This week's episode is with Rhiannon Bell (VP of UX for Google Search) and we're doing a deep dive into what it takes to design for AI at the scale of Google.

Some highlights:

• The design decisions that unlocked AI Mode

• Designing dynamic component systems for AI

• How AI is shaping the practice of design at Google

• What we can learn from the top designers at Google

• What skills are becoming more valuable for designers

• + a lot more

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

🔗 FEATURED RESOURCES

WhatThePort Tom Johnson just launched a pretty epic side project while roaming around in his RV. It's a Mac menu bar app for monitoring local dev servers, and I downloaded it immediately. Highly recommend. Read more →

Paper x Conductor Remember when I filmed a live session with Kyle Zantos showing how I use Paper and Conductor? Well, that informed an official collaboration between two of my favorite tools. If you're interested in learning more, I definitely recommend bookmarking this. Check it out →

Inter alternatives: How to choose a UI font I've always been jealous of people who have a deep understanding of typography. Most of the time I just play it safe, so this practical guide to choosing UI fonts beyond Inter was pretty much made for me. Read more →

How to build a video studio around Opus 5.5 On last Thursday’s Dive Radio, Tommy and I went deep on how anyone can animate now. Right after, Rari published a breakdown on building a video studio around Opus 5.5 so if the episode got you curious, this is a great next step. Read more →

🧃 INSPIRATION JUICE

3 things I saved this week

1️⃣ Tim Van Damme’s personal website

Tim is one of the best to ever do it, and his new personal site is even better than you'd expect.

See it live →

2️⃣ Sean Goodwin's personal website

Another personal site I love is Sean Goodwin's, who you might remember from when I interviewed the Loom team about their AI launch. The personal video intro is my favorite part. It makes the whole site feel like you're meeting him.

See it live →

3️⃣ Baytas list hover interaction

This list hover interaction is as smooth as it gets. No wonder, since it was made by Baytas, one of the most skilled design engineers I know. Fun fact: he just joined Moment as their new creative director through the Dive Talent Network.

See it live →

👥 FEATURED RESOURCE

Want Tommy and I to review your portfolio?

This Thursday at 4pmEST, Tommy and I are going to review a bunch of portfolios live on Dive Radio

So I have two asks:

1. If you’re a hiring manager, we want to showcase your tips in a pre-recorded Loom video. Reply to this email if you want a slot!

2. For people wanting their portfolio reviewed, reply to this email and I’ll follow up with instructions 🙂 

It should be a fun episode so go ahead and add it to your calendar here ✌️

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

This week's episode is with Danny Martinez and we're doing the ultimate deep dive into design hiring and what's happening in today's job market.

Danny has the perfect vantage point as the CEO of Decimals—the platform that powers everything I do with the Dive Talent Network.

So this episode is about as practical as it gets:

• What companies want in a “design engineer”

• The biggest green and red flags from hiring managers

• How the best teams are iterating on the hiring process

• Examples of portfolios getting hired in the talent network

• Why brand design is the most difficult design role to hire for

• How to attract the most in-demand designers as a hiring manager

• The interaction design example hiring managers keep highlighting

• + a lot more

👥 FEATURED RESOURCE

Speaking of design hiring…

Quick Dive Talent Network update because the list of companies hiring right now is pretty incredible.

I'm currently promoting designers to companies like:

• Antimetal (autonomous infrastructure)

• Bland (AI voice agents)

• Coinbase (duh)

• Greptile (AI code review)

• Logora (Legal rocketship)

• Lovable (duh)

• Railway (rocketship we use at Inflight)

• Ramp (duh)

• Superpower (health membership with 150+ lab tests)

• + a lot more

If you're quietly open to something new, take 30 seconds and drop your info here so companies can apply to chat with you ✌️

🔗 FEATURED RESOURCES

Brand as software There's been some pretty incredible work coming out of Ramp lately, and Paul Jun is a big reason why. I wanted to share this article he wrote about the future of in-house brand and creative teams. He makes the point that we're moving away from static guidelines toward living brand systems and brand as software. Read more →

AI Interface Museum Kyle put together a horizontal timeline that chronicles the major milestones on our way to today's AI interfaces. It's a beautiful scroll and worth a bookmark. Check it out →

Sounds on the Web By now you know my new obsession is sound design in UX, so I wanted to share this article from Raphael that I bookmarked recently. Read more →

🧃 INSPIRATION JUICE

3 things I saved this week

1️⃣ Password reveal interaction

Gotta be one of the most clever design concepts I've seen this year

Check it out →

2️⃣ Dessn wax seal envelope animation

Nim is the engineer behind Dessn. He has no real motion background, but he still extended Ayush's brand work into this with AI. It's so impressive that I asked him to do a behind the scenes on Thursday's Dive Radio 👀

See it live →

3️⃣ AppZapper 3000 ray gun uninstaller

AppZapper is real and it's amazing 😄

Check it out →

📻 DIVE RADIO

Want to hang with me and Tommy?

I think we've finally cracked the format for Dive Radio…

Each week we pick a topic and some of my favorite designers from the community send in short videos, either sharing their take or demoing what they're building.

It's been so inspiring and I'm learning a ton every week.

This Thursday we're going deep on video as code, which is one of the things I'm most excited to explore right now. It should be a good one :)

Tune in to Dive Radio Thursday at 4pmEST/1PST and you can add it to your calendar here ✌️

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

This week's episode is with Geoff Teehan—co-founder of the legendary design agency Teehan+Lax, longtime design leader at Facebook, and now Chief Design Officer at Lightspark.

Some highlights:

• How Geoff has navigated multiple cycles of change

• What the “parking spot” phase of software looks like

• Why Geoff plans to only hire 4 designers at Lightspark

• The design backstory behind Geoff’s viral Dialed game

• How Geoff brings consumer principles into enterprise design

• ＋ a lot more

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

📣 FEATURED RESOURCE

Want to become a Founding Designer?

There's one question that I can't stop asking myself:

That question is the foundation for the Dive Talent Network (and it's really working).

Right now I’m helping many of my favorite startups hire people who listen to the show 👀

So if you're curious what might be out there (or maybe you're even looking for your next design hire) here’s the link ✌️

🔗 FEATURED RESOURCES

That Crisp Interface Is Going To Date Clean UI used to be a selling point. Now that look is a single prompt away, so we gotta dig deeper as designers to stand out. It's one of the reasons I keep sharing Geoff Teehan's rows.gg (which we talk about in today’s episode). That’s the opposite of minimalism in many ways… but it’s dope. Read more →

How we built Interfere’s new website I've been noticing a trend where designers are skipping static images on their landing pages and building out fully interactive demos instead. This case study walks through how Interfere built theirs (and why the approach is so compelling) 👀 Check it out →

🧃 INSPIRATION JUICE

3 things I saved this week

1️⃣ Shrey Gupta’s personal website

A trend I'm loving right now is personal sites built around vertical columns. Shrey's transitions are pretty impressive and the sound design is a nice touch too 🎧

See it live →

2️⃣ infinite faq

If you somehow missed this viral pattern… definitely take a look because you're about to be seeing it everywhere. Amazing how you can still design something that makes a million people go “oh duh that’s brilliant”.

Check it out →

3️⃣ Horizontal scroll transition

I find the visual language on the new blink.trade site quite fresh and the scroll transitions are well executed too

See it live →

📻 DIVE RADIO

Sneak peek of my new AI workflow

I built a tool that completely changes the way that I prompt while designing...

It’s literally just a link now every time. And honestly it’s incredible.

If you want a sneak peek I'm giving a little demo of my new workflow on Dive Radio at 4pmEST on Thursday.

You can add it to your calendar here 👇
https://dive.radio/join

We’ll also be sharing a bunch of other AI workflows from designers in the community so you won’t want to miss this one.

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

Ready for a sneak peek into Eleven Labs’ internal design tools?

This week's episode is with Nev Flynn (their Head of Design) and we're doing a deep dive into how he's bringing artful expression into enterprise design.

Some highlights:

• Inside look at ElevenLabs internal brand tools

• Why Nev is prioritizing specialists over generalists

• What Nev looks for when evaluating a design portfolio

• How they built a shader orb system for 40 million voices

• What happens when non-designers are designing with AI

• How the team is making their design system agent-native

• + a lot more

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

📣 FEATURED RESOURCE

How Designers Are Getting Hired in 2026

I’ll be honest… I think last Thursday’s deep dive into design hiring was one of the most valuable pieces of content I’ve ever been a part of making.

We heard from hiring managers at Linear, Shopify, Notion, Railway, as well as a bunch of stories from designers who recently navigated the job market and landed a new role.

So if you’re open to new opportunities:

1. Make sure to hop in the Dive Talent Network

2. Bookmark the design hiring deep dive

🔗 FEATURED RESOURCES

Design Work Survey 2026 I’m partnering with Tommy Geoco on the State of Design Work survey. The goal is to paint a clearer picture of where design work is headed and what the heck is going on in today’s landscape. We’ll be doing these quarterly and sharing the results here. I filled it out and it only took ~2 minutes :) Appreciate the help! Check it out →

How to make your own design harness “Harness” is a bit of an ambiguous (and maybe even intimidating) word for designers. But it’s honestly much simpler than it seems. This article from Will Newton does a great job of showing why it matters and how to go about it. Read more →

Interface design library ICYMI Dive Radio last week, I shared Conductor’s new composer pattern and Chris from Rogo quote tweeted it with this awesome inspiration library. It’s basically Mobbin but for game design. Check it out →

🧃 INSPIRATION JUICE

3 things I saved this week

1️⃣ Figma and SwiftUI interactions

I love everything about this microinteraction from Nitish 👏

See it live →

2️⃣ John Bai’s portfolio

Remember John Bai’s episode about designing Grok Bot?

Well I was on his portfolio the other day and I think it’s definitely worth sharing. I like how clearly it:

1. Puts the work first

2. Paints the picture of his career journey

See it live →

3️⃣ Dark mode components

Some nice details to give these components some depth/texture even in dark mode 👌

See it live →

📻 DIVE RADIO

Calling all (aspiring) founding designers

On Thursday we’re doing a deep dive into what I consider one of the most valuable roles in all of tech: the founding designer.

