Fons Mans - How to design visuals that stand out (Dive Club Ep. 10)

what I see a lot is designers being very good at executing that first 90% right so getting to that initial idea but then just throwing that figma file over the

fence and and having a bunch of iterations scatter on the artboard and I think that's a shame even when you're presenting I think it's important to think about that direction that you want to give the brand and that first

impression that you want to give welcome to deep Dives my name is rid and this is where we go deep with the best designers so that you can learn from their journey and apply it to your own career today's

guest is Fon mans whose visual experiments have captivated the design community and they're a big reason why I decided to hire fonds to create the dive brand now today's episode is a little

bit different and I don't want to give too much away but if you are interested in The Branding process and how to level up as a visual designer then this episode is a master class hey red I'm F

I'm a designer from the Netherlands most of you know me probably from my Twitter posts right sharing a lot of visual experiments that I do in figma started doing that last year sharing my visual

experiments these graphic exercises if you will and I guess they kind of stood out on Twitter as I use figma in unconditional ways and I got a lot of

questions from people on how I actually create these visuals in figma so I started doing these little tutorials on Twitter and other socials that ultimately led to me starting 10x

designers which is a design Community we'll probably talk more about that later but yeah really excited to be here awesome I'm happy to have you been looking forward to this conversation for

a while so fans you did all of The Branding for dive and absolutely crushed it and just so listeners have a little bit more context I came to you with

nothing more than the Nugget of an idea I had no name I had no visual aspirations no color ideas nothing and you guided me through what I thought was

a really excellent branding process where I learned a lot and now I have this brand that I love I'm proud of and I enjoy working in every day so I'd like

to do something a little bit different than normal here I'd like to roleplay so I'm going to pretend that I am a new entrepreneur with an idea for a mobile

app that helps people who play pickle ball connect with each other and improve their game and kind of like the straa or any distance for pickle ball is what I

have in my head and so what I'd like you to do is guide us through a mock branding project so that listeners can

get a better idea of what your process is and the different checkpoints and Milestones and how you structure the back and forth so let's pretend that

we've just signed a contract and the deliverables are basically the same as dive and I have almost nothing other than an idea for a product Where Do We

Go From Here Yeah that's a great one and maybe I can set the stage a little bit because as a designer especially a product designer brand design can be quite intimidating it's less factual

right it's not really data driven it's more like okay does this feel right with the thing that I'm creating which is such a big contrast with everything that we learn about product design so that's

the first also what can be quite difficult for a designer is when you're taking on brand projects you have clients coming to you with Half Baked ideas they're like oh I kind of have a

name and we already have a kind of a logo but you just need to polish it you have people that are like we have a product but we have no idea what to call it yet so there's a huge Spectrum as well of where do we start from the first

step for me is always let's go back to the beginning and discuss a little bit about why did you start this project just going in and trying to make something beautiful for a brand or trying to replicate something that you

saw somewhere that is in my opinion the fastest way to a Rebrand you are creating something that is cool now but it doesn't have a strong foundation and there's always a foundation for every

startup there is something in there that sparked the initial idea to grow this thing together because it takes a lot of time to to set it up so I think that time should also be invested in the

brand so how I solve that is by diving in first with the founder most often or the founding team and have a conversation with them why did you start the project where do you want to go

towards what's the vision right how does the world look like in 10 years when your company is not a startup anymore but got a bunch of employees and a lot of impact on the scene that you build

this startup for so that's a first right a great way to do that is by start writing a manifest and a manifest is nothing else than just a one pager a one pager including things like the vision

as I just said but also some of the core beliefs that you have so for example design education should be accessible to all things like that are critical to

include in that manifest because you can use that manifest to base your decisions on later on in the process no matter if it's writing copy for your website or creating icons or coming up with an

illustration style when you've got a certain rule set you can refer back to that and base your decisions on it and that manifest was so valuable for me too

because I had done a lot of talking about the idea for dive but it's easy to find yourself rambling and not really knowing how to explain what is in your

head when you're just having these back and forth these casual conversations but like forcing me to sit down and answer very specific questions and write them

down in a way that is concise and understandable was quite challenging and we actually went back and forth on that manifest what at least three times right

and so I totally appreciated that as that starting point within the project yeah for sure and I think an important part of that is also the exercise that

it's something that you create together but it's not necessarily for you to put your website it's more for yourself and for your team for example getting new people in the company if you have one source of truth of why you're here what

