DIVE TALENT NETWORK

This past week I came across two of the most exciting founding designer roles I’ve ever seen where you get to work shoulder to shoulder with industry titans 👀

So I put together a list of the most talented designers and builders to recommend.

It’s how Matt Sellers got hired at Lovable 👇

So if you’re open to new opportunities, take a second to claim a spot in the new talent network.

It’s a new model where companies apply to talk to you (not the other way around). And guess what… it’s working ✌️

Meet the Dive partners 

I made a list of my favorite products and asked them to come on as sponsors of the newsletter/podcast. They said yes 🥹

The #1 way to support Dive Club is to check them out👇

Framer​ → How I build my websites

Genway → How I do research

Granola → How I take notes during CRIT

Jitter​ → How I animate my designs

Lovable → How I build my ideas in code

Mobbin → How I find design inspiration

Paper → How I design like a creative

Raycast ​ → How I stay in flow while I work

Thanks for reading! I'm working hard to bring you the best design resources on the planet 🫶

If you want to go even deeper you can always:

☞ Read all ​ideas​

☞ Watch all ​episodes ​

☞ Learn ​advanced design tactics​

See you next week ✌️  - Ridd

P.S. if you were forwarded this email you can ​subscribe here

Last month the head of design at Lovable, Nad Chishtie, walked us through the portfolio of Matt Sellers.

He’s one of the designers they just hired from the Dive Talent Network and his website is what a top 1% portfolio looks like.👀

So today's episode is a behind-the-scenes of what it actually takes to create a portfolio that gets you hired at one of today's top startups.

He shares some really tactical mental models that I think everyone can benefit from:

• Why Matt removed 80%+ of his work

• What made Matt's micro copy so effective

• How Matt built his project animations in Framer

• The finer details of Matt’s portfolio and micro-interactions

• How Matt changed his portfolio strategy and why it worked

• What it takes to make your portfolio an experience rather than a catalog

• + a lot more

Watch on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts 👇

🤝 WITH JITTER

If you’re like me you know that adding motion to your designs is the easiest way to make them feel premium

The thing is… I’m not a motion designer 😅

But that’s why Jitter’s new AI Brainstorm feature is a game changer.

I just drop in my design, and then get instant motion ideas that I can tweak, refine, and make my own.

It’s seriously so easy to animate your work with Jitter I cannot recommend it enough👇

🔗 FEATURED RESOURCE

I am completely convinced that UX design will own the bulk of the frontend moving forward.

And the more I step into that reality as a designer, the more fun that I have.

On the flip side, it also highlights how much I have to learn when it comes to design engineering and well-crafted animations 😅

That’s why I still reference Emil Kowalski’s animation.dev constantly.

tbh I would be embarrassed if Emil knew how many times I fed his techniques into Claude.

Over 8,000+ builders (myself included) have taken his course and he just opened enrollment for animations.dev for the next 10 days.

I don’t promote courses often but this is one of the few learning experiences I highly recommend so definitely claim your spot before it closes.

Here’s what I’m really excited about though…

Emil is also releasing a new skill file using Claude Code which alone will be worth the price of admission:

I’m about to use that all the time 💪

🔗 FEATURED RESOURCE

4 new sources of design inspiration

By now you know how much I love a tasteful inspiration gallery so here are 4 new resources I’ve saved recently:

1 — Ben Issen’s Inspiration Gallery

I scrolled this for two viewports and already knew it was legit.

Ben is an absurdly creative designer and a great follow on the Twitter bird too.

2 — Detail

Where Ben’s focuses more on full websites, this gallery by Rene Wang obsesses over the finer details and interactions—things like typography, motion, interactivity, and even easter eggs.

3 — Very good components

Remember when Framer sites first started blowing up and all of those component websites launched? I think I paid for 3 of them because it felt like magic to grab a component and paste it into Framer.

Well now it’s kinda like that except for coding literally anything on the web…

4 — Brian Lovin’s “Good Websites”

Is this the greatest curation of portfolio websites the world has ever seen? Maybe

👥 DIVE TALENT NETWORK

Whenever companies I like start hiring, they usually ping me to see if I know anyone great… (like Matt for instance 😉).

So I put together a list of the most talented designers and builders to recommend to companies like Raycast, Lovable, ElevenLabs, and some of my favorite early stage startups.

