Dive Club 🤿

In this episode, Marco Cornacchia shares how he accidentally created a new trend of animated bento grids, the process of brand transformation through website design, showcasing design work on a portfolio website, the journey of unexpected success, the role of a designer at Diagram and the potential of AI in design, transitioning from a startup founder to a multi-billion dollar company, and practical tips for becoming an attractive first hire at a startup.

Three guest designers discuss strategies for professional growth as individual contributors. Topics covered include traits of top ICs, becoming a collaborative designer, leveraging communication strengths, growing as a product designer, focusing on problem-solving, and seeking feedback to grow as a designer.

James McDonald, creative designer and branding expert, discusses his creative process and reimagining the Clerk brand. Topics include establishing visual languages, incorporating motion in web design, exploring motifs, web design trends like perpetual motion buttons and giant CTAs, and the perfect amount of animation.

Brian Lovin, Founder of Campsite, discusses his journey as a two-time design founder and shares key insights from hundreds of interviews. Interesting topics include strategies for sharing work and getting feedback, the problems with post-COVID design process, and the three values he's instilling in the design culture at Campsite.

David Hoang, a product designer, discusses the future of the industry and how designers can prepare for it. Topics include AI in Figma, creating a more accessible web, the rise of the design founder, dynamic interfaces' impact on design systems, and the trending title 'software designer'.

Expert Erik Kennedy breaks down landing page design techniques on popular websites like Lemonade, Formcarry, Stella Domo, and Runway. Dive into creating top-notch hero sections, avoiding design mistakes, and showcasing testimonials effectively. Learn about the crucial first five seconds of a landing page, optimizing design with subtle animations, and enhancing layouts with typography and design elements.

Design team at Loom discusses their design process and takeaways from their recent AI launch, including prototyping, collaboration with cross-functional teams, using Figjam for feedback, developing a visual language for AI, documenting edge cases, and pivoting mid-project. They also explore interdisciplinary collaboration, designing upgrade flows, managing different user experiences, product usage and QA process, and future plans for the Loom product team.

This week's Deep Dive features early-career designer, Perry Wang. Previously at Google and now working at Discord. This Deep Dive is a masterclass for junior designers looking to jumpstart their career. We cover a lot👇

Designers Dan Mall, Grace Walker, Adrien Griveau, Yuan Wang, and Luis Ouriach share their insights on: organizing variables and thinking strategically in design systems, pricing strategies for first-year freelancers, best practices for design systems teams, improving design portfolios and case studies, and collaboration with engineers.

Learn from Adrien Griveau, the founding designer at Linear, about collaboration with engineering, traits sought in design candidates, customer feedback, design systems, QA process, prioritizing craft and quality, improving skills, and the impact of Linear on design.