your vision is right then everyone is on the same page literally instead of everyone hearing kind of the same story but a little bit different that's not what you want especially in the beginning phase of building your company

of building your brand so I think that's a huge one when you've got that manifest and everyone's like yes this is who we are right this this is where we believe in this is this is our story then you're ready to move on to your brand name

because now you have set those initial constraints I think when you starting out as a designer and someone tells you okay you have complete creative freedom right you're like wow this is my dream

project but to be honest those are the hardest projects because where do you start right in my opinion the more constraints you set for yourself right or the better constraints the better the

stuff that you are able to create for example me creating these visual things in figma figma has a lot of constraints right it's not like illustrator where I have probably thousands of tools to

create the craziest stuff but by setting those constraints you also start to think more creative right what can I do within those boundaries and going back to that brand name that initial manifest that you created those are the first

boundaries of that brand name right coming with up with a brand name is is quite difficult because you're working with a founding team and often times s they already have something in their in

their mind for a brand name but they're not quite sure yet when you're seeing work of someone else it looks great it sounds great but if you're creating something yourself it's much harder to

reach that point of oh that's it you almost always need that second opinion of people coming in and saying that sound good I think also with dive before even presenting it to you I just

presented it to a couple of other people who didn't even know about the project just to get that initial reaction of okay does this does this make sense because it can be quite hard to judge that work for yourself coming up with

the brand name is really about letting that manifest soak in and every time when something pops up writing that down and ultimately you're building a list for yourself and then boiling that down

to two or three proposals that you can ultimately then present to your client I think the idea of having someone else create it versus yourself

is so true because if I were to come up with the name dive on my own I think I actually would have just missed it pretty quickly just because it is this more generic word and something I like

to do is pay attention to like how things are trending internally and when I first read dive I was like oh that's interesting but like is it too generic and then every day I would wake up and

it was like a little bit more compelling and a little bit more compelling and often times the direction that an idea is heading means a lot more than actually where it is on the spectrum of yes no so I guess that is a long-winded

way of saying saying thank you for coming up with that name and convincing me yeah and I think the most difficult part of coming up with a good brand name

for a company or for a Founder is that it's important to make it feel their brand name because you are building the the company so I could come up with a

brand name but you've got the feeling that it's not it's not really yours then it's not going to work right it has to be something that you build together and you feel like okay we set it up together

in order for it to last in my opinion so continuing the example let's say that we've arrived at that brand name for the pickle ball app and the

general positioning and some of the keywords in the Manifest relate to this idea of appealing to the serious players but we want to have something that is mass Market that can really capture the

growth in all these millions of new people where we want my grandma to look at it and be like that's for me and we also want someone that's like maybe our age to consider playing for the first

time and say like that's the app for me and I'm wondering where do we go from here what's the next step now that we've kind of aligned on that original vision

and manifest we have a name what's next yeah and this is kind of more the softer part where you then get into right because now you've set the foundation which is just that one page what we

talked about we've got a strong brand name and now it's like okay when people hear about us what should they feel or what they should they see when they actually see our product or website or

any other deliverable and I think what you're trying to do here it sounds easy but it is very hard is you want to create the thing that you see when you're close your eyes and you think

about the brand right the thing that is most natural that people expect when you talking about the brand you want that to be in line and that can be very hard right that's all about coming up with

first mood board for example sending some directions of what's the initial style that this brand should be so that would be a natural Second Step Right we've got the brand name we've got the

logo now it's time for okay overarching what should the feeling be not just diving directly into a deliverable because that can be so hard right because then you have to come up on the

spot with illustrations different kind of deliverables for that project it's better to think of it as a mood board which can consist of stuff that you

found online but also quick doodles from yourself gut feeling spinning that out and then going back again to the team and discussing what resonates with you

of course you started this company what resonates with you right what comes closest to the feeling that you want this project to have I'm always intimidated by creating mood boards I know that it's like a part of the

process that we need but they take a lot of time and I remember being really impressed with the mood boards that you put together for dive where do you start looking when you're putting those

together yeah that's a great question and I think that also ties in with the concept of inspiration right it's it's pretty hard if you start looking for

inspiration only when you need it I see it more as a backlog right so I try to look around and to collect inspiration along the way constantly so I have a folder on my desktop with all of the

inspiration that I come across so that when I need it I don't have to start from scratch and start looking okay let me go to Pinterest let me go here here here no I can actually refer back to

stuff that I already noticed that can align with this project that also makes sure that I have a curated list of inspiration that speaks to me as a

designer and that fits my Stell so I would say that's a big tip instead of only looking for inspiration when you need it because that can be quite draining try to collect and build that

backlog for yourself so that when you need to create a mood board you're already taking look at your own inspiration and pulling from that instead of all of these different sources that also keeps you in that

creative flow when you are thinking of a certain mood board that you want to create and you have to browse go to different sites it's also easy to get distracted with going on all these side