So if you’re open to new opportunities, take a second to claim a spot in the new talent network 💪

Meet the Dive partners 

I made a list of my favorite products and asked them to come on as sponsors of the newsletter/podcast. They said yes 🥹

The #1 way to support Dive Club is to check them out👇

Framer​ → How I build my websites

Genway → How I do research

Granola → How I take notes during CRIT

Jitter​ → How I animate my designs

Lovable → How I build my ideas in code

Mobbin → How I find design inspiration

Paper → How I design like a creative

Raycast ​ → How I stay in flow while I work

Thanks for reading! I'm working hard to bring you the best design resources on the planet 🫶

If you want to go even deeper you can always:

☞ Read all ​ideas​

☞ Watch all ​episodes ​

☞ Learn ​advanced design tactics​

See you next week ✌️  - Ridd

P.S. if you were forwarded this email you can ​subscribe here

 

There's been a heck of a debate around the future of coding and design tools lately... but how are today’s top teams actually using AI?

Well, Stephen Haney (founder of the new design tool Paper) spent the last few months talking with teams like Shopify, Notion, etc. to find out.

He turned it into a bit of an AI Design Field Report and there are a lot of interesting nuggets in there.

So in today’s episode he walks us through some of his key findings and how that's shaping his product strategy for Paper.

Some highlights:

• How AI adoption looks at startups vs. big companies

• Which AI tools are the most popular in today’s top teams

• Which Twitter trends you can safely ignore as a designer

• What Stephen thinks about the great Ryo vs. Karri debate

• The localhost sharing problem and how teams are solving it

• Where Stephen thinks the future of design tools is headed next

• + a lot more

Watch on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts 👇

🤝 WITH FRAMER

Don’t be the person with the portfolio that still doesn’t have a custom domain

With Framer’s latest release you don’t have an excuse anymore.

They partnered with Hover to provide a seamless flow where you can select free or discounted domains that will automatically be connected to your Framer site after purchase.

That’s right, Framer is offering free custom domains for the first year when you upgrade your site to a yearly plan.

So definitely don’t miss out on this offer. Click the link to claim your domain today👇

🔑 KEY TAKEAWAYS

AI Design Field Report Takeaways

1 — AI Mandates

AI usage is being explicitly evaluated in performance reviews at many of today’s top companies. For designers, using tools like Claude Code, Cursor, Lovable, etc. is no longer optional.

2 — Prototyping > Production

Very few designers at large companies are actually PR’ing into production. Handoff still exists. Designers are just sending over fully functional prototypes with way more context than a static mock ever had.

3 — Forking Production

Most companies now have some level of top-down AI investment, which often means forking production so designers can have their own copies of the repo to use as a playground.

Stephen talks about the “new friction” involving environment variables, local databases, linting, deploys, etc. These are the hurdles designers regularly need help clearing (especially on larger teams).

Interestingly, this is exactly what Dessn gives you out of the box (we covered this in last week’s episode on prototyping in prod ICYMI).

4 — Tooling Trends

Stephen is seeing far more teams gravitate toward Claude Code and Cursor over standalone prototyping tools like v0 or Replit.

There’s real value in using your current app as a starting point rather than spending time recreating production UI from scratch.

5 — Startups vs. Big Companies

The operational gap between startups and big companies has never been wider. In early-stage roles, designers are already coding and shipping PRs as part of the job.

I can attest to this as both my design co-founder and I ship Inflight PRs daily. At this point, we’re all builders.

6 — The new localhost problem

Transitioning from Sketch to Figma was a no brainer because all of a sudden we went from working in local files to web-based collaboration.

But as more designers start coding with tools like Claude and Cursor, we’ve actually taken a step backward in how we share work.

My last 4-5 design artifacts were created entirely in Claude Code so I feel this big time. Sharing coded-prototypes and getting feedback is surprisingly tricky. So much so that it’s quickly become a problem we’re focused on solving with Inflight. More to come 🙂 

Meet the Dive partners 

I made a list of my favorite products and asked them to come on as sponsors of the newsletter/podcast. They said yes 🥹

The #1 way to support Dive Club is to check them out👇

Framer​ → How I build my websites

Genway → How I do research

Granola → How I take notes during CRIT

Jitter​ → How I animate my designs

Lovable → How I build my ideas in code

Mobbin → How I find design inspiration

Paper → How I design like a creative

Raycast ​ → How I stay in flow while I work

Thanks for reading! I'm working hard to bring you the best design resources on the planet 🫶

If you want to go even deeper you can always:

☞ Read all ​ideas​

☞ Watch all ​episodes ​

☞ Learn ​advanced design tactics​

See you next week ✌️  - Ridd

P.S. if you were forwarded this email you can ​subscribe here

It’s no secret designers are playing more in code as of late.