The call-in lineup is stacked so we’re going to hear from a bunch of awesome designers about what it takes to thrive in the role (and some lessons learned the hard way).

Tune in to Dive Radio on Thursday at 4pmEST/1PST (or you can add it to your calendar) ✌️

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

This week's episode is with Ed Bayes and we're doing a deep dive into how designers at OpenAI prototype the future of Codex/ChatGPT Work.

Some highlights:

• How prototyping at OpenAI has shifted recently

• The design challenges of bringing Codex into ChatGPT

• How Ed thinks about the spectrum of dynamic interfaces

• How Codex thought about their information architecture bets

• Why Ed structures design teams around personas not features

• The traits of the designers making the biggest impact at OpenAI

• + a lot more

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

👥 FEATURED RESOURCE

My new HTML workflow

Every time I think I know where the ceiling is for HTML prototypes I realize I’m wrong…

Now I use HTML even to share production components (working on a skill to share with you at some point).

When I’m ready to send something to my team it’s simple:

1. Ask my agent to “share with Inflight”

2. Get a link to drop in Slack

3. People reply with pinned comments or video

It really is that easy 👏

🔗 FEATURED RESOURCES

Designing Grok Bot Remember John Bai? He demoed some of the earliest explorations of Grok Bot. Well the xAI team just published a deep dive into how they thought about the core primitives and information architecture behind the viral product and it’s a good read 👇 Read more →

How Vercel builds on-brand pages with design.md John Phamous shared a behind-the-scenes look at how Vercel approached building their design.md system. I recommend feeding it to your agent to look for ways to improve your own system. Check it out →

Wealthsimple: one year post-acquisition Remember Thiago Costa? He joined the show last year to talk about designing Fey (still one of the most gorgeous products of all time imo) Well they’ve now been at Wealthsimple for a full year, and Thiago’s co-founder Dennis Brotzky shared a behind-the-scenes look at what they’ve made so far. It’s a bit technical, but it’s also full of gorgeous interface shots that are 100% worth a scroll. Read more →

🧃 INSPIRATION JUICE

3 things I saved this week

1️⃣ Laurent Del Rey’s personal website

Laurent is probably one of the most creative designers I’ve ever seen and his site is about as awesome as you’d expect.

See it live →

2️⃣ on.design upload hover state

I’ve been spending more time on on.design recently. Really like this upload hover state and how they communicate the dimensions as an annotation almost.

See it live →

3️⃣ Adam Whitcroft — Split drag handle interaction

Ya this is freaking good lol

See it live →

📻 DIVE RADIO

Insider design hiring data 🤫

This Thursday Tommy and I are surfacing some juicy insights from the Dive Talent Network.

We also get to hear from companies like Shopify, Notion, Railway, and a bunch of recently-hired designers.

it’s going to be the ultimate inside look at the market for design hiring and I can’t wait.

Tune in to Dive Radio Thursday at 4pmEST/1PST

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

This week’s episode is with Evil Rabbit who is the founding designer at Vercel and an iconic figure in the design community.

He shares his design journey (which started with his first job in Argentina at 9 years old) and how he built the Vercel brand.

Some highlights:

• What it takes to design an iconic brand identity

• How Vercel’s new Creative Studio team operates

• How he landed his first design job at 12 years old in Argentina

• Why Vercel is shifting from designing assets to building tools

• What he learned from working directly with Guillermo (Vercel CEO)

• + a lot more

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

📣 FEATURED RESOURCE

The rise of HTML

soooo I've been interviewing a ton of designers/teams lately for Inflight and let me tell ya...

HTML prototypes are becoming very popular 📈

I use them all day long for quick prototypes but the problem is sharing them + getting feedback is super awkward.

That’s why we’re making HTML a huge part of the all-new Inflight:

⇢ upload an HTML
⇢ get a shareable link
⇢ allow pinned comments + video

This feature pretty much changed my workflow overnight so I’m excited to see what you think 👇

🔗 FEATURED RESOURCES

HTML state machines Remember Anthony Menecola? He shared one of my favorite use cases for HTML prototypes which is building little state machines to control my prototypes. Hopefully this sparks some ideas for your own work :) Oh and Owner is hiring in the talent network if you want to join him ✌️ Read more →

UI Skills Playbook This website is a whole page of practical design-engineering lessons (best practices for skeletons, pressed states, typography, etc.). Definitely worth a bookmark. Check it out →

Procedural UI sound generator So I’ve been building sound board tools to nail down the sound.md file for Inflight and came across this very cool resource from Mick. Will be sharing what I built on Thursday’s Dive Radio if you want to learn more (you can add to calendar here). I’ve never done anything like this before and it’s a blast :) Read more →

🧃 INSPIRATION JUICE

3 things I saved this week

1️⃣ Composer interaction

I’ve seen a lot of composer designs but nothing quite like this from Ayush before 👌

See it live →

2️⃣ That’s gonna leave a mark

Remember Matt Sellers? My man drops banger after banger on Twitter. I probably watched this 25 times.

See it live →

3️⃣ Supercut testimonials section

I really like the grid approach on the new Supercut website (especially the testimonials layout)

See it live →

📻 DIVE RADIO

How to engineer a brand universe

Tune in to Dive Radio tomorrow at 4pmEST/1PST!

We’ll be sharing some special sneak peeks of how the best teams are building internal brand tools 👀

Just wait til you see what Metalab has cooked up…

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

Grok Bot has been going viral the last two weeks so this week's episode is a behind-the-scenes of the design journey with John Bai (who was the first NYC design hire at Cursor).

He screen-shares a ton of agent interaction pattern ideas as well as his unused concepts for the Grok Bot onboarding flow.

Some highlights:

• The prototype that led to the Grok Bot mascot

• Why John realized chat was still the right UX for AI

• How John uses agents to streamline his Figma work

• Comparing John's onboarding concepts for Grok Bot

• Why John still starts his design explorations in Figma

• What it took to turn AI agents into a consumer product

• Why no two designers at Cursor have the same tools/process

• + a lot more

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

👥 FEATURED RESOURCE

Dive Talent Network

Remember Claire Taylor?

She just posted that she joined the design team at Superpower.

And guess what?? She landed it through the Dive Talent Network 😏

So if you're curious what might be out there (or maybe you're even looking for your next design hire) here's the link ✌

🔗 FEATURED RESOURCES

The making of Cursor's icons Speaking of Cursor, if you want to see what “people who care” really means, just look at the making of their icons. Geesh. Check it out →

Beautiful UI One of my favorite parts of the episode with John Bai is seeing how many different interaction patterns he explored for agents. So I want to share Beautiful UI. Its a small library of components for agent UX and they’re gorgeous. Check it out →

James McDonald time-lapses Remember James McDonald? He's been sharing time-lapse recordings of him recreating complex visual patterns and they're incredibly fun to watch. Check it out →

Rauno field notes If there's one thing you can count on, it's that I'll share one of these Rauno field notes with you. Check it out →

🧃 INSPIRATION JUICE

3 things I saved this week

Router

Ramp ships so insanely fast idk what they even do anymore as a company 😆 Router is some pretty fresh work though. Love this site.

Calendly brand identity

Remember Mike Smith?

He just redesigned the Calendly brand identity (RIP toilet bowl). The logo is great work but I also love these cards.

Operate

Been loving all of the work coming from the Operate team. Alvish's B2B visuals are always on point.

📻️ DIVE RADIO

Novel UI patterns

This week's Dive Radio will focus on novel UI patterns (and I'm working on a little demo I think you're going to like).

Hopefully Tommy doesn’t turn me into a whale mascot again lol.

See you Thursday at 4pmEST/1PST

You can add it to your calendar here ✌

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

This week's episode is with Patrick Morgan and we're doing a deep dive into the prototyping environment he built for Sublime Security.

What started as an attempt to organize his team’s prototypes ended up becoming a new type of AI design tool. It's a great example of how designers can level up the team by building thoughtful internal tools.

Some highlights:

• How Patrick hacks low-fidelity styles with AI

• Patrick’s vision for agent-native design handoff

• How Patrick built a canvas to organize prototypes

• The design principles that guide how the agent prototypes

• How Patrick built a system to port over production frontend

• How the brand team uses Design Studio to build internal tools

• + a lot more

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

👥 FEATURED RESOURCE

Dive Talent Network

There’s one question that I can’t stop asking myself:

What if companies apply to talk to you rather than the other way around?

That question is the foundation for the Dive Talent Network (and it’s really working).

Right now I’m helping many of my favorite startups hire people who listen to the show 👀

So if you’re curious what might be out there (or maybe you’re even looking for your next design hire) here’s the link ✌️

🔗 FEATURED RESOURCES

Creating a particle transition scene We talked about this one on Dive Radio, but it’s too good not to share here too. Natko built a particle transition scene for his new product’s website and then walked through how he did it in a little thread. Easily one of the coolest things I’ve seen on design Twitter this month. Check it out →

Bringing Spaces to Dia Remember Charlie Deets? He got together with a couple other designers from The Browser Company to pull back the curtain on how they designed Spaces in Dia (which just officially got me to switch from Arc this week 🫣). Check it out →

Vault of effects I just found Arlan’s vault and I’ve scrolled it twice over the last week because it’s so fun. All of the effects are ready to copy too 👀 Check it out →

🧃 INSPIRATION JUICE

3 things I saved this week

1️⃣ A fresh backdrop effect on Lightspark

Just when I thought I was bored of AI-gen backdrops for mockups, this effect on Lightspark is pretty fresh.

See it live →

2️⃣ Roman’s App Store screenshots

Remember Roman Tesliuk?

He just shared some App Store screenshots for The Daily Dispatch that I saved. He always impresses me with his ability to design in totally different visual languages.

See it live →

3️⃣ A peek detail on Claire Taylor’s site

I love this little peek detail on Claire Taylor’s new website.

