An Inside Look at Every’s Design Philosophy - Ep. 55 with Lucas Crespo

This episode is sponsored by Vanta. Achieving SOC 2 compliance can help you win bigger deals, enter new markets, and deepen trust with your customers—but it can cost you real time and money. Vanta automates up to 90% of the work for SOC 2, ISO 27001, and more, getting you audit-ready in weeks instead of months and saving you up to 90% of associated costs—and Every listeners can get $1,000 off of Vanta at https://www.vanta.com/every. As our creative lead, Lucas uses tools like native image gen in ChatGPT and Midjourney to generate the cover images you see every day. He also designs the interfaces for our products—Cora, Spiral, and Sparkle—and makes everything on our site feel as thoughtful and delightful as possible. It was great to have him on the show to talk about how AI is changