Dive Club 🤿

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

This week’s episode is with Alejandro Matamala Ortiz, the cofounder and Chief Design Officer at Runway—one of the leading generative AI companies in the world today.

The way they work is incredibly unique. So a big focus of this interview is digging into how AI is shifting the way products get built and what it all means for designers:

• How the lines are blurring between roles
• How AI flips the order of building new features
• What it means to “carve” AI products vs. build them
• How Alejandro believes the role of design will change
• Why the embed frontend engineers on the design team
• Where the film and video industry might be headed next
• a lot more

Many of my favorite episodes are when we get to hear from the earliest designers at companies like Linear, Perplexity, Ramp, Facebook, etc.

So this episode pulls out the key insights so you can learn what it takes to thrive as a startup designer:

• Nate Parrott (Founding designer of Arc): https://www.dive.club/deep-dives/nate-parrott
• Adrien Griveau (Founding designer of Linear): https://www.dive.club/deep-dives/adrien-griveau
• Soleio (2nd designer at Facebook): https://www.dive.club/deep-dives/soleio-2
• Marco Cornacchia (Founding designer at Diagram): https://www.dive.club/deep-dives/marco-cornacchia
• Henry Modisett (Founding designer at Perplexity): https://www.dive.club/deep-dives/henry-modisett
• Helen Tran(Design leader at AngelList): https://www.dive.club/deep-dives/helen-tran
• Diego Zaks (2nd designer at Ramp): https://www.dive.club/deep-dives/diego-zaks

This week's episode is with Ryan Scott who was an early designer at Doordash and then spent years as a design lead at Airbnb. Nowadays Ryan teaches hundreds of designers ranging from seniors to VPs how to make a bigger impact at your company.

This episode is jam-packed with insights about:

• What it’s like presenting at Airbnb CRIT
• Ways to unlock your credibility as a designer
• How to mitigate risk when presenting your ideas
• What it takes to speak the language of the business
• Types of “PM-y” questions that designers should be asking
• How Ryan led a massive redesign of the Airbnb booking flow
• The right (and wrong) way to make a case for investing in UX debt
• How to talk about your work in a way that resonates with non-designers
• a lot more
• Get $100 off of Ryan’s course “Describing the ROI of design”
• Ryan’s case study on redesigning the Airbnb checkout flow
• Past interview with Alex Schleifer (Chief Design Officer at Airbnb)

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