A hiring manager just sent it to me as an example of the type of designer they’re looking to hire. Little did they know that Claire just landed a new role through the Dive Talent Network 😏

See it live →

📻 DIVE RADIO

Is Tommy making a little guy??

I think Tommy might be cooking up a mascot for Dive. No promises, but needless to say I’m excited for next week’s Dive Radio.

Tune in Thursday at 4pmEST/1PST

You can add it to your calendar here ✌️

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

We’re making history this week…

Kyle Zantos is officially the first person to make three appearances on Dive Club 🎉

I keep inviting him on because it feels like every couple of months AI totally transforms the design process.

So in today’s episode, we’re demo’ing the new workflows we’re using to design and build with AI.

Some highlights:

• 5 use cases for designing with HTML docs

• How you can build a UX writing environment

• How Kyle explores with node-based workflows

• My new Supercut MCP workflow for prompting

• Strategies for brainstorming UX ideas with Fable

• How to decide when to invest in a personal design tool

• Why workflows Kyle no longer includes in his design process

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

📣 DESIGNER OF THE WEEK

Every Thursday on Dive Radio we crown the “Designer of the Week” (Tommy and I each nominate someone and we source two others from people in the community).

Our first ever winner was ÌníOlúwa Abíódún (side note: she has one of the coolest portfolio sites I’ve seen this year).

If you found Ìní on Backyard designers you’d know she was a lawyer before practicing product design.

But what you might *not* know is she landed an incredible role at Airops through the Dive Talent Network 🎉

It’s a big reason why their design lead David said:

So if you’re looking for a big time hire, there are a ton of talented designer/builders who are quietly open to their next role 👇

🔗 FEATURED RESOURCES

Redesigning Loom

Not going to lie… Loom redesign caught me off guard. They are truly re-imagining every piece of the UX and Cody Cai is sharing a behind-the-scenes here 👇 Read more →

Smart corner morph animation

The quality of design engineering coming from Dessn nowadays is pretty incredible. This breakdown from their design engineer Kevin is so sick. Check it out →

Meng To’s open-source three.js site

Remember Meng To from Codex superpowers? He’s been working on a very cool three.js site and just open-sourced it so that everyone can learn from it. It’s another reason why he’s one of the truly great teachers of our time :) Read more →

🧃 INSPIRATION JUICE

3 things I saved this week

1️⃣ Segmented expansion interaction

You ever see an interaction and you’re like “yup I am 100% stealing drawing inspiration from that”?

See it live →

2️⃣ Butter video website

The new Butter website is really fresh. Also Ellis Hamburger helped with the storytelling so it’s worth a scroll for no other reason than that.

See it live →

3️⃣ Uno card concepts

idk what to do with these yet but I love them 🙂 

Check it out →

📻 DIVE RADIO

Want to hang with me and Tommy?

Then I’ll see you for the next Dive Radio on Thursday at 4pmEST/1PST

You can add it to your calendar here ✌️

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

Charlie Deets has designed Safari, Arc, and now Dia…

Needless to say he knows a thing or two about designing browsers 😅

So in this week’s episode Charlie shares the principles that guide his design practice and takes us on a tour of some of the finer craft details inside Dia.

Some highlights:

• Charlie’s tips for presenting design work

• How to protect your special sauce as a designer

• What makes Apple’s decision-making culture unique

• The differences between designing at Apple vs. The Browser Co.

• Why Charlie is spending more time in Figma and less time prototyping with AI

• + a lot more

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

👥 FEATURED RESOURCE

There’s one question I can’t stop asking myself…

That question is the  foundation for the Dive Talent Network (and it's reeeeeally working).

Right now I’m helping many of my favorite startups hire people who listen to the show. Just look at this logo wall 👀

So if you're curious what might be out there (or maybe you're even looking for your next design hire) here’s the link ✌️

🔗 FEATURED RESOURCES

Designing Vercel’s Project Cards

Rauno just shared a behind-the-scenes of how they designed the all-new project cards in Vercel. Tbh I wish more companies would share this type of content. It’s definitely worth a scroll. Check it out →

UI SFX

We’ve been talking about sound design a lot more on the podcast lately. Its a big reason why I shared the rows.gg demo last week too. Moving forward I’m considering sound design a first class citizen in my UX practice (it’s my favorite part of our landing page). So ya… definitely bookmark the new UI SFX library 👀 Check it out →

🧃 INSPIRATION JUICE

3 things I saved this week

1️⃣ X Money feature section layout

I find this feature section layout on the new X Money site pretty fresh. It’s not every day that you see content grouped like this.

See it live →

2️⃣ Fresh dark mode grid

Superwhisper just launched a new website and I love this grid concept—especially the subtle negative space created for the primary heading

Check it out →

3️⃣ Glitch effect scroll animation

I. Am. Obsessed. With. This. Scroll. Animation.

The craziest part is I wanted to see if Claude could do it and I pretty much one-shotted the same effect with Opus 5 yesterday 😆 So we’ll probably be seeing a lot of this moving forward.

See it live →

📻 DIVE RADIO

Want to hang with me and Tommy?