PS so instead I'll just check Twitter really quickly to see if there's any inspiration on there yeah yeah and there you go there you go so I would say instead of seeing that as a separate

exercise doing that beforehand and collecting that that can save you a lot of time and um yeah also it's just a lot of fun right just to collect that inspiration for yourself have that

database so you can pull from it later on it reminds me of this idea from a writer and creator that I really like named David Perell and he talks about

this concept of writing from abundance anytime you're sitting down to write you should be pulling from all of these Snippets that you've been adding to your notes over the last weeks and years and

it feels very similar right like I agree if I'm going to just crack open dribble and just start entering search queries that is going to take me forever and I probably won't be very happy with the

output all right so let's get back on track let's say you've given me these two or three mood boards and I'm really excited about one so we have aligned on

the general visual feel and Direction what's the next step that we're taking so what we need next is a first impression when you're going to talk with someone someone about the brand

that you're building or the company you want to show them a first impression right and this this is for me one of the most fun exercises and I had a creative director that I that I worked for when I

was an intern a few years back and um what I always did and I think a lot of product designers do this is they think inside out right they work on the product on the design system and

then they're like oh I need an illustration and I make it into the product and then when they need a billboard let's say right or maybe a poster or something else else uh marketing materialized they just blow up

that literally they blow up that that illustration from their app or maybe a screen right but what you're then doing is you're basically zooming in on that tunnel vision of you as a product

designer who already knows the product who already knows what's going on um whereas the what the creative F said to

me was you should think about it as a journey right let's say I'm driving on the highway I see a big b billboard of the stuff that we are creating so I only have 2 seconds to take a look at it what does it say people have no idea what

they're looking at how can we communicate what we are doing and how can we get them excited and then secondly how can we make sure that from that billboard right according to the website that's the second step then

they're going to download the app then they're maybe purchasing something and for me a good brand experience is that Journey between those steps but that starts at that first impression and that's a combination of a couple of

things so we know that it has to include the logo we know that it needs to have some copy so this is already the second exercise copywriting big part of branding right what's the first sentence we are going to communicate of course

we've got a whole story in our head but how can we drill that down to one sentence incredibly hard to do incredibly hard and then based on that one sentence how can we visualize that then it's more about setting that scene

and something that resonates with that one liner probably that we want to communicate getting the first billboard right and also here going with different routes different value propositions and

again testing a lot we talk a lot about testing in product design but we don't often talk as much about testing a brand and that's a shame that first impression it can make or break something especially when you're creating

something let's say for designers with probably you had the same right where you saw something you heard about an app and then you looked it up you downloaded and you were like oh that first impression that app icon doesn't really

work for me and then already you're going in not as excited so testing that first impression very very very important but yeah as I said we start off with you know a couple of different

variations of that first impression we've got that billboard and then everyone on the team's like yes this is it right we are happy with this this is the direction we want to go for then

when that first impression is there then it's time to dissect that right into the different parts because now we know what to do with typography because we probably use some typography in at first impression right we also know the

illustration style or maybe photography style that we're using in that we also know how to position the logo so we can start dissecting that how to treat these different

elements and start building out that system every time that you sent me a deliverable first off it felt a little bit like Christmas just based off of the time zones because you would finish working at the end of the day and then I

would wake up to some kind of a slack message the next morning and I was always so excited to open up the figma files not just because it was a fun process but also your presentation and

the way that you even showcased the ideas that you were working on was really really well done so before we go any further can you kind of give listeners a better idea of how you even

think about structuring a figma file throughout this process and the different tactics that you use to make sure that when you are sharing these Concepts the environment that I as a

stakeholder in viewing them in feels high quality what I see a lot is designers being very good at executing that first 90% right so getting to that

initial idea but then just throwing that figma file over the fence and and having a bunch of iterations scatter on the artboard and I think that's a shame even when you're presenting I think it's

important to think about that direction that you want to give the brand and that first impression that you want to give so just taking you know 15 minutes at the end of iterating and making sure you