But up until this point it’s felt like I had to make a choice between:

• Spinning up my environment and using an IDE

• Recreating production in AI prototyping tools

That’s why I’m so interested in what Dessn is building 👀

It allows designers to prototype in the context of their production codebase (without any of the setup).

So I asked the co-founders Gab and Nim to hook it up to the Inflight repo and give me a little demo to see what’s possible.

I’m pretty sold 👀

Listen on Youtube, Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts 👇

🤝 WITH MOBBIN

There legitimately might not be a tool that the design industry agrees on more than Mobbin…

Over 1 million designers from companies like Airbnb, Uber, Headspace all use Mobbin for design inspiration.

And it makes sense…

It’s highest ROI investments you can possibly make as a designer.

I use Mobbin almost every day to see real world examples of how different products handle specific UI patterns and flows.

It’s invaluable to my practice and I can’t recommend the product enough 👇

🔗 FEATURED RESOURCE

Zantos’s design engineering skill for Claude Code

The Designer’s Toolkit for Claude Code really took off…

In it, Kyle Zantos talks about a “skill” he created to capture the philosophies and tactics of his favorite design engineers on Twitter.

Like you, this blew my mind and I immediately wanted it for myself 😅

So I asked him to share the skill with the community and he agreed! Here’s how Kyle describes it:

You’re definitely going to want to bookmark this one 👇

🔗 FEATURED RESOURCE

How I do web design

Koos Looijesteijn wrote a list of 30 things that actually helped him as a designer and it’s legit.

It’s all over the place but there are a lot of pointed insights that are worth saving.

Here are a couple of my favorites:

🔗 FEATURED RESOURCE

AI Design Field Guide

A new written interview series just launched that I will definitely be following along with.

It’s called the AI Design Field Guide and the first interview is with Barron Webster who is a model designer at Figma.

Check it out 👇

👥 DIVE TALENT NETWORK

Whenever companies I like start hiring, they usually ping me to see if I know anyone great…

So I put together a list of the most talented designers and builders to recommend to companies like Raycast, Lovable, ElevenLabs, and some of my favorite early stage startups.

So if you’re open to new opportunities, take a second to claim a spot in the new talent network 💪

🧃 INSPIRATION JUICE

3 things I saved this week

1️⃣ Shopify order fulfillment exploration

Derek Briggs was one of the design engineers referenced in the Claude Code Toolkit episode.

He just shared a glimpse of a Shopify exploration that I love. Notice the subtle paper gridline behind the customer note 🤌

Check it out →

2️⃣ Dessn loading states

Speaking of Dessn…

Their loading animations just went viral on Twitter and for good reason 😮

Check it out →

3️⃣ Immersive parallax scrolling

I love the simplicity and immersive parallax imagery from the new Autonomous website 👌

See it live →

Meet the Dive partners 

I made a list of my favorite products and asked them to come on as sponsors of the newsletter/podcast. They said yes 🥹

The #1 way to support Dive Club is to check them out👇

Framer​ → How I build my websites

Genway → How I do research

Granola → How I take notes during CRIT

Jitter​ → How I animate my designs

Lovable → How I build my ideas in code

Mobbin → How I find design inspiration

Paper → How I design like a creative

Raycast ​ → How I stay in flow while I work

Thanks for reading! I'm working hard to bring you the best design resources on the planet 🫶

If you want to go even deeper you can always:

☞ Read all ​ideas​

☞ Watch all ​episodes ​

☞ Learn ​advanced design tactics​

See you next week ✌️  - Ridd

P.S. if you were forwarded this email you can ​subscribe here

Someone asked me recently:

“if you had to join a design team, who would you want to work for?”

And my answer was easy... Perplexity

So today's episode with Henry Modisett (Perplexity's VP of Design) is a deep dive into what makes their design culture so special.