Tune in to Dive Radio tomorrow at 4pmEST/1PST

I have a little game that I’m going to force Tommy to play with me that I think you’ll find pretty entertaining :)

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

Pablo Stanley has built as many creative tools as anyone in our industry.

So in this episode he gives us a behind-the-scenes of his latest creations (including how he prototyped the all-new design mode in Vercel's v0).

We go deep into:

• The two types of design builders at Vercel

• Pablo's approach to prototyping the new v0

• Behind the scenes of Pablo's custom design tools

• What historic artists teach us about AI and creativity

• How Pablo gets people excited about his ideas with Loom

• The moment Pablo realized “I don’t design like this anymore”

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

👥 FEATURED RESOURCE

Talent network updates

In the past week, listeners have been hired at companies like Superpower, Lovable, and Moment. Insane, right?

And we’re just getting started…

I’m currently promoting designers to companies like:

• Conductor (my tool of choice)

• Iverson (the meme lord himself)

• Legora (opening new NYC office)

• Railway (rocketship we use at Inflight)

• Primary (Nick Pattison’s branding studio)

• + a lot more

If you’re quietly open to new opportunities take 30 second and drop your info here so companies can apply to chat with you ✌️

🔗 FEATURED RESOURCES

Rows demo

My friend sent me this demo over the weekend and it’s incredible. I highly recommend spending a couple minutes clicking around to feel the interactions (make sure your sound is up too!). Then after you’re done, bask in the beauty that is this copywriting. Read more →

Make sure the fire is still alive

ICYMI Cursor took over design Twitter after Jenny, Manuel, and Tyler announced they were joining. Which naturally had people asking about Ryo Lu… well, I think his recent post is worth a read. Read more →

Career advice for designers

Dive Club OGs remember Anthony Hobday. He just shared a great article full of practical career advice for designers. My favorite part is where he gives 10 ways to look impressive without having impressive projects or jobs on your resume. Read more →

🧃 INSPIRATION JUICE

3 things I saved this week

1️⃣ New heyclicky website

I love everything about this vibe. We need more aqua buttons in the world 👌

See it live →

2️⃣ Nice button hover state

Luis Ouriach shared the new Griffin website on Twitter the other day and it’s really well done. My favorite part is definitely the button hover state though.

See it live →

3️⃣ Gorgeous portfolio layout

I’m obsessed with how clean this portfolio layout by Sue Park is 😍

See it live →

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 captures the messy creative process perhaps better than any of the ~300 before it…

We’re doing a deep dive into Jason Yuan’s multi-year journey designing Hivemind (his new social intelligence product).

He screen-shares dozens of unused concepts, novel art directions, brand identities, and everything in between.

Some highlights:

• The journey of designing Dot

• Why Jason doesn’t believe in user research

• The surprising sources Jason uses for design inspo

• Building a system to generate infinite branded images

• How Jason thinks about art direction and world building

• How Jasons’s first design output at Apple became a poem

• + a lot more

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

👥 FEATURED RESOURCE

Dive Radio goes live this Thursday

This Thursday is the first ever Dive Radio live show 📻

To celebrate, Tommy Geoco built the most fun (and probably worst converting) sign up page I’ve ever seen: dive.radio

I’m also working with Fons Mans on a brand refresh for Dive and will be sharing more about that soon too 🤫

See you there?

🔗 FEATURED RESOURCES

Operating as a principal designer

Tom Scott interviewed a few principal designers to shine a light on what it takes to operate at that level of seniority. It’s a fantastic read. My favorite line is: “Anyone can claim the work that’s already on the roadmap, but my job is to find the work that isn’t.“ Read more →

Less is more, more or less

I’m a huge fan of side by side breakdowns to communicate animation best practices. Jakub’s latest article is 100% worth a scroll Check it out →

🧃 INSPIRATION JUICE

3 things I saved this week

1️⃣ Hero section layout

I just discovered North mail from Barton (ex: Spotify) and I think the entire website vibe is very fresh 👌

See it live →

2️⃣ Alvish’s toggles

I’m a huge Alvish fan. Over the past few years he’s shared so many beautiful UI designs. But over the last few months he’s starting bringing them to life with Claude and it’s a beautiful thing to see. This post shows 1 min of toggle animations and it’s delicious.

Check it out →

3️⃣ Special logo animation

I’ve started saving way more logo animations like this one from the new Special website (remember Brandon Jacoby? Turns out he made it). The reason is Claude is getting good at processing and reverse-engineering animation captures.

See it live →

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 kinda feels like the way design operates at Anthropic is consistently 3-6 months ahead of the rest of the industry.

As a result, Meaghan Choi (Design Lead for Claude Code) has quickly become a staple guest on this show.

In today’s episode we go deep into her design process, how she uses the new Artifacts feature, how the shape of designer is evolving, and a lot more…

But there’s one part I can’t stop thinking about…

At one point she shows how she has moved basically all of her Claude chats into Slack using Claude Tag (I really underestimated this release tbh).