have an archive page with all of your previous iterations because it doesn't mean that you have to throw everything away I would say save as as much as you can because probably somewhere down the line you are going to refer back to that

be like oh that was actually a great idea but cleaning up that file and I'm not talking about naming your layers but just cleaning up that file a little bit giving a little bit of context right

also with your iterations for me that's just one two sentences Max what is this concept and why did I choose to include it I think it's very important and also

shows the client that you're working for that you care about the craft right you care about the concept that you created it's not going to be somewhere on on a random artboard no it's actually

polished presented okay this is you know well thought out this is the way I think we should give this uh brand a go you mentioned the phrase carrying a lot and I just want to double click on that because that is the impression that I

got whenever you would deliver work to me just the way that you even thought about the artboards made me feel like hey Fons is invested in this brand and so I'm I'm glad you brought that up

because it does feel very important taking a step back and kind of revisiting the process what else is missing is there anything else that you would make sure that you would guide me

through during a branding process I think it's very important to see a brand as a living thing there's no such thing as creating a brand and being done with it then moving back again to product

right and being like Oh brand is done brand is a living thing same as a design system same as a product you keep iterating on it right and you keep

evolving it so I think big part also of starting a successful brand or a visual language is not just throwing it over the fence but actually educating the

team also how to use that brand right and being there for support in that first Del liables but because this can be quite hard you only have the first initial billboard right and probably a

small group of elements but now it's really about okay how well are these able to translate to a website to a product to maybe merchandise for the

team being involved in those initial first few months I think either makes or breaks a brand it's not about delivering one PDF and that being it it's about

okay and now what right how can we make sure that the vision that we have is consistent and high quality throughout the entire experience so I'm going to go ahead and

take my pickle ball branding hat off and ask you a little bit more broadly what are some of the brands out there right now that are inspiring you the

most I think the brands that I am really inspired by are the brands that have this unified visual language and I keep saying visual language because for me

brand and visual language are different because visual language is for me just the thing that you see right and it's not the whole storytelling around it's just that impression that goes through all of your marketing material but also

drips through into your product great solid example I always call out is headspace where you think of headspace when you close your eyes you know the the environment that they created for

themselves which is so powerful even you you know me when someone would say okay now create a landing page for headspace we could do it probably right in that same style because it's easy to create

easy to remember limited pallet and a such a good balance between product design and content design for me those are the brands that really shine right

the connection between those two having that Synergy between it has to be useful but also it should be on brand and um when you open your headspace up you are into headspace right and you feel like

you're okay I'm I'm part of this environment that's something that I really love some other brands that I recently really was surprised by is fig Jam fig Jam just came out with a Rebrand

and that Rebrand is just fantastic the way they embraced the imperfection of the product throughout their whole brand system the dynamic is something that I

really like you can see that it's not just something created based on Trends but something that comes from the core beliefs fig Jam should be accessible it should be about putting things and ideas

together so for me yeah to see something like that flourish and expand is is really cool to see maybe one more that's just my personal favorite um is Nike

different industry but the way Nike handles their campaigns it's just fantastic in my opinion they've got this thin layer of a brand which is most of the time just black and

white very clean but every month when I visit the Nike website they've got this completely new look and feel but it's still Nike that's something that I really like to see so those are three of the the brands that I recently really

enjoyed what are some of your favorites R I actually was going to say Spotify and for a similar reason as Nike where they've been able to create this

Mark that is so iconic and yet their brand specializes in being able to adapt to the content that it is surrounding and so I think it makes the Spotify

brand really dynamic in a similar way as Nike where you know this is Spotify but now it feels like this hipop style or it

feels like this country folk style and the way that they're able to wrap it and have the brand adjust while still maintaining the core identity of Spotify

has always impressed me and it's something that I've tried to emulate before actually in past projects and even for my own startup years ago and I think I mostly failed it's not a it's

not an easy thing to do um another example that comes to mind that is a little bit out there but GoDaddy actually and I think part of

that is because GoDaddy used to be archaic and I didn't want to spend time next to the GoDaddy brand or on their website or in their product or anything

like that and for them to be able to make the jump to something that I actually really enjoy is so impressive to me because it's very very very

difficult for an old world brand to take that jump effectively but the way that they have used this like modern siif and

the very bright vibrant colors makes it feel re-energized in a way that I found quite impressive yeah yeah I completely agree and and to

go back to the Spotify example Spotify is also one of my favorites as well and I think Spotify almost fits that line of Nike and for example headspace as well