Some highlights:

• How to create a culture of decisiveness

• What signals Henry is looking for in designers

• Factors that influence Henry’s leadership style

• How to lay the right foundation for your design org

• Why Henry is doing feedback differently at Perplexity

• Henry’s strategies for building world class design teams

• + a lot more

Watch on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts 👇

🤝 WITH GRANOLA

Fun fact for you…

I'm right on the cusp of the top 1% of Granola users. So when I say I cannot get enough of this product, I mean it, it is that good.

But after seeing their end of year Crunched Report, I have even more respect for this product.

I never have a conversation about design without running Granola, and  somehow it perfectly organizes all of it for me.

Granola gave me this beautiful synopsis of all of the key themes and even some funny moments from the past year.

It's just a good product, so if somehow you're not already using Granola, click the link to try it today 👇

🔑 BEHIND-THE-SCENES

Why this episode changed how I think about Inflight

I can’t stop thinking about Henry’s emphasis on decisiveness and the importance of “never getting stuck” as a designer.

It’s actually influencing how I think about building Inflight… how can we build tools that help designers move forward with confidence and clarity?

So I want to share a little behind-the-scenes of my thought process and how it’s shaping the way we think about product strategy.

There’s a bit of inception but I think you’ll find it pretty interesting. And if you’re down to share your thoughts I’d love to hear what ideas this sparks 👇

👥 FEATURED RESOURCE

How to get hired at Raycast, Lovable, ElevenLabs…

Whenever companies I like start hiring, they usually ping me to see if I know anyone great…

So I put together a list of the most talented designers and builders to recommend to companies like Raycast, Lovable, ElevenLabs, and some of my favorite early stage startups.

You only talk with companies you want to meet and the whole thing is designed to be an easy way for talented designers to see what’s out there without having to make a bunch of noise on Linkedin :)

So if you’re open to new opportunities, take a second to claim a spot in the new talent network 💪

Meet the Dive partners 

I made a list of my favorite products and asked them to come on as sponsors of the newsletter/podcast. They said yes 🥹

The #1 way to support Dive Club is to check them out👇

Framer​ → How I build my websites

Genway → How I do research

Granola → How I take notes during CRIT

Jitter​ → How I animate my designs

Lovable → How I build my ideas in code

Mobbin → How I find design inspiration

Paper → How I design like a creative

Raycast ​ → How I stay in flow while I work

Thanks for reading! I'm working hard to bring you the best design resources on the planet 🫶

If you want to go even deeper you can always:

☞ Read all ​ideas​

☞ Watch all ​episodes ​

☞ Learn ​advanced design tactics​

See you next week ✌️  - Ridd

P.S. if you were forwarded this email you can ​subscribe here

My goal for 2026 is to fully transition into a builder (dare I say design engineer) using AI.

But I’m not going to lie… it’s hard to keep up with all of the products and tactics that are popping up every day.

That’s where Kyle Zantos comes in.

He’s leading the new UX Tools Labs where he's responsible for figuring out what matters for new design tools and workflows.

As a result, he's pretty quickly become a go-to resource on my AI journey.

So today’s conversation is a deep dive into specific tactics you can use on your own design engineering journey.

I’m 100% stealing his idea of creating a custom “skill” that captures the techniques and philosophies of his favorite design engineers on Twitter 👇

🤝 WITH LOVABLE

Another week another huge Lovable release 👀

They now have connectors with products like Perplexity, ElevenLabs, Firecrawl and even Miro.

So you can build apps that pull live data from anywhere on the web or maybe even talk to you. It’s as simple as writing a prompt like “Read this page out loud when users tap play.”

Connectors blow the roof off of what you can create with natural language and you can start today just click the link to get started 👇

🔗 FEATURED RESOURCE

The biggest debate in design right now

In the first few minutes of today’s episode, we look at the latest Cursor updates which sparked a few days worth of debate mostly between Ryo Lu (Head of Design at Cursor) and Karri Saarinen (CEO of Linear).

My takeaway is that both people are right and it completely depends on what I’m designing.

When I’m designing a new feature from scratch I almost always make a mess in Figma first.

However when I’m iterating on something that already exists, I almost always skip Figma and jump right into Claude Code.

