The State of Design, with Hannah Ahn and Resham Khanna

I have heard that saas is dead and now more recently that design is dead? I brought in two of the greatest designers that I know in @hannah_ahn and @Reshusaur to address this and read some tweets and ads and such with me.

Hannah also listed fonts to failure.

Watch on X; listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

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Transcript

When you’re friends with me there are special privileges

SPEAKER_04 0:00

So you're listening to a very special episode of members of technical staff. Hannah knows that I say that every single time, so I've completely eliminated the meaning of the word special. But I will keep saying that because that is my right and it's my damn fucking show. Yeah, you're right. That's exactly right. I mean, what you know, special, special episode with friends, friends of the show. And so I am here with Hannah and Ray Sharm, two of the greatest designers that I know.

SPEAKER_02 0:27

That's very kind of you. I wouldn't go that far. It's like, how many designers do you know? Yeah, how many out of like the five that you know? Like, oh yeah, you know.

SPEAKER_04 0:35

Two. Joseph's a friend of the show. We'll uh you know, we'll we'll get him in there in some way, shape, or form. Uh, with some tweets. This is how it works. This is how it works. If you're a friend of the show, you just get your tweets featured. So that is why it's so important to become a friend of the show. And you know, sometimes you even just come on the show. Uh so you guys are co-hosts today.

SPEAKER_02 0:56

When you're friends with me, there are special privileges.

SPEAKER_04 1:00

There will be signs. You'll be featured in mods. Um, but you know, it's good that I actually have a couple of the greatest designers that I know with me because we can actually talk about some design, right? The state of design, in fact. That's what I've titled it. Uh, whether we end up, you know, talking about that, we'll see. We'll see. But I'm confident that we will. But the state of design, um, what is AI doing to it? Uh, what is Claude doing to it? Uh, what are people actually doing with it in the big 2-6? The big 2-6. So I actually think that's a that's a good that's a good place to start, right? Because there has been some discourse in the last say a couple of days about uh claw design, AI design, what AI is doing with design, all of these sorts of things. You know, if I think uh myself, what has AI

How to tell when a design is made by AI

SPEAKER_04 1:50

ruined in terms of design? I think gradients and I think the color purple. Any thoughts? Any thoughts?

SPEAKER_02 1:59

I think um well, I mean I know I definitely obviously for no one in particular. I think it's it is interesting where um you can clearly tell there are specific styles that these tools really prefer over others. Um and it feels easy and cheap to reach for because at some point those things were considered tasteful, and now it's it's had this sort of mass manufacturing effect where uh over time when you train these models, you train these tools and like try to show them what taste is. Um what used to be taste historically is now slop because it's mass-produced, it's uh out of context oftentimes uh and used without intention, which turns it into slop. I don't think inherently those things are sloppy. I think purple is still a beautiful color. I think glass morphism is still a beautiful technique, but um those artifacts placed out of context, I think, turn into slop very quickly.

SPEAKER_04 3:06

Totally. What's um for the for the for the non-technical uh make what is glass morphism? Um what's the best way to describe it?

SPEAKER_02 3:16

Um you know, with uh it just looks like glass on your screen. Yeah. Um that's and there's different flavors of it. I mean, you know, um with iOS 27, for example, like there's liquid glass, but historically it just looks like the the effect, the texture of the panels that you place elements on look like glass, and then that's glass more.

SPEAKER_01 3:38

Some light hitting, some refraction, there's like frostedness, that's like tends to be what glass is, but yeah, like I think you're seeing just so much of a sort of style everywhere. Um I think um Apple definitely just like proliferated way more of this.

SPEAKER_04 3:52

Totally, totally. Yeah, I'm thinking, I mean, if I if I think to the colour purple again, if I actually just put my technical hat on for a second, right? God forbid a man get a little bit technical, uh little JavaScript libraries about the colour purple, about the colour purple. But I mean, you know, that's like that's very shad CN. Colour purple, very shad CN. And as we'll get to in a second, with uh the article in the New Yorker, which I was very well researched um in bringing up, um, what people don't know is that uh I I just read it uh just before. Like literally while we're on the couch, yeah, they they they they saw me read it. So this is the kind of analysis that you actually get from members of technical staff. Well-researched, extremely serious takes. Yes, every single time. Every single time. Like Shad CN, uh to me, Shad CN screams purple, and then whenever I've used any of the coding agent products, you know, um black box AI, for example, one of the one of the one of the great mod sponsors. I mean these these these products these products they suggest the colour purple all the time. Codex suggests the colour purple, right? So I mean I've used a bunch of these, used a bunch of these. Um codex does not sponsor, so don't fucking use it. Um very, very different thing. Use black box though. Uh but yeah, it's always suggesting the colour purple uh using Shad CN. Of course, Shad CN uses a library called Tailwind, uh all of these sorts of things, but even pre-Chat GPT, Chad CN was uh predisposed to the colour purple. I'm also thinking gradients, right? Gradients really made uh to me, I think of gradients from like the freaking from the from the crypto era. It's like like all of these like swap websites just had these weird little gradients, and now for whatever reason, like AI, AI like vibe coders are just gradients, purple gradients everywhere. I think another vibe coding colour is the colour orange.

SPEAKER_01 5:38

Yeah, yeah. Like a like the brownie clawed orange, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Not superpower orange. Yes, yeah, very different. Yeah, yeah, very different. Yeah, it's very different. Very different.

SPEAKER_04 5:46

Very, very different. Uh that's actually pretty good that you've actually that you guys have managed to keep the superpower orange, like you know, the not cringe version of orange.

SPEAKER_01 5:56

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 5:57

Because as because as uh Roshan was was tastefully alluding to, uh, once a taste is mass-produced, it's slop.

Taste requires intention

SPEAKER_02 6:05

When when taste is mass-produced out of context and um without intention, like taste I think requires um emotional intention and intentional execution. So things need to elicit a certain emotional reaction, and if the emotional reaction um that you're trying to elicit is not the one that your product is actually eliciting, then it's not exactly a good it's it's not implemented in good taste. Um and why why I say intention is important is because it's not just all of the positive feelings. Like let's just say, like, take like an outlier example. Like if you run like a I don't know, like a slime shop website or like you're you have like a slime selling app, right? And the the emotion that you're trying to elicit is disgust, but it's done with intention, it's like gooey and nasty and whatever. Maybe that's the style that you're going for. Um if it's done with intention, then it is, and if that is the emotion that you're eliciting, but it's done with intention, then you are successfully executing on the taste that you have chosen to adopt for your app. Um, another really good example of this is like uh a grug. They won an Apple design award recently. Oh like the sketch. Yes. Like that's that's not really something, you know, if you prompted your agent and it gave you grug visuals out of context, I don't think you would look at it and say, Oh, this is taste. You would be like, why did it just spit out scribbles to me? But in the context of what they're trying to do and the emotional reaction that they're able to elicit, I mean, and now now even the fact that they have like an Apple design award, right? Yeah. It's just the intention behind it is is what makes it tasteful.

SPEAKER_01 8:01

Yeah, I think like a lot of things with like all these like decisions and like you know, the fact that everyone can like be a design and all that sort of stuff, it's like they will create things that are out of context because uh they don't have that intention in mind in terms of like how they want someone to feel and you know that thought behind it. Um because they're sort of just like one-shot generating or all these sorts of things. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 8:20

Yes, it's like it's like the the the um the floor is is is higher. Yeah, everybody has the baseline level. But that also kind of just you know, in a sense, it just it moves, it moves the bottom.

unknown 8:36

Totally.

SPEAKER_04 8:36

Yeah, it's like okay, new baseline, but that also is now the floor. And so, no, it totally makes sense. I think um before we actually get into Kyle's article, and we'll touch on it real briefly because uh it is extremely relevant. In fact, it came out two days ago. So so there you go. Uh Mott's always on the cutting edge, kind of. Uh neither timely nor timeless, somewhere somewhere in between. Uh but uh I'm I'm trying to think about okay. So I just wanted to check in here while I'm merging lane. Uh there is that. What a what a perfect way to time it. Um the newest Mother,back.ai, your company write making meetings memorable, making meetings memorable. So if you don't know anything about Talkovac, they transcribe and automate it afterwards and they automate it for you. It's been very, very helpful having a follow-up automatic. Whoever was in a meeting with route full-up now for me, and it's taken up. And we like that because time is money, and money is what soccer back is not AI is paying now. So very thankful for the attack. Uh thank you for the top back. Welcome to the mod army, the mod empire, one might say. And uh, yeah, that's that's about it. I'm gonna focus on the road con and

More AI tells in design

SPEAKER_04 10:00

you guys have any other like any other AI tells in design? Like I mentioned gradients and purple. I mean, but I feel like that's been a tell for a little while. Are there any other tells that you guys see when it comes to like oh 100% AI generated?

SPEAKER_01 10:17

Yep, totally. I think AI will always use, they tend to use like the the different models will have different preferences, and that's just based on the personality of the model. And I think tends, like whenever you use Claude, it tends to spit out outputs that look kind of like Claude, like map Clawed. It's like it'll use a lot of serif in the headings. Uh the serif will not have tight curning, like the conning will be a bit wider for some reason. Um, I think that it tends to sometimes also be like darker, like a dark grey background, and like this orangey burnt amber text color. Um, and then they have like these pills, and the pills are never quite optically aligned, which always personally annoys me. Um so optically aligned is different from just like general alignment because yeah, yeah. But um, and uh and then also like obviously the copy is all AI. Like, yeah, yeah. So I think it all just adds up, and you're like, that's AI slot.

SPEAKER_03 11:09

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:10

I think a few other things is um I've noticed just the craft that it takes to do shadows right, um, it'll also it it gets that wrong, um, also applies that to gradient, so that's kind of what what makes a gradient good versus bad, just like the blur and the meshing of colors, it's not executed again with intention in mind. So it looks chunky and it looks kind of cheap when um it's AI generated. Uh all same with shadows, just you need the right level of depth, right level, right color, right opacity, right spread, blur, all of those like little things that really distinguish, you know, like a cheap experience from a premium experience. Um yeah, and then yeah, like really likes instrument surf. Oh yeah. I I used to love instruments, I used to love that font. I use it for presentations like two years ago. Uh or or you yeah, two years ago, and I now I can't look at it. It's like ruined something so beautiful for me, um, which I'm very upset about.

SPEAKER_01 12:19

I really did love that typeface. I think instrument serif is uh one of the most divisive fonts in the design community today, yeah. Because of uh well, because of Claude and probably because of uh the US government. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 12:33

Oh right. So are you you are you accusing the US government of using Claude Slop?

SPEAKER_01 12:40

Um I'm I'm not from the US. I decline to comment any further.

SPEAKER_04 12:45

My case officer is waiting outside the building right now. Um I'll let my legal lead my legal team with this one. Yes. Yeah, my legal team has advised me not to continue.

SPEAKER_02 12:57

What are they doing about instruments, sir? Like someone ban the typeface. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 13:04

Yeah, yeah. The the wide the slightly wide kerning is an interesting one as well because I feel like that's just, you know, I feel like as a as a as a front-end engineer building little apps, one of my worst tendencies ever was to just have, was just to set the the kerning too wide. It's like, you know, just give people a stroke trying to read it.

SPEAKER_02 13:25

It it can it can work. It's just uh I always see that in like especially with eyebrow text. Um that's it's always just I'm like, wow, this is so far apart, it looks like a movie title that I can barely read, like I have to turn my head to read the entire word. But eyebrow text specifically, it does use a lot of that style, like it uses a lot of eyebrow text, and then the current kerning's always too wide.

SPEAKER_04 13:48

Right. I wonder what I wonder what was in the training set in order to get the kerning that wide. Like, like, is it just all movie text? I don't know. I don't know. These are the questions that are elicited when we talk about these sorts of things. Uh, will they be answered on mods? Absolutely fucking not.

SPEAKER_02 14:04

No, no, keep watching to find out. Keep watching to find out.

SPEAKER_04 14:11

Well, thanks for coming, guys.

@chaykak reaction

SPEAKER_04 14:15

Okay, so I think uh it's a good time to actually bring up Kyle Chaeker's article, um, in which we all read thoroughly before doing this.

SPEAKER_01 14:25

Studied beforehand.

SPEAKER_04 14:26

Yes, that's right, that's right. But Kyle is a friend of the show. Um, in fact, uh he he wrote the New Yorker article on the permanent underclass in which I was featured in. So don't mind just me talking my own book, glazing myself for my own show. Um doesn't get much better than that. Doesn't get much better than that. Uh but he, you know, so he mentioned this was a couple of days ago, and his post on Twitter reads, uh, beige backgrounds, rust red text, overzealous italics, and underlining pointless news tickers. I wrote about the increasingly annoying generic style of clawed design websites and AI-induced homogeneity for my New Yorker column. And so he continues talking about very smart comments from a bunch of different people, fig mananthropic, all those sorts of things. Um, the ubiquity of clawed design tripes is enough to make aesthetics that looked tasteful, suddenly feel off putting in cheap. Exactly what you guys are saying. Uh hit the nail on the head. Uh I'm surprised, surprised you guys didn't say anything in the article. Wait, no, did you you you said you mentioned you spoke with with Kyle, no?

unknown 15:26

We didn't speak.

SPEAKER_04 15:27

You didn't speak, okay, okay, okay. Well, Kyle, if you're listening to this, uh, which you might actually do so, definitely recommend uh reaching out to Hannah or Rasham. They're good for it.

SPEAKER_03 15:36

We should speak.

SPEAKER_04 15:36

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely, absolutely. And so basically, honestly, he was you know, if you actually read the thing, he's kind of touching on what we've just spoken about, right? Obviously, I mentioned Shad C N and the colour purple, and you guys have been talking about, you know, uh like design without intention or or the you know mass-produced slop. So I just wanted to bring this up because it just proves that what we're talking about is good and relevant. Anyway. Next next thing. I need to get exactly, exactly. Okay, so my next question, my next question is uh, because you know, on Claude design, there's all this

Is @figma dead?

SPEAKER_04 16:25

talk about Claude and the AI labs, right, coming out with design software, and then the the natural reaction of people on the timeline is like, oh well Figma's dead. Oh yeah. Figma's dead. What are your guys' thoughts on this? Without throwing any company under the bus. You don't actually have to do that. You can be like, oh, you know, I think it's a very classic, like, oh, Claude did this, so therefore that style of software is dead, and then the market sells off, and then what they don't actually mention is when the market rises again. They just mention when it sells off. Uh but Figma is like way back up as far as I know. Oh, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:56

Figma is having like its best year, like in terms of um profit revenue, all that sort of stuff it's ever had. Um it's crazy to me though, because I uh you know was picking up a badge to go config. Yep. If you want right now. Yeah, config on right now. Um I'm in line and I'm chatting to some of the designers there, and they're like, oh, like I'm so excited to be here. I flew all the way from like Europe, from like Texas, whatever. Um, but I just don't know if they're gonna have another config next year. I'm like, what do you mean by this? And they're like, oh like I don't know, I think Figma's gonna die as a company, and like oh many.

SPEAKER_04 17:37

Dylan is a friend of the show, okay? I want Figma to win. He's a friend.

SPEAKER_01 17:42

I I disagree with this statement. It's absurd. Like, I think every couple months a new design tool will come out, and then you know, everyone's like hitting to the press, like, design is dead, like this new tool just eliminated designers' jobs forever. And it's like, no, like I think it's actually quite fatiguing for designers. Like every couple months there'll be like a new thing that people will share to me. They'll link in my site being like, oh my god, you should try this, like we can automate our marketing.

SPEAKER_04 18:08

Oh yes.

SPEAKER_01 18:10

And I'm like classic automatically. And I'm like, I'm still here, guys. Like, nothing has changed. Um, so like design is not dead. I think what it's created is um a lot of opportunity to play with some of these tools and modalities to create things faster, uh, create things that are a bit more interesting and more novel. Um but I I think that you know you will still need this orchestrator who has a semblance of what uh taste is or or or what like nuance is in terms of like how you want to express something, which I think just like one-shotting a design is just not going to allow you to do. Um it's just like you know, Canva came out like a a decade ago.

SPEAKER_03 18:52

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 18:52

Um and it enabled so many people to create things, but it similar to where we're seeing right now, it enabled people to create things based off templates off of things that were kind of generic, and like you still need someone who can come in and bring in like their own point of view and and make something truly distinctive, and they can do it faster and better with all these tools, but um I think you still need someone who has that level of discernment, um, which you're not gonna get just from AI.

SPEAKER_04 19:15

Totally. I figured you pretty much just agree with everything.

SPEAKER_02 19:19

Um well, yes, I I think also don't email. I have opinions, yes. I I agree. I agree with uh yeah, of course, I agree with everything Hannah just said, and I think it's also very easy to forget that you know Figma is not just a canvas for creating designs, it's also a place for um organizing your design system, having a source of truth for what it is you build, historical artifacts. I think design documentation is also so important and something that I struggle with when I'm vibe coding because you're kind of iterating on this like live working prototype without necessarily having the best way of capturing the decisions that you made along the way. Um yeah, I think people forget that Figma is not just a place you go to create designs and then like, alright, that's all this is good for, I'm done here. Um it's it's a lot more than that. And you know, even if you look at the new features that they just released, it's indicative of that, that this is not just a place to come in and have static designs, which people say they're not good for anything anymore. I I fundamentally disagree with that. Uh I think, in fact, I think having a blank blank canvas is extremely important for human creativity, and it's also very important to see what you come up with first uh from your own human understanding instead of just starting out in AI tools because they have they also have like a yes man problem where where wherever you you know I could give it the most absurd idea, like hey, I want to build like I don't know, like DoorDash for dogs, and it's like you're so right. Let me let me spin up an app for you right now, and like you're you're a genius. And I'm like, yeah, I she does it once again, like you know. So I think there has to be like I think Figma is really good, like it forces you, we don't stare at blank canvases anymore as much as we should, and it really, I mean, of course you have the community templates and that's a wonderful resource, but it really forces you to put down your thoughts uh visually in in systems and components first before you actually try to go and use AI tools, at least I use AI tools more as like a way to plan things first, and I explicitly will tell it to shut me down, like not feed my delusions if I'm like, you know, I think I'm on to something here. It's like you're so right, and then it's just yeah, you know, and then that's just like a one way ticket to AI psychosis, and that's not good. But yeah, I think Figma Figma is great. I don't think design is dead. I think I also love that they're having fun with their marketing. Oh, yeah. With the whole like the design is dead hats, you know. Yeah, they're great. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 21:58

Yeah. I mean, um, yeah, it's fun. It's funny you say that like the you know the the the AI psychosis thing. I mean, there was a there was a great tweet, I think, a couple of days ago. It was like the um I'm paraphrasing, but it was like the best way to one-shot an AI model is just ask it, are you sure? One-shot it. Uh but yeah, and also on the design docs, right? It's kind of like, you know, I I think of any sort of documentation, right? I'm sure it's especially the case with design docs, but it's like, my brother in Christ, what do you think these tools are trained on? Trained on the design docs, right? It's like that is that is that is how it's gonna be. I mean, makes sense. I mean, I I even think about this in regards to the whole SaaS's dead thing, right? Even going dating, this people have been saying this back since 2023. I mean, I as far as I know, Salesforce is doing pretty well. I'm sure there will come a point in time in which, you know, like the Salesforces of the world, I mean, maybe like, I mean, even even going to the big consultancies, they will stop adding headcounts, but that's not happened yet. They actually keep adding headcounts because of organizational complexity. And so, you know, I do think, yeah, it like even that sort of thing, even B2B SAS, damn it, you know, there is there is that there is that orchestration, right? Like there is there is the human in the loop. I'm gonna throw every single fucking buzzword at it. Orchestration, human in the loop, agents, um, God, into my veins. All the words. Anyway, does anybody know what I just said? I mean, people can figure it out. It's highly relevant. Just making comparisons, making comparisons, right? Because yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:34

This is like the in real life version of when people add words to their resumes and like turn it like, you know, to like zero back zero vastity or like all white text, and then you're like, wow, this is really hitting all everything on the ATS. Like, what's going on here? This is the perfect candidate, and then you're like, oh. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 23:55