in which you could just you talked about the Nike logo right and being so recognizable but I think the the best part with Brands like Spotify Nike and

headspace is you can take that logo out and still being recognizable right I don't need to see that heads space logo to recognize headspace I don't need to see that Nike logo to recognize a Nike

ad or website and I think that's when you've got a strong brand right you don't even need a logo you've created a visual language that people recognize instantly it's a good point it reminds

me of like Apple TV commercials where you're 10 seconds in and you already kind of know that this is an Apple commercial even though they've said nothing about the product and nothing about the brand name yeah that's why you

know that you killed it right but that takes time takes time to establish that and that's also why I said consistency and making sure you've got the right

brand in those first years is critical because you're building that up for yourself right and if you have to Rebrand after one year you're losing that progress of people recognizing that style of

yours you talk a lot about this phrase standing out as it relates to branding and something that I've noticed recently over the last year or so is what I'll

refer to as the linear ification of websites because it feels like once a week now we're getting a new website that has that dark mode purple primary

color gradient borders the different lighting and I don't want to knock those designs because they're very very high quality and some of the most polished

websites on the internet they're very impressive I'm curious what is your reaction to this kind of trend it's a good question and it's something that people ask me a lot

actually and I think it comes down to Quality right and I think we can break quality up into two parts because there's the quality and execution right as you said

as well we see a lot of linear like websites who are ex you know executed fantastic right with great animation great hover

States but we or I also talk about quality in a creative sense right so what's the quality here on the idea if we would rate this concept or this this

visual style in creativity on the scale from 1 to 10 where would it be and so standing out for me is being both great in executing right quality but also

having that idea um being more original and that's that's for me the point where you stand out and a great way to do that is to actually look at businesses or

companies outside of your industry so instead of when you're building a SAS company looking at websites like linear go take a look at Nike go take a look at

maybe go take a look at some other scenes or Industries for inspiration and bring that to your industry I think that will help you to to stand out combining

those Concepts can we take that one level further and add a little bit more tangibility to the conversation let's say that you're working on a new project

and it is a SAS website and your task with not creating another linear clone and creating a website design that really does Stand Out Beyond looking

outside of the industry what are some of the other tactics or strategies that you would use to execute on that second part of quality as it relates to the

creativity and Ingenuity of the idea itself yeah definitely so first of all big part of that would be the entire storage that we already talked about right so starting from within if you

start from within chances are really Slim you're going to end up at linear and trying to not maneuver because you can always say oh you know we also want

to do that um so trying to stay in your lane in that sense also as a designer going back through that inspiration right that you gaed before and taking a look at some of the elements that you

like of different projects we talk a lot about imposter syndrome for example right and I think that's the thing that arises when you take a look at linear and you start recreating almost one

onone right but for me I trly believe you know in in everything is a remix so I think there's nothing wrong with recreating something but try to

take different elements from different projects recreate those and bring them together to create something new that's for me where the magic lies so for example taking that linear gradient

right and combining that with let's say something from Nike some good photography that you saw from Nike combining those two that can bring you both high quality but also creativity

because you're now combining different visual styles to create something new for yourself so I think that's really important right you there's nothing wrong with using a website like linear

as inspiration but use it as a starting point and try to add to that right mixed in some different concepts so let's say this is your

project it's coming from within you do you think that the website that you would design would be light mode or dark mode oh that's a good

one um currently in the light mode phase yeah how about you your background you're a split man you you've got both I that's such an interesting

question and just a little bit of context for our relationship is that you were convincing me to do the dive brand in light mode and I kind of got swept away with the dark mode and this idea of

going deep and I think about that a lot because I think right now the Strategic move might be going light mode that might be the

easiest way to stand out but I also think that it's a lot more difficult to achieve that execution Quality Bar in light mode I'm curious if you feel the same

way yeah I think I think it depends I think when you've got a certain direction in your right the visual direction that you want to take it into

for example what we see now is especially with the rise of AR and VR we see a lot of translucent effects right things like that and to be honest those

things work a lot better in Darker environments right so I think that's a big reason why a lot of Brands and companies are now going into the dark mode because those translucent effects a

little bit more advanced a little bit more depth um is just something that's very trending right now so yeah I'm kind of in the middle there because for me

light mode doesn't per se mean um just having everything full full white right can also mean for me going with a light mode

setting for me means creating a project that feels a little bit more accessible almost having a a a wide landing page

and vibrant um yeah I don't know feels a little bit more welcoming almost uh but that's that's just a gut view from from my end right whereas I for example when I see a dark website with glowing things

and stuff like that for me that feels a lot more for pros but yeah I kind of see why you want to take dive into that dark mode direction as well because when I think about dark mode I think about Pro

stuff an interesting example of this accessible idea I think is the new family website have you seen that by chance yeah yeah so it's at family.co if

you're listening and you haven't been on there before uh really really skilled product team and they're entering this crypto space thank goodness we can stop

saying web 3 now but they've taken this light mode approach that doesn't really just feel like you're dumping everything on a white canvas but it's very friendly

and welcoming and I appreciated that strategic angle when almost all of the competitors are going for more of this