That being said, I wanted to share this video from Tommy Geoco because I think it’s a thoughtful synopsis of what this all means for designers 👇

🔗 FEATURED RESOURCE

Figma Make is changing how I do handoff

Most of the Figma Make examples I see focus on prototyping. But it's starting to change how I think about handoff too.

So I wrote an article to shine a light on some of the (atypical) ways I’ve been using the tool 👇

🔗 FEATURED RESOURCE

The deck Paul used to get hired at Linear

Paul Macgregor recently shared the deck he used to land a role at Linear and I really enjoyed paging through it.

One thing that stands out to me is the lack of text and the sheer amount of UI 👀

Thought you might enjoy checking it out too :)

🧃 INSPIRATION JUICE

3 things I saved this week

1️⃣ Rive education cards

I’ve been incorporating Rive into Inflight a lot more lately and fell in love with the education cards in their dashboard.

See it live →

2️⃣ Sky’s Preferences Notepad

I thought we were going to get a Sky interview but OpenAI acquired them before we could film 😅

I still wanted to share this screenshot though because I love their little notepad UI. It’s a simple way to visualize memory and communicate preferences to the model.

3️⃣ Cutaway header nav

This is kind of a fun approach to a website header. I like how the matching CTA bar slides in from the bottom on scroll ✌️

Check it out →

Meet the Dive partners 

I made a list of my favorite products and asked them to come on as sponsors of the newsletter/podcast. They said yes 🥹

The #1 way to support Dive Club is to check them out👇

Framer​ → How I build my websites

Genway → How I do research

Granola → How I take notes during CRIT

Jitter​ → How I animate my designs

Lovable → How I build my ideas in code

Mobbin → How I find design inspiration

Paper → How I design like a creative

Raycast ​ → How I stay in flow while I work

Thanks for reading! I'm working hard to bring you the best design resources on the planet 🫶

If you want to go even deeper you can always:

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We talk a lot about using AI at startups…

But what are more established companies doing to scale AI prototyping?

What are the best ways to use AI to prototype with your design system?

That's what today's episode is all about because we're talking with Lewis Healey and Kylor Hall about how they scaled AI prototyping at Atlassian.

Some highlights 👇

• Their vision for a truly AI-native design system

• What's worked to scale AI prototyping adoption

• Tips for reducing hallucinations when prototyping

• Ways to help AI make sense of your design system

• Their novel approach to prototyping with “templates”

• How the role of design system designers is changing with AI

• + a lot more

Watch on Youtube, Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts 👇

🤝 WITH RAYCAST

So I got a new computer recently… and what do you think was the first app that I installed?

If you’ve been listening to this show for a bit, you probably guessed that the answer is Raycast.

At this point it’s an extension of my fingertips and the core way that I use my computer.

And I’m not alone… I see this sentiment from people I look up to on Twitter all the time so if you’re still on the fence, just do it.

Download Raycast and thank me later. Click the link to get started 👇

🔑 KEY TAKEAWAYS

Atlassian just totally changed how I think about prototyping with AI

I’ll admit… I usually gravitate toward smaller, more nimble teams (especially when it comes to AI workflows).

So I was a bit skeptical when Lewis pinged me about what they’re cooking up at Atlassian.

Then he walked me through what they’re doing and I haven’t stopped thinking about it since.

Here’s what I find so interesting:

How Atlassian uses “templates”

Lewis and Kylor built templates for Replit and Figma Make that anyone on the team can use as a starting point when prototyping.

But this screenshot below doesn’t actually map to any specific Atlassian experience.

Instead it’s simply a launching point designed to help people get better results when prompting.

What they’ve found is that when you upload a screenshot and ask a model to build something from scratch, it tends to hallucinate. Like, a lot.

But when you give the model a base of existing code and then ask it to modify that code to match the screenshot, the results improve dramatically.

Improving prompts with pre-built “recipes”

So how do you help people use these templates effectively?

This is where it starts to get a little meta in a fun way.

Lewis and Kylor created “recipes” which are pre-built, coded instructions that let anyone spin up specific experiences on demand.

Things like:

• switching a UI to dark mode

• dropping in an instance of Rovo (their AI chat experience)

Instead of asking people to write a prompt from scratch, the recipe does the heavy lifting and is written in a way the model understands.

Baking in guideline files

Each template comes with a robust guideline.md file.

It’s job is simple: teach the model how to wield the Atlassian design system.