Apparently that’s how most people are working at Anthropic now and she says it’s about to transform the industry soon 👀

So ya… there’s a lot of alpha in this one :)

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

👥 FEATURED RESOURCE

Introducing Dive Radio

I’m going to assume you’ve definitely heard of Tommy Geoco by now…

He’s easily my favorite person to jam with in the industry so we’ve decided to join forces 🤝

Next Thursday we’re launching Dive Radio.

It will be a weekly live show streaming everywhere.

We’ll break down news, share what we’re learning, highlight what the community is building, and who knows what else (if you have requests hit reply and lmk!)

Want to join for the pilot?

p.s. Tommy just made the worst converting yet most fun sign up UX I’ve ever seen. Enjoy :)

🔗 FEATURED RESOURCES

Understanding is the new bottleneck

Remember when Geoffrey Litt talked about designing malleable software at Notion? Well he shared his vision for what reviewing AI output could look like in the future and it’s a fascinating read. Read more →

Career advice in the age of AI

AI is getting pretty damn good at executing against a defined problem. That’s why Phil suggests that your career strategy moving forward should revolve around becoming a problem finder. Read more →

🧃 INSPIRATION JUICE

3 things I saved this week

1️⃣ MCP instructions

I was working on a similar pattern a few months ago for Inflight and tbh even Hugo’s discarded iterations are straight up better than my concept 😂

Check it out →

2️⃣ Metal effects

Some really nice metal effects in this thread 👀 reminds me of something Brett would make.

See it live →

3️⃣ Empty state illustration

idk I just thought this drawer illustrations was pretty sweet 😅

Check it out →

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

Meng To is one of the people I keep tabs on to see how he's evolving his workflow as he builds his ideas with AI.

So I sat down with him to get a look into what his process looks like now… (spoiler: he’s moved everything to Codex)

We do a ton of screen-sharing and go deep into his strategies for getting better outputs from the models and a lot more 👇

• Why Meng built his own local Notion tool

• Why Meng writes 0% of his own code now

• Strategies for design.md and agents.md files

• How Meng uses GPT Image 2 to brainstorm UI design

• How Meng’s workflow has evolved in the last 1.5 years

• + a lot more

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

👥 FEATURED RESOURCE

There’s one question I can’t stop asking myself

That question is the  foundation for the Dive Talent Network (and it's reeeeeally working).

Right now I’m helping many of my favorite startups hire people who listen to the show. Just look at this logo wall 👀

So if you're curious what might be out there (or maybe you're even looking for your next design hire) here’s the link ✌️

🔗 FEATURED RESOURCES

How to make your design system AI ready

Remember Vitaly Friedman? I’ve received as much positive feedback on AI design patterns than any episode ever. Well he just released a can’t miss article on strategies for AI design systems (+ 4 example systems). Read more →

Designing better artifacts for Dia’s browser

Christine Rode wrote a fantastic article detailing her journey of figuring out how to make AI documents for Dia that don’t look like slop. My favorite part was seeing how she gathered and used inspiration. Check it out →

Turning world cup data into posters

Zeh made an organic, painting-like poster of France and Senegal’s world cup matchup that blew up on Twitter. So he broke down his poster process in this article. Talk about creative. Read more →

🧃 INSPIRATION JUICE

3 things I saved this week

1️⃣ MyMind’s sticky search bar

MyMind zigs when every other product zags. I haven’t seen a search bar quite like this before and it’s beautiful.

See it live →

2️⃣ Town’s hero section

Everything about this composition on the Town website is fresh 👌

Check it out →

3️⃣ Card connectors

Another week another Ayush design. I shall definitely be finding an excuse to copy this use this as inspiration at some point 😅

Check it out →

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

~1 month before COVID changed the world, this is what the entrance to the first ever Config looked like 👀

I remember losing my mind watching Dylan demo Auto Layout 1.0, and listening to Soleio declare design as the future of open source.

We’ve come a long way :)

And honestly… I think this is probably the strongest set of Config launches ever.

So I interviewed Figma’s new Chief Design Officer, Loredana Crisan, to go behind-the-scenes.

We get into Motion, code layers, shaders—all of it. But the thing that really stuck with me was this sentence:

I’ve never felt so seen 😄

Figuring out AI’s role in design can be exhausting (and confusing).

But our conversation was surprisingly clarifying.

As she put it: “technology changes the world mostly by changing what we’re able to imagine”.

So Figma’s vision is to give designers the ability to express what is already in their head (not outsource creativity to AI).

Loredana is a joy to listen to, so I think you’ll really enjoy this one.

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

👥 FEATURED RESOURCE

New design opportunities

I’m officially doubling down on the talent network because it’s really starting to pick up steam and there are few things more life-giving than helping someone land a dream role.