Pro and predominantly dark mode very glowy and gradient Vibe yeah I really appreciate that because I think a lot of companies in web 3 and in crypto go for

that dark mode and it can feel quite intimidating from you you know when you're just stepping into that industry it's quite something to get into um there are finances at play right your

personal finances going into crypto so making that as transparent as possible and also that links back to the name as well family right making that as welcoming as possible I think is a great

great move by the way I love the design team from family yeah um also the designer from honk I don't know if you know that oh yeah you know you can you can see it directly you know that

friendliness that attention to detail yeah I think that's that's yeah brilliantly executed before honk shut down I took a screen recording of the entire app and just saved it in my notion because I wanted to be able to

refer back to it years from now because I really do think it's one of the best mobile designs that I've ever seen yeah I I read something about someone saying

Hong Sho comeb back but then for CH GPT yeah I saw that having that at the same time and that actually makes a lot of sense so yeah let's hope for a comeback

someday actually let's talk about that if you were given the task of Designing the chat GPT mobile app how do you think

it would have differed from what we ultimately got if at all it's a great question and a very difficult because what even is the target audience

right it's everyone apparently everyone um yeah it's everyone so I always like to Niche down when you're creating a brand I always say it's okay

if some people don't like the brand I would even say it's better because if everyone would say it's okay then probably you didn't really do an outstanding job you just created something blend that everyone's okay

with but nothing no one's really excited about and I think that's the way J GPT or open AI went for right it's pretty much middle of the road right they've got some nice micro interactions I

really like the level of polishing in that sense but from a brand perspective it doesn't really have personality which I think it's a it's a strategic

move if it were up to me I think a lot of people see AI also maybe even as a threat or something a little bit scary even so I would lean more towards the Fe

approach right making it a little bit more friendly even though it's the same product giving it a face and and not literally but trying to to give it some

character I think would go a long way for me personally I agree with the family idea I also thought another potential way to think about it was leaning into this idea of personalization because that's one of

the things that's so exciting to me about Ai and llms and what they make possible is I think it's going to empower a much more personalized and

tailored web and I thought even just a very small detail that they could have done to tap into that idea was allow me

to choose from a set of personalized app icons and just make it feel like this is my space and not the same exact experience that everyone is having and I

wonder if they had those kind of discussions yeah I like that a lot actually because to be honest it it's impossible to for a product like that to create a face or a character or

something like that that resonates with everyone right um but people are also using it for completely different use cases so customizing that and almost seeing it as some sort of U you you

remember the Pokemon Ditto right that that transforms right um in different different things where it's needed for maybe something like that would be

really interesting for for jpt as well so I'd like to take a step back from Brand because we're recording this only a few

days after Apple unveiled their vision for spatial Computing and out of anyone you're one of the people that I really am interested in hearing more about what your reactions were and maybe you could

even touch a bit on how you see this new platform impacting design more broadly yeah so for me seeing something like this come out is very exciting right um it's basically having a new

playground for us as designers right we first we did the web then you know we started playing around with this small canvas on on on the phone screen size and now we've got this whole new world

that we can explore and um First Impressions from me were when I saw for example reality OS is that it's very similar to our mobile UI but in my opinion that's that's just the beginning

because we want to make it familiar to the thing that we know what I'm wondering is okay what does it look like in five or 10 years when we maybe

dropped the whole phone UI uh thing and we embrac the spatial um the spatial element more because now what I saw a lot and that stood out to me is okay we

are still using all of those cards card designs are still here right they're here to stay well we've got all of this space to work with right do we really need cards or do we need something else

to contain it so I think that's very interesting to take a look at but also how are we going to translate some of the elements that now make a lot of sense like buttons

into that space for example I heard some first reviews where you now only have to look at something to activate it so what's the need for a button right when do I need to take a look at the button