God forbid a podcaster try and have a take. You know, this is this is how it is. Try to try to come up with something relevant. I was like, oh yes. Anyway. No, so when I was at the grocery store the other day getting the ingredients for this particular flop that I'm making, somebody asked me about cappy.ai, and they asked me what it was, and I said, What the fuck is wrong with you? What is wrong with you? What do you mean you don't know? Get the fuck out of my face. Because they don't know that capy.ai is your agentic IDE, right? Your multiplayer IDE in which you can spin up your agents. Spin up your agents, make pull requests and fight. You're a fucking idiot. They didn't know what they were talking about. Anyway, uh speaking of takes, I want to get into a

@alessio_joseph reaction

SPEAKER_04 24:41

couple of tweets here. I want to bring up this one from Joseph, if I can click on it. Uh cool. So this one, uh this was from oh just last month actually. He's like, POV, you use claw designs. So I'll show the I'll show my friends here. And so it's a graphic, and on the graphic we have examples of claw design. And one of the examples is excessive monospace with weird lines beside it. Another one is icons in rounded squares and cards. Another one is insanely high contrast serifs everywhere for no reason. That's pretty good. And randomly italicized text.

SPEAKER_02 25:14

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 25:15

No, this is all accurate.

SPEAKER_02 25:16

Yeah, absolutely. And the the first one, that's the thing. I it it loves that's the eyebrow. Yeah, the it loves eyebrow text like that. And also, this reminds me the alignment, like the left alignment when it stacks different things on top of each other, is also always off. Because you're not supposed to have those lines. It's like you know, the the text is not aligning with what's underneath it. Yeah, and then yeah, it's also the line spacing, it's just all wrong. It's all wrong.

SPEAKER_04 25:43

You're kind of cooking its ass.

SPEAKER_01 25:45

No, I'm just having a visceral reaction. I mean, I I I think people like underrate how many like minute details go into design. Like if you read uh grid systems, it's like a canonical book in like graphic design literature. It's literally like this German book that is just about grids and how to properly use grid lines. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But um, what I'm seeing is interesting is like people will make their own um libraries where they're training the AI on like you know how to use grid systems. It's like, oh, I taught uh Claude all this AI, like like, you know, all the grid system rules I fed it the book, and like now whatever I generate with it um is a lot smarter, and it's following these like practical design principles that actually make things like more elegant and nice, and like you know. So it's like there's a lot of these minute details that you just like don't necessarily learn just by like you know creating things on Claude.

SPEAKER_04 26:32

We should just we should feed Claude the entire book. Design.md. Design.md skill. Um okay, cool. What else do I have here?

@zetalyrae reaction

SPEAKER_04 26:42

What else do I have? Oh, this is one from sweet Fernando. And so uh so Fernando posts uh this is Zettel Ray, I've got another friend of the show. Um have you met Fernando? He's from Australia.

SPEAKER_01 26:52

Yeah, yeah, I've probably well. I don't think I met him, but we're in like similar circles.

SPEAKER_04 26:55

Yeah, similar circles. You wouldn't have not have met Fernando, but he's he's great.

SPEAKER_02 26:59

Yeah, never been to Australia. We'd love to change that sometime soon. Yes.

SPEAKER_04 27:03

Don't mind if we do, don't mind if we do.

SPEAKER_01 27:04

More time with superpower. Yes.

SPEAKER_04 27:07

Little bit of uh recruiting going on on Mots here. Don't mind if we do. Don't mind if we do.

SPEAKER_02 27:12

It all happens live, unfiltered right here. Spiritually Australian.

SPEAKER_04 27:21

Yeah, I think so. I think so. Um in any case, what Fernando has said. He was like, Claude is really good at doing corporate Y2K boring punk web design. And so he's got this. Oh gosh, how am I gonna describe this? Um, well, I mean, I think Fernando's actually described it pretty well, but if you're listening, you're fucked. I don't really know how to describe it, but Fernando said, well, year 2000 boring punk web design.

SPEAKER_01 27:46

This is a quite impressive. This was not clawed at all. Yeah, you don't need to be a good idea. I mean, I I would be really impressed for an AI model to spit this up.

SPEAKER_04 27:53

Right? Right?

SPEAKER_01 27:54

Yeah, everything's because it makes sense. Yeah. And there's no redundancy. Like, you know, like this, it's not a good design. But like I respect this way more than what I'm seeing in like the majority of the app store now, you know.

SPEAKER_04 28:05

Right, because it I mean it goes back to your point, right? It's like deliberate, it was done with intention. Boring punk Y2K. Yeah. They didn't even know that was an aesthetic.

SPEAKER_02 28:11

You know, when people try to recreate like Windows and then they're like, this is what they go for. I've seen portfolios actually of designers trying to do like their own OS.

SPEAKER_04 28:20

Yeah, and it's like a weird turquoise colour, whatever it is.

SPEAKER_02 28:23

Yeah, and like with the Windows logo with the the You know, the sound effects and everything. But that's done with intention. If if I had told it to make, you know, like a null knowledge portal and did not give it design direction and gave me this, I'd be very angry.

SPEAKER_01 28:37

But you know, I mean like um I would not be happy with this result. Like it's just generally from a human, from an AI, but I respect this much more than than what people get from one shot.