One of the biggest unlocks here is creating specific instructions for translating from Tailwind.

This brings up a separate point that I found interesting…

When I asked how they’re thinking about what comes next, they pointed to the network effects around today’s dominant frameworks and libraries.

Web technology is entering the most extreme homogenization we’ve ever seen.

Why this all matters

Lewis and Kylor are firm believers that product teams are entering into a more fluid model where anyone with any tool can ship directly to a customer.

Funny enough, Lewis was pretty skeptical of AI in the beginning because he viewed it as a threat to design system adoption.

Now, he sees it almost the opposite way.

Design systems are the thing that makes AI usable at scale.

In his words, the design system becomes the “core of an AI-native, high-velocity organization”.

So if you’re into design systems, modern prototyping workflows, or just want a glimpse at how large teams are adapting to this moment, then I think you’re going to like this episode 👇

🤝 WITH GENWAY

Alright here’s the thing… you don’t need another dashboard. You need to talk to customers 👀

So I want to introduce you to Genway AI

You can think of it like vibe researching to validate your ideas quickly

Just draft your questions, select an ICP, and their AI agent runs interviews on your behalf by pulling from a panel of global participants.

Set it up in the morning and get actionable insights by lunch time. It’s validation at your fingertips.

And you can try it out free for 14 days just click the link to get started 👇

Meet the Dive partners 

I made a list of my favorite products and asked them to come on as sponsors of the newsletter/podcast. They said yes 🥹

The #1 way to support Dive Club is to check them out👇

Framer​ → How I build my websites

Genway → How I do research

Granola → How I take notes during CRIT

Jitter​ → How I animate my designs

Lovable → How I build my ideas in code

Mobbin → How I find design inspiration

Paper → How I design like a creative

Raycast ​ → How I stay in flow while I work

Thanks for reading! I'm working hard to bring you the best design resources on the planet 🫶

If you want to go even deeper you can always:

☞ Read all ​ideas​

☞ Watch all ​episodes ​

☞ Learn ​advanced design tactics​

See you next week ✌️  - Ridd

P.S. if you were forwarded this email you can ​subscribe here

Today's episode goes deep into all of the design details in a new video collaboration tool called Flask.

But the reason I’m so inspired by this product goes far beyond the UI/UX…

Flask is designed and built by one person—Enrico Tartarotti—who was a PM at Maze before this so his journey is the perfect example of what it looks like to thrive as a generalist builder in 2026.

This episode tells the story of what it took to build a well-crafted product and all of the lessons that he learned along the way.

I find his journey incredibly inspiring and I hope you do too.

Watch on Youtube, Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts 👇

🤝 WITH JITTER

If you’re like me you know that adding motion to your designs is the easiest way to make them feel premium.

The thing is… I’m not a motion designer 😅

But that’s why Jitter’s new AI Brainstorm feature is a game changer.

I just drop in my design, and then get instant motion ideas that I can tweak, refine, and make my own.

It’s seriously so easy to animate your work with Jitter I cannot recommend it enough👇

🔑 KEY TAKEAWAYS

Time for a little reflection…

In the Summer of 2023 I decided to quit my job because I thought there was an opportunity to create the “Lenny for design” and I wanted to give it a go.

2.5 years and ~200 episodes later, I still work for myself and am having more fun than at any point in my career 🙂 

So first off… thank you for listening because it wouldn’t be possible without you.

I think it’s time for a bit of reflection though…

From the very beginning I set out to make a podcast that I personally wanted to listen to. That’s why sometimes it might feel more like a guest lecture than a fireside chat. I like content that is snappy and deep.

This also means I’m pretty much following whatever topics interest me at that moment in time. This week’s episode with Enrico is a great example of that. He’s not even a designer lol. But his journey as a solo builder and founder inspires the heck out of me.

So I want to pause and hear from you: what topics, people, or companies would you like to hear more about in 2026?

Some potential examples:

• Design leaders at top companies

• Designers becoming builders

• Hiring and portfolio tactics

• Agencies and freelancers

• Design tool deep dives

• Early career designers

• Design systems

• Startup stories

• ???

Hit reply and let me know!

I read, respond, and appreciate every email 🫶 Otherwise have a wonderful New Years!