to continue or can I just look at directly at the thing that I want to go towards so I think that's going to be interesting what are some of those new patterns that are going to yeah to to

come out of this I'm looking forward to that how about you I love the idea of the button and that's kind of the layer that I'm most interested in too is thinking about how does this new

platform fundamentally change the way that we interact with computers and broadening what we think of as our role

as a designer because it's not about yeah like what is this button and where does it go and should I use 48 or 56 pixels and how C morphic should I make

it it's thinking about how should someone use their hands while interacting with my product and

what and really and increase the importance of having that level of empathy where you can really put yourself in that person's

position because the the spectrum of possibilities is so much wider than I'm sitting on my computer with a specific job to be done you know this kind of software it's becoming more a part of

our life in a way that is maybe a little bit scary but for designers you you said it right it's a it's this exciting playground that I think kind of just

breaks open the box of what we imagine when we think of product design yeah for sure and I think you're also going to design a bit

differently whereas we for example we have a discussion about light or dark mode on the phone screen you're setting your own stage right that's your that's

your composition but when you're creating something for VR or ar it's all about how can I design something that blends in naturally with the space that

I'm looking at right so then the canvas completely changes right so probably we are not going to talk about light or dark anymore we are going to be like okay how can we make sure that we create

something that seamlessly blends with the thing that people are already looking at and that's something completely different and that excites me actually a lot to start thinking about that yeah it gets back to this idea of

personalization and taking that even one step further the combination of this new spatial Computing with what AI is

unlocking is particularly exciting because you can imagine this world where a lot of the interfaces that we are interacting with in a spatial

environment are dynamically generated by the AI to solve that specific problem that I'm facing as a user and what the heck does it look like for designers to

set out designing something that is generated on the Fly tailored to like a an almost Infinite combination of

layouts and use cases and that is also exists in a 3D environment to an extent it's really difficult to wrap my head around what the heck it's going to look

like for product designers a few years from now and what are the types of output and deliverables that we are responsible for even yeah I think that's

a great Point as well also not having that static content anymore that's something that we have to deal with now still a lot as designers but indeed when we take a look at content generation and

the personalization we start to having to think about not only the UI that we create blending seamlessly but also making sure that it works in all of

those different contexts um yeah so that's that's that's going to be an interesting one for sure it's gonna be fun to figure out as as an industry I

think we we see all of as an industry we see all of like the advancements in Ai and we think about it like shrinking the the market and the

array of possibilities for design and I'm just super excited for the roof to be blown off of the market for design and even just the demand for design in general as all of these new platforms

emerge I'd like to transition a little bit though and talk a bit more about you specifically and and I'd like to do another what if

scenario and have you imagined that you have just taken on your 25-year-old self as a mentee what's the main thing that you

would teach your younger self to help you take that next step in your career great one great question for me I think it's a pretty harsh one but I

would reject all of the first ideas I think there's something very powerful in rejecting that initial thought that comes up that could most of the time be

that linear thought I have to create a website let's go for linear no disregard it directly going back to my internship that I had a few years back no matter how good the first idea was that I

brought up it would always get rejected maybe the first two ideas just to get into the practice of dive a little bit deeper into it what comes out of it then and most of the times something much

better comes out out of it when you disregard that initial that initial thought but because let's be honest your brain also wants to make it easy for yourself so that first thought that you have when you want to create something

want to design something chances are that thousands of others also had that initial idea so you want to disregard that and you want to move on because not a lot of people do that actually not a

lot of people disregard that first idea because it can feel very compelling but you have to let that go second thing that I would teach my youngers s is don't fall in love with your ideas and

especially that those early ideas right don't keep them for yourself I made the big mistake in the beginning of my career of coming up with a concept completely creating everything for it

worrying about the pixels and the exact color value stuff like that before presenting it for it then to hear this was not what we're looking for right this is not going to work um then it can

be very hard for you to to move on and to uh start iterating on it right so so not falling in love with your ideas I think it's a hard one but a really good one to keep in mind while you're

creating something um yeah I think those are the the first two steps I would I would say are are pretty important um third one for me is don't obsess over

the tool right tools are changing especially now we see new tools pop up every few months and I feel like it's going faster and faster I for example started with Photoshop and illustrator

right design designing in there and then we had sketch but I've been I've been designing for for Photoshop but five to to seven years and then sketch came and I used that for two years and then I

switched to figma right and then we've got framer and all of these new tools coming in and I feel like that's a trend that just keeps on going right where we

just shifting between the tools so instead of becoming the true expert in that tool for me personally it would be more worth the time to invest your time

in becoming stronger creatively because when you're strong in that creative sense you can be very good in executing something on a technical level but I

think in the end especially with the rise of AI true creativity will prevail because AI will probably take a lot of those mundane technical tasks away from

us whereas the thing that keeps valuable in my opinion is that creativity and the power that we have as humans combining those different Concepts what about now if you look at

your current skill set what's the main area that you think you can improve in the most I think something for me it's a little bit difficult to get a little bit