SPEAKER_02 28:47

It's it's like your intern, right? If you went like, oh yeah, we're gonna build a knowledge portal and like this was hard.

SPEAKER_01 28:52

This was really hard for someone to build, yes, um, like a decade plus ago. But like, you know, I respect that amount of profit from the effort. But you know, yeah, yep, yeah. Yep.

SPEAKER_04 29:01

Kind of cooking its ass. I mean, I mean that's that's fine. That's what it's worth.

SPEAKER_01 29:04

And and I think that's part of like the taste slob thing. It's like you can tell when there's lack of intention effort um because they just one-shot it and they didn't like think through like yeah. Yep it's laziness, I think.

SPEAKER_02 29:15

That's the thing. You're just like design is also just a lot of patience and really taking the time to perfect and the time to think through things and revisit them and rework them and then rework

@maxmarchione jump scare

SPEAKER_02 29:26

them again and do some more thinking.

SPEAKER_04 29:28

Max, do you want to come say hello? For people uh listening, uh Max Max is filming us from getting some behind the scenes on the thing. Yeah, that's good. I mean, behind the scenes, you're in the scenes.

SPEAKER_00 29:42

I'm trying to become Twitter famous because you're well on your way. We're gonna get there somehow.

SPEAKER_04 29:50

Do you want to say any words, Max, that that can be picked up?

SPEAKER_00 29:53

It's design time. It's design time. It's design dead. It's design dead. Um gosh. No, but I I I think I think like design isn't about making things pretty, right? It's like prettiness will probably die. Like AI will be able to make stuff pretty, but it's like, will AI be able to make stuff meaningful? And it's like, probably not. I think very, very, very few people are good design strategists. Like they know why and like what to design. I think more people know how to make something look kind of good. So that's my design take for the day. Don't listen to me, I'm not a designer.

SPEAKER_04 30:31

This is not design advice. Thank you. Max Marsh, I mean.

SPEAKER_02 30:37

Actually, based on what he said, I just um it's it's

AI does not understand UX

SPEAKER_02 30:40

an interesting point. Like we've talked a lot about form, but we haven't really talked about function as much. Like we've talked a lot about, oh yeah, the gradients are off, the line, you know, line height's off, kerning is off, there's all these telltale signs in terms of you know visuals, but we haven't really gotten into the functionality. Like if you try to prompt an app and the way that it understands uh how people are going to interact with it. Oh yeah, there's so much clunky UX. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 31:09

Just like making me click on stuff twice, damn it.

SPEAKER_01 31:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 31:12

Or just having the same instructions repeated in three different locations on screen, which, you know, again, like kind of redundant, or you know, the designs on their own, even if you let's say you get the visual direction right, you know, on at first glance, I think the designs look complete, yeah, but then it's just like the you know, the more sp time you spend looking at it, you realize how unusable those things are.

SPEAKER_03 31:36

Right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 31:37

Um, you know, like let's say you're going through some sort of onboarding, like there's no back buttons. Like that's not how this works. Like you live with the choices you make, actually, and there's no going back now. Oh, you selected that time zone and you're like in a country that's like, you know, thousands of miles away. Too bad. Yeah. You're gonna be on London time.

SPEAKER_04 31:58

Or if you're like, oh well, no back button. Let me click refresh and you're back on step one of 12.

SPEAKER_02 32:03

Oh my gosh, I hate that when you have to like force quit an app because there's just no way to leave where you're at in the flow, and I'm just like, alright, that that for me is like you know, the the worst thing you can have someone do, where it's like there's no escaping, you exit, and then you have to reopen the app and start over again and not make the same mistake, even though your finger kind of gravitates towards doing the same exact thing because that's you know the way that the design is set up.

SPEAKER_01 32:27

Yeah, I think that like AI is incredibly like it's good at like you know something, like making something like a semblance of okay. And like, you know, uh for like a single screen. But it's like terrible at like an entire flow and like thinking through every step of that flow and like being functional at every step. I remember I was trying to like um yeah, just like vibe code my own like tooling app and it just put all of uh the different functionalities and tools on a single screen, so there was like just different knobs like everywhere, and it's just like totally unusable, like there's no intentionality with placement of anything. So yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 32:59

It's kind of important. I mean, you know, again, as a as a front-end engineer, once upon a time, I was also thinking of these things. Of course, it ends up being a bit of more of like, you know, we call it like a state problem. These things that you know from the technical point of view, we're thinking of uh state and all of these sorts of things, but gosh, you would uh you would not believe some of the things that I've seen when I simply open up the developer tools for some of these vibe coded sites, like shipping like raw PNGs to users, like like like brutal stuff.

SPEAKER_02 33:28

Like no thought about performance and anything about that. Yeah, brutal. There's also a lot of security risk involved because I think when people ship vibe coded apps, obviously these aren't developers, they don't know all that much about cybersecurity and you know malicious actors and how they can kind of crash their system or like the sort of user data that you're able to obtain if you know you have malicious intentions. So I think having more frameworks just around supporting people who might not be as technically savvy or as code savvy to ship things with confidence and also for people to interact with them confidently without worrying about you know um personal data or photos or addresses, things like that being compromised.

