Dive Club 🤿

I’m designing a new product and a few months ago I would’ve confidently said it’s not an AI product. But I was wrong.

This new technology creates endless opportunities... we just have to be able to see what AI makes possible. And that’s what this episode is all about.

• Maggie Appleton (former design lead at Elicit)
• Joel Lewenstein (head of product design at Anthropic)
• George Kedenburg III (designer at Humane)
• Michael Wandelmaier (designer at Dropbox)

I’ve followed Mike Smith ever since he designed the Perplexity brand identity and quickly realized he’s one of the most creative designers I’ve ever seen. Turns out his wife Chara is a positioning mastermind too so it makes sense why Smith & Diction is one of the hottest agencies in the game today.

So this week’s episode is a deep dive into brand strategy and what it takes to stand out in 2025 and beyond. We get into:

• What it takes to stand out in an AI world
• Their hacks for cracking a brand strategy
• Why the best brands have lots of “moves”
• Mike’s #1 piece of advice for younger designers
• What people really mean when they say “timeless”
• Their experience using Visual Electric in brand design
• Positioning Smith & Diction in today’s agency landscape
• a lot more
• We talk about how they used Visual Electric for their latest project (Alma Food). ⭐ Don’t forget you can use the code DIVECLUB to get your first month free.
• You can also check out the episode with Colin Dunn (CEO of Visual Electric)
• Mike says to make sure you watch the episode with Phi from Perplexity
• We talk about Topo, Cotopaxi and Steady bags

Anthropic has quickly become a category-defining company and in this episode Kyle Turman (their first full-time designer) shares a behind-the-scenes of what it was like designing Claude.

If you’re interested in startups, AI products, or the art of prompting then this conversation will be right up your alley.

Some highlights:

• Kyle’s story of wearing every hat for Claude
• What it’s like designing conversational UX flows
• How Kyle uses Claude in his personal design process
• Why Kyle only half-finished his Claude designs in Figma
• How Kyle thinks about designing for emotion and feeling
• How Kyle thinks about the future of design as a discipline
• Kyle’s thoughts on whether chat should the dominant pattern for AI
• a lot me
• We mentioned Tuhin Kumar’s episode (Head of Design at Luma AI)
• We mentioned Julius Tarng
• We talked about the Sesame conversational AI demo
• Machines of Loving Grace by the Anthropic CEO Dario

Recommended Episode:

George Kedenburg III (former designer lead at Humane)

A little over a year ago, Joey Banks and I were DM’ing each other in Slack about leaving our W-2 jobs and going independent.

So this week’s episode is a reflection on his journey working for himself and it’s as human and relatable as any conversation I’ve ever had on this show. We go deep into:

• Managing your pipeline of clients
• Creating a personal knowledge system in Notion
• Finding companionship as an independent designer
• Structuring your schedule and maintaining momentum
• Communicating your services and pricing yourself effectively
• Dealing with uncertainty and all of the unknowns in your first year
• a lot more
• Get a special offer on Joey’s “Level Up with Figma” course
• Joey’s Baseline website and newsletter
• Paul Millerd’s “Pathless Path” book and his episode on Lenny’s podcast
• Joey mentioned Oliur’s episode as one of his favorite YouTube creators
• He also mentioned Stephen Robles YouTube channel

Being able to think like an engineer helps you collaborate with developers more effectively, design UIs that make sense, and empowers you to build your ideas with AI tools like v0, Claude, etc.

So this video is going to break down a few traits of designers who I believe are already doing this at a high level.

It includes insights from:

• Mariana Castilho (designer at Vercel/Pierre)
• Julius Tarng (prev engineering at Linear)
• Meng To (Founder of Design+Code)