— Ridd

🤝 WITH PAPER

I saw a scroll-stopping tweet the other day…

The creators of tailwind are working directly on Paper to train the output to be perfect. They even invested in the company 🤯

So just think about the possibilities for a second…

In the future you could design something in Paper and then just right-click and copy the perfect Tailwind as if the creators wrote it by hand or take an existing code component and import it into Paper to make edits directly on the canvas.

This is going to totally change how we design and deliver UIs for the web and it’s another reason why I’m betting on Paper as the next great design tool 👇

Meet the Dive partners 

I made a list of my favorite products and asked them to come on as sponsors of the newsletter/podcast. They said yes 🥹

The #1 way to support Dive Club is to check them out👇

Framer​ → How I build my websites

Genway → How I do research

Granola → How I take notes during CRIT

Jitter​ → How I animate my designs

Lovable → How I build my ideas in code

Mobbin → How I find design inspiration

Paper → How I design like a creative

Raycast ​ → How I stay in flow while I work

Thanks for reading! I'm working hard to bring you the best design resources on the planet 🫶

If you want to go even deeper you can always:

☞ Read all ​ideas​

☞ Watch all ​episodes ​

☞ Learn ​advanced design tactics​

See you next week ✌️  - Ridd

P.S. if you were forwarded this email you can ​subscribe here

As one of the fastest growing companies in the world, Lovable is scaling their design team by tapping into the Dive Talent Network.

So I interviewed their Head of Design, Nad Chishtie, to learn everything I can about how to get hired as a designer at Lovable.

This is easily one of the most practical conversations of the year. I’ve been looking forward to sharing it with you for a few weeks now 🙂 

Some highlights:

• A breakdown of a recent design hire’s portfolio

• How to avoid getting your portfolio screened out

• How to crush the later stages of the hiring process

• How you can win Nad over with side projects alone

• What to do if you’re not confident in your visual skills

• The 2 things Nad cares most about when hiring designers

• + a lot more

Watch on Youtube, Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts 👇

🤝 WITH MOBBIN

Big news: Animations just launched in Mobbin 😎

So you can see how world-class apps use motion to guide, delight, and create seamless experiences.

It’s just another reason why Mobbin is an absolute cheat code for your entire design team. We use it all of the time and I can’t wait to start sending animation ideas to the rest of the team.

Click the link to check it out today 👇

🔑 KEY TAKEAWAYS

Key takeaways from a jam-packed episode with Nad

1 — Lovable is all about generalists

That showed up over and over in our conversation.

The single biggest trait Nad kept coming back to was the ability for designers to run a project end to end. Lovable only has one PM, which means designers own a lot of product strategy.

You’re talking to users.

You have access to all the data.

You’re empowered to decide when to build (or delete) something.

Until recently, their handbook literally said something like:
“You know you’re doing your job correctly when someone else tells you you’re stepping on their toes.” 😅

2 — Portfolio insights

1. Think about yourself as a brand/product.

   1. Nad pays close attention to his gut reaction in the first few seconds (exactly the same way he evaluates a company website). This reaction is driven by copy, visual rhythm, composition, and overall polish.
      

2. If you don’t have the craft skills to wow someone, do less

   1. One great tactic is to write articles that demonstrate your thinking. You don’t have to use the cliché portfolio template. Putting up subpar visuals hurts more than hiding them.
      

3. “I put the exact same amount of weight on side projects.”

   1. Not everyone gets to work on beautiful products with polished design systems. That’s ok! You can win Nad over just as easily with a well-executed side project. He’s simply trying to assess your skill and level of intentionality.
      

4. Overselling process can be a bad thing

   1. Nad really only cares about the work. The more you explain every detail of your process, the more chances there are for a hiring manager to latch onto something they don’t want. As Nad put it, “you can give signal on the wrong things”.

It’s important to understand where you are in the funnel. A portfolio isn’t the place for the hard sell. You’re just trying to get bumped to the next round. That’s where they’ll actually evaluate your process.

I pushed Nad on this to the extreme and asked whether it’s possible to move forward with nothing but a component playground (no text, process, project pages, impact, etc.).

His answer? “Definitely”.

3 — How to nail the interview process

Nad places a lot of weight on the quality of questions you ask in the interview. This is one of the clearest ways to signal product thinking.

He loves when candidates show up clearly having done their homework with formulated opinions about the product and space.