Carried Away by the creative process right you've got these big ideas on how to achieve a certain feeling or concept but then also being able to execute on

that right on on a high quality can be quite difficult so for for me finding that balance because sometimes I don't have the technical background in how to actually execute it so I always need

that counterweight when I'm working I always work together with a developer or someone that was very skilled in let's say building framer sites or knows the nitty-gritty of figma to actually pull

me back and be like hey you know great idea but that would take months or that's not even possible right so I think having that balance is important as well what's something that you believe

about design that you think a lot of other designers might disagree with visual design or how something looks and feels is not an afterthought it is actually a constant throughout the

entire process even when presenting or showing a figma file I think that's where you make the difference as a designer how do I present and communicate my ideas but I think we are

also as humans drawn to stuff that feels polished that feels like someone put care into them let's say you've got a product and it kind of works but if The

Branding is on point right and it feels polished then you can get away with it I feel like it can make up for those remaining percentages so I think yeah not a lot of designers I think would

agree with me but for me it's definitely about how it how it looks and feels what's something that you're working on right now that has you particularly excited I'm starting off

grid which is a new inspiration platform because the question about inspiration is something that I hear a lot so what I set out to do is is to create a new platform that's focused on sharing

inspiration that is not shared a thousand times already so to share those gems with designers in product design also showing them that there's a whole Space of design outside of product

design I feel like that's something that's being forgotten a lot of the time when we talk about design people assume that it's about product design but we've got industrial Design Graphic Design

type design there's a lot of different skill sets outside of product design as well and I think merging those right and having that cross pollination between them is the best thing for for design so that's yeah that's something that I set

out to do and I'm really excited to get that going where can people find that because I'm subscribed and I can't wait to plug into more of fans's inputs yeah

definitely so uh definitely follow us on Twitter right after design the first newsletter will go out um this month as well we will be talking with the cre

creators behind those projects right and talking with them on okay what was your journey to get here and um how do you go about you know creating the stuff that you creating so yeah I'm really excited about

that what's the project that you've worked on over the last year or so that has challenged you the most yeah the projects that challenged me the

most were the projects that I took on too quickly without considering if it was a nice fit for me as a designer right I had a quick rise on Twitter and

with that quick rise also came a lot of projects um and I've got to be honest in the beginning I said yes to almost everything that I initially thought of

oh that that sounds cool right um but that also meant that I took on a lot of projects that needed a skill set that was not my strongest point so for

example building rather complex landing pages with a lot of interactions and small stuff you know the kind of things that I talked about earlier that are not my strong point right that really needed

someone to get into the tool and um flush it out um in a in a very high quality manner um so I've

been more selective lately on the projects that I take on right um and working with together with others who can actually execute on some of those more technical

aspects one final question I want to start making deep Dives more practical so that listeners Can Come Away with at least one next step so what is a

challenge that you would give to ambitious designers who want to take the next step to improve their visual skills and maybe their creativity even yeah a

great first step would be I think there's kind of a negative ARA around recreating work from others right or copying work from others but I

would say that's the best thing you can do if you like linear take a screen grab and recreate it you don't have to recreate the entire thing but recreate the elements that you like because by

recreating you learn to understand how something was created and you add it to your skill set and the more you recreate the broader your range becomes and I call it this your your creative range

when you started as a designer your creative range is very limited the stuff that you can actually create is pretty simple but if you recreate a lot you expand that and the more different

things you can create that also means that you can combine those different ideas to come up with your own style so I would say try to recreate as much as

possible not for the sake of publishing that but to train that creative muscle and to expand your range as a designer I love that well fans this has been awesome I hope that people have learned

a lot I know that I have before we go can you just tell listeners where they can find you online and anything else that you want to share about this is your time yeah awesome so luckily I have

quite a distinctive name so you can find me at phones man right on Twitter on LinkedIn um follow me there um I've got quite a bunch of interesting projects

coming up so um yeah happy to see you there awesome thanks fans thanks r