SPEAKER_04 34:15

Yeah, yeah. The LLMs are like, yes, you should roll your own auth. That's a great idea. Roll your own auth. Um on this topic, on this topic, who would have thought, I have another tweet to react

@iamjasonlevin reaction

SPEAKER_04 34:27

to. Um this is from Jason Levin. This is from actually uh December 20, 2024, and it's an image of Rick Rubin. Uh and of course, in the quotes he says, I have no coding ability, I have no design background, I make software based on my intuition and taste. This is, you know, I mean, it was it was at the end of 2024, still seems kind of relevant in the big two six.

SPEAKER_03 34:50

That's what I'm saying. That's a timeless tweet.

SPEAKER_04 34:52

Time pretty timeless, pretty timeless. Hey, 11k likes. Um, you know, in December of 2024, that's pretty pretty good going.

SPEAKER_02 35:00

I will say Rick Rubin is looking for an AI tutor at the moment. So I think actually? Yeah, there's a post going around on Twitter. A lot of people have submitted applications because he wants someone to spend, I think, two to three months with him in Italy and um teach him everything about AI and coding. So you know.

SPEAKER_04 35:19

So he's gonna be coming back, he's gonna be like talking about like vector embeddings and you know, like I don't know what I mean.

SPEAKER_02 35:25

I like learning.

SPEAKER_04 35:27

I mean whatever whatever or someone's telling him how to use Chat GPT. Now what you gotta do, Rick, is you gotta like, okay, first click on the text box. All right, cool, good. Now type in a prompt. Type in a prompt. Now click enter. That's what I think I think about when I'm like when people are like, oh yes, learn AI, learn AI tools. I'm like, my brother in Christ.

SPEAKER_02 35:49

I think the main takeaway is just how to have AI be a good teacher to you. If you can teach how to have AI teach you, I think that's the biggest unlock. Because then you have all of how to ask questions. Yeah. Yeah. Good communication, asking questions, and also setting up somewhat as foolproof systems that are as foolproof as possible.

SPEAKER_04 36:13

So it's you're talking about AI or like a like a like a boyfriend?

SPEAKER_03 36:18

Good communication, asking questions.

SPEAKER_04 36:24

Just keep grinding, guys. Your wife's data center has not been built yet. Like just keep keep grinding for now. Um to wrap here, to wrap here. I guess on you know, more positive note, if we have some of these thoughts off the top of our heads, uh, what are some of the coolest

Who has the coolest design right now?

SPEAKER_04 36:41

products with the coolest design right now? Any any that come to mind for me? I don't think any comes to mind, actually. So I'll let you guys go first, and then I'll think about it a bit more. Any off the top of your head? Because if not, that's also fine. If not, that's also fine, and I will leave it in.

SPEAKER_02 36:59

I think in terms of I think about these things in terms of categories. So just like broadly, like, you know, it's like, oh yeah, you like design, name three well-designed apps, like go. I'm like, oh it's like, oh, oh, I don't know.

SPEAKER_04 37:14

Well I actually like I I think I feel like liquid glass has grown on me. Controversial opinion. It's grown on me. And maybe that's just because I've gotten used to it.

SPEAKER_01 37:22

Yeah, I think that's that that's yeah. I think the more that you're exposed to something, the more that you have a taste for it or you like it. Like music in a way, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 37:30

Yes, totally, totally. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:32

I think this is true for yeah, a lot of design too. Sometimes when it's really just that novel, people just have the knee-jerk reaction to say, wow, like it just takes time for adoption. It's kind of like a haircut, you know, when you get your haircut and you look at yourself, you're like, Oh my god, what did I do? And your friends might be like, Oh no, it looks good, and then kind of grows on you over time. I I feel like that's also just like it takes a little while for design trends like that that are just like really out there, like liquid glass, for example, when it was first like, whoa, what are we gonna do with this? And you also work out the kinks over time and like you refine it. Now they also have uh contrast sliders because that was a big problem where you had things on the glass and it actually wasn't super readable. Yeah, um, yeah, there's like a joke tweet someone made about like Allen Dye saying like design is not, and then it just like fades into like you you can't really read the rest of the thing, and that's a joke because like it's supposed to be like a profound quote. But totally, yeah. But now they've actually also shipped some updates around, um, being able to have more control over contrast, and now it's you know, like that was the main complaint that people had about it not being usable and you know actually making their lives more painful, even though it looks pretty, it wasn't very functional.

SPEAKER_04 38:45

Yeah, if I if I if I were to glaze a little bit, uh I think some of my favorite design would have to be superpower.com. Command command center for your health, get the care the billionaires get for less than $200 a year. Don't mind me, don't mind me. I am biased, and so is Hannah. So is Hannah to be fair.

SPEAKER_02 39:02

And they do tasteful orange gradients and looks warm, bathed in light, you know.

SPEAKER_04 39:07

Any falls, Hannah?

SPEAKER_01 39:08

Um, well, I don't know. I think that like part of it is uh we want to be really intentional about the design. Like I think every couple weeks in the Slack I'll be like, oh my god, like we have to try Higgs Ford and like AI generate all this video and stuff, and I'm like, wait. Like, yes, like we can, and AI is always gonna be a tool to help support with the creative process. Um, but yeah, we just want to be really intentional about everything that's gonna be.