The full episode is jam-packed with practical takeaways like this. I took as many notes as any episode ever 👇

🤝 WITH FRAMER

If you’re still designing in Figma and rebuilding in Framer, you’re doing twice the work.

With Framer’s Design Pages, you no longer need to jump between tools. The last page I made for the Dive Website I explored entirely in Framer.

You can sketch, iterate, structure, and publish to the web all from the same place. 

Framer isn’t just a site builder. It’s a design tool for your entire workflow.

Start creating for free and use the code RIDD to unlock a free month of Framer Pro.

Meet the Dive partners 

I made a list of my favorite products and asked them to come on as sponsors of the newsletter/podcast. They said yes 🥹

The #1 way to support Dive Club is to check them out👇

Framer​ → How I build my websites

Genway → How I do research

Granola → How I take notes during CRIT

Jitter​ → How I animate my designs

Lovable → How I build my ideas in code

Mobbin → How I find design inspiration

Paper → How I design like a creative

Raycast ​ → How I stay in flow while I work

Thanks for reading! I'm working hard to bring you the best design resources on the planet 🫶

If you want to go even deeper you can always:

☞ Read all ​ideas​

☞ Watch all ​episodes ​

☞ Learn ​advanced design tactics​

See you next week ✌️  - Ridd

P.S. if you were forwarded this email you can ​subscribe here

What does it look like to own web design for one of the fastest growing AI startups in the world?

And how do you get that opportunity if you don’t have companies like Apple or Airbnb on your resumé?

That’s what this episode with Roman Tesliuk is all about.

He walks us through the Eleven Labs Figma and talks about the tiniest of design decisions all the way to how he’s building a scalable website system.

We also go deep into Roman's side projects and all of the ways he's becoming a builder with AI 💪

Listen on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts 👇

🤝WITH GRANOLA

Fun fact for you…

I'm right on the cusp of the top 1% of Granola users. So when I say I cannot get enough of this product, I mean it. It is that good.

But after seeing their end of year Crunched Report, I have even more respect for this product.

I never have a conversation about design without running Granola, and  somehow it perfectly organizes all of it for me.

Granola gave me this beautiful synopsis of all of the key themes and even some funny moments from the past year.

It's just a good product, so if somehow you're not already using Granola, click the link to try it today 👇

🔑 KEY TAKEAWAYS

What stood out to me in Roman’s episode

1 — Custom exploration tools

Eleven Labs is another example of a team building internal tools to explore brand patterns (similar to MDS, Nick Pattison, and Ryan Miyoshi).

This is one of the biggest themes I’m noticing in design right now 👀

2 — Creating systems that scale

The Eleven Labs website is so much bigger than I realized and the amount of UI in Figma is pretty staggering.

So it was fascinating to listen to Roman talk through his strategies for components and creating layouts that are standardized enough to scale while allowing plenty of room to make each page feel unique.

Roman has the broader system and potential future use cases in mind at all times.

3 — Why I’m so inspired by Roman’s career journey

Like me, Roman doesn’t have a fancy design degree or a bunch of high profile logos on his Linkedin.

And yet he’s designing in the big leagues right now at Eleven Labs 👀

So I spent the second half of the episode digging into how he got there.

A few things stand out:

• He shares his work on Twitter pretty consistently

• He freaking went for it and started App Stacks (which is how I initially found him). This required sending a bunch of cold DMs to well-known designers.

• His portfolio is simple but perfectly showcases his skills (you might remember me sharing it in an earlier inspiration juice section without even realizing who he was at that point).

Hopefully the full conversation inspires you as well 👇

Meet the Dive partners 

I made a list of my favorite products and asked them to come on as sponsors of the newsletter/podcast. They said yes 🥹

The #1 way to support Dive Club is to check them out👇

Framer​ → How I build my websites

Genway → How I do research

Granola → How I take notes during CRIT

Jitter​ → How I animate my designs

Lovable → How I build my ideas in code

Mobbin → How I find design inspiration

Paper → How I design like a creative

Raycast ​ → How I stay in flow while I work

Thanks for reading! I'm working hard to bring you the best design resources on the planet 🫶

If you want to go even deeper you can always:

☞ Read all ​ideas​

☞ Watch all ​episodes ​

☞ Learn ​advanced design tactics​

See you next week ✌️  - Ridd

P.S. if you were forwarded this email you can ​subscribe here