Dive Club 🤿

This week's episode is with Sam Peitz who quickly became one of my favorite designers to follow in 2024.He regularly shares experiments like TextOS, his scribble running app, and assorted letter prototypes. So this conversation is a deep dive into his creative process and how he’s redefined his career path over the past ~10 months. We go deep into:Sam’s go-to source of design inspirationThe power of setting the right constraintsWhat Sam has learned about building with v0How to think creatively and design out of the boxHow to position yourself for the type of work you want to doa lot moreKoto branding studio is where Sam worked previouslySam likes Arena for design inspirationWe talked about the episode with Dennis from Amie

Designers have become servants of “the process” so this episode features stories of people who are breaking the mold in the way they explore and prototype ideas.It includes insights from:Gabe Valdivia (Fractional design leader): https://www.dive.club/deep-dives/gabe-valdiviaDennis Muller (Designer + founder of Amie):https://www.dive.club/deep-dives/dennis-mullerGavin Nelson (Designing Linear mobile app):https://www.dive.club/deep-dives/gavin-nelsonNikolas Klein (Designing Prototyping at Figma):https://www.dive.club/deep-dives/figma-prototypingMichael Wandelmaier (Former Head of Design at Metalab): https://www.dive.club/deep-dives/michael-wandelmaierAnd lastly it features insights from Jenny Wen including her original blog post that inspired this episode (definitely bookmark this it’s awesome)👇https://jennywen.substack.com/p/dont-trust-the-design-process

Did you know that the very first interface designer at Adobe was also the first designer to work on Figma? 🤯His name is Andrei Herasimchuk and he knows a lot about design tooling…So this week’s episode is jam-packed with stories about designing the earliest interfaces for Illustrator and Photoshop, as well as what it was like seeing the original seed of an idea that became Figma.Not only that… Andrei gives us a behind-the-scenes of his new design tooling startup and shares his vision for where software creation is headed next 👀Some highlights to expect:How AI fits into his new product strategyThe bizarre story of Andrei’s first day at AdobeThe 3 types of designers that will exist in the futureWhat it was like joining Figma as the first designer in 2012How Andrei defined the initial keyboard shortcuts in design toolsThe #1 trait of designers he’s worked with over the last 3 decadesWhen to break out of the familiar interaction patterns for design toolinga lot moreBryan Lamkin was Andrei’s first manager at AdobeMark Hamburg was who he collaborated with on the original keyboard shortcuts

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-parrottAdrien Griveau (Founding designer of Linear): https://www.dive.club/deep-dives/adrien-griveauSoleio (2nd designer at Facebook): https://www.dive.club/deep-dives/soleio-2Marco Cornacchia (Founding designer at Diagram): https://www.dive.club/deep-dives/marco-cornacchiaHenry Modisett (Founding designer at Perplexity): https://www.dive.club/deep-dives/henry-modisettHelen Tran(Design leader at AngelList): https://www.dive.club/deep-dives/helen-tranDiego Zaks (2nd designer at Ramp): https://www.dive.club/deep-dives/diego-zaks