SPEAKER_04 39:32

Totally makes sense, totally makes sense. Okay, so I'm out in a pretty spot right now, and I just think that this place needs a little bit more technology, and so what a better uh thing to introduce to this pristine land than black box AI. Coding agents all in one spot, you can spin up up to 15 agents all in one try. You can run between uh claud code and codex, you can use cord code to actually code your stuff and codex to review all of these workflows are available in one place. You can use the VS Codex engine, you can use the CLI. All of these sorts of things are stuff that you can do in blackbox.ai, trusted by over 30 million plus developers worldwide at Blackbox.ai, go ahead and improve your productivity. Write some code with them today. They support the show, they do push-ups and shit. So do I. So do I. That's why I partner with these people. Partner with all the founders that just do push-ups. Anyway, go check them out. I'm gonna go um play some golf or something.

More @alessio_joseph

SPEAKER_04 40:35

Unemployed, by the way. Um I'm thinking the only other things that I have are basic basically more tweets from Joseph.

SPEAKER_01 40:41

So I'm just gonna get let's just roll with the tweets.

SPEAKER_04 40:44

Yeah, every roll roll with some Joseph tweets to.

SPEAKER_02 40:47

What do you mean? He's right there. You're like feeding the tweets right now.

SPEAKER_01 40:52

He's like tweets. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 40:55

Thank you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We can actually see him through the window. Um here's one, he actually he posted this like two weeks ago. He said, uh, one of the underrated harms of AI is the death of vernacular design. Now the kebab shop sign is gonna look like Claude Slop instead of chaotic defont goodness.

SPEAKER_01 41:10

No, this is true. Like, I think we're gonna see like the death of like incredible fonts like papyrus. Yeah. Like uh, you know, like I think that there is this era of the world where like, you know, we were just getting into like industrial design or like people were setting up their mom and pop shops and like no one really knew how to use Photoshop and all these tools, and so you kind of just like saw like the same like Microsoft Word art esque thing. And it's like always like design and the world around us is always like kind of a function of the time that tools that we had available. Yep. Much like how a lot of things are like clawed slot. But like, so so it's just like this, I guess, mourning of the past era of what that world looked like.

SPEAKER_04 41:48

That checks out, that checks out. I used to use the the the font monster at all the time. Oh, uh Did I not did I not say it right?

SPEAKER_01 41:57

No, no, you said it.

SPEAKER_04 41:58

Okay, I said it correct. What's the in what's the dish?

SPEAKER_01 42:02

I'm just laughing at the way she reacted.

SPEAKER_04 42:04

Wait, what's the inside joke on it then?

SPEAKER_01 42:06

It's like uh uh instrument surf now is uh to what Inter was uh five years ago to what MonsterAt was ten years ago. Yes. So this is like don't forget Poppins. Uh Poppins? I know that's a classic. Poppins was in between MonsterAt and and Inter.

SPEAKER_04 42:22

Yep, yep. And you know the reason I use MonsterAt all the time is because that's what all the that's what all like the React tutorials were in. So exactly to your point, exactly to your point, you know, React, what React was 2016.

SPEAKER_01 42:33

Yeah, and it was a Google Fun, everyone could use it, it was free, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 42:36

Yep, yep, yep, yep. This checks out, this checks out. I think the the last one we can feature from Joseph again. Fucking these have been going off, actually. Because this was this was June 19, so we had that recent tweet, which was June 12. This was June 19. He says, I miss the old Open AI, the research lab open AI, the Area 17 design open AI. Um Area 17, if I'm not mistaken, is like the classic sort of uh I think they're agency. Yeah, they're an agency, right? And they do a lot of the they do a lot of the hard the hard tech, hard deep tech startups now, right?

SPEAKER_01 43:05

Oh, yeah, maybe perhaps.

SPEAKER_04 43:07

I believe so. I can double check that.

SPEAKER_01 43:09

There is one agency that does a lot of the hard tech. They did the Rainmaker, they did uh the uh atomic gloss. Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_04 43:18

Is that Area 17? No, no, it's a different agency. Don't quote me on that. Um in fact, don't quote Hannah on that either, because we're we're unsure. We can do we can do the classic podcaster thing of just being like, eh, time will tell, I guess we'll see. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 43:31

I don't know if you have churnits.

SPEAKER_04 43:33

Nope. I have my sponsors' descriptions in there. Okay, well, I think that's actually a pretty good place to wrap, unless we're for whatever reason we have any closing thoughts. So I'll leave it open for three, two, one. No closing thoughts, really, really good. So we can uh we can wrap there. Um that is the state of design in 2026 from uh two of the best designers that I know.

SPEAKER_01 43:57

So so design is not dead, to summarize. Design is very much alive, she's still kicking. Um and uh Figma's probably gonna be fine. Figma's probably gonna be fine. There will be a config next year. Yeah, sure. Rest assured.

SPEAKER_04 44:09

Yep. Thank you, Dylan. Uh I'll tag Dylan. Engagement bait.

SPEAKER_01 44:15

And and and don't use instruments here.

SPEAKER_04 44:17

Ah wise words, wise words. Okay. Well, you've been listening to another episode of Members of Technical Staff. We'll see you on the timeline again very, very soon.