Here are the companies who joined this week:

• Owner

• Conductor

• ListenLabs

• Iverson

• + a few stealth startups

If you want me to promote the heck out of you to these teams or any of the others (Lovable, Granola, Superpower, Livekit, etc.) then drop your info here 👇

🔗 FEATURED RESOURCES

A bull case for Figma

Yitong puts his finger right on the most interesting tension point for Figma in this article. I actually asked Loredana about the value of playground repos vs. shipping to prod because of this article :) Read more →

A color system that disappears

Remember how Matt Sellers showcased the portfolio that got him hired at Lovable? Well he’s started shipping some major visual improvements at Lovable and documenting the process. His behind-the-scenes of their new color system is fantastic work. Honestly I was using Lovable the other day and they’ve cranked up the craft across the board. Check it out →

StyleX

I’ve noticed multiple teams on Twitter (including Linear and Polar) talk about migrating from Tailwind to StyleX over the last week. Definitely something worth investigating.

🧃 INSPIRATION JUICE

3 things I saved this week

1️⃣ Poke loading animation

I’ve started using Poke to generate little research websites for me and the loading state while it processes is lovely

See it live →

2️⃣ Glowing progress bar

The details from Nick here are absolutely stunning

Check it out →

3️⃣ Interfere’s priority icons

Look how clever the Interfere priority icons are 👀 I never would have thought to roll with dots > lines.

See it live →

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

2 months ago @BrettFromDJ was so opposed to building with AI that I offered to debate him to the death ☠️

Thankfully that’s not what this week’s episode is about 😂

Instead it's the ultimate story of how a visual designer went from 0⇢1 as a builder.

Brett gives us a behind-the-scenes of his journey building Gather including:

• Brett’s process for iterating on a design

• Brett’s new prototyping.md skill workflow

• How Brett maintains control while building with AI

• Brett’s strategy for adding sound design to Gather

• When Brett relies on Figma vs. explores directly in code

• + a lot more

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

👥 FEATURED RESOURCE

My new design process with AI

It seems like my design process is fundamentally changing once a quarter at this point 😅

So I teamed up with Kyle Zantos to share a behind-the-scenes of my latest workflow using Paper + Conductor.

We jam live for an hour and I build a few Inflight features live. It’s raw, a bit chaotic, and pretty much shows what my day to day is like currently.

👥 FEATURED RESOURCE

Speaking of Conductor…

Conductor is one of the newest startups looking for a designer in the Dive Talent Network 👀

This is one of my absolute favorite products and easily one of the biggest opportunities on the market right now.

If you want me to promote you make sure to fill out your info here ✌️

🧃 INSPIRATION JUICE

3 things I saved this week

1️⃣ Lovable’s sliding tabs

Remember Matt Sellers?

He shipped a ridiculously good sliding tab bar for Lovable recently. Pay attention to how the selected background grows toward the item that you’re hovering over 🤌

See it live →

2️⃣ Sliding pill interaction

Here’s another sliding interaction with an insane level of detail.

The text is actually rotating through the full number wheel on its way from one spot to another. Incredible work.

Check it out →

3️⃣ Slick upgrade overlayed

I love this overlay from the Details website. Not only is the design clean but the copy (and the way they highlighted “less than 1%”) is well executed too.

See it live →

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

This week's episode is with Ron Goldin who has led design at Google, Shopify, UberEats, and in my opinion... he's the perfect example of what it looks like to thrive as a design leader in an AI world.

So this week’s episode is a deep dive into his journey as a builder and it’s full of stories:

• Redesigning the Shopify checkout

• Ron’s unique research tactics for UberEats

• Building MTCHMKR from scratch in Lovable

• Navigating the job market as a design leader

• + a lot more

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

👥 FEATURED RESOURCE

My Dive Club full circle moment

If you remember my interview with Steph Golik about going from designer to founder then you are a true Dive Club OG.

(quick fun fact: my co-founder Kyle listened and it was how we got reconnected after many years)

Anyway…

The reason I’m bringing up Steph again is she just landed an insanely cool role through the Dive Talent Network at Function Health.

That means she gets to work with Seth Weisfeld who is truly one of the greats (OG FB designer).

And the best part? Function is still hiring another design lead so if you want me to recommend you join here ✌️

🔗 FEATURED RESOURCES

Claude code tips from the lead designer

During Dive Club Live in NYC we got to hear from Claude Code’s lead designer, Meaghan Choi. She shared a demo of how the team at Anthropic uses Claude Code and there are a lot of practical takeaways 👀 Watch the video →

Liquid glass for the web

It seems like the aave team has completely solved liquid glass for the web?? So ya… that’s a pretty big deal I guess. Check it out →

Poke is available for iMessage

I’ve seen Poke for a while now but held off because I didn’t fully trust that it would last. But they just announced that they were approved by Apple which immediately got me to play with it and I think I’m going all in :) Not sponsored just something I’ve been playing with a lot recently. Read more →

🧃 INSPIRATION JUICE

3 things I saved this week

1️⃣ Raindrop website

I actually cannot believe how good this website is. It’s beautiful, on brand, and the foggy background perfectly illustrates the value prop of the product. Truly one of the best sites I’ve seen in 2026.

See it live →

2️⃣ Gradient reveal hover state

Remember the Supercut episode? They’re masters of the tiny details and this little gradient fade in the top right corner is the latest I’ve saved.

3️⃣ Cursor logo display

Pretty obsessed with this Cursor artwork and hover state 😍

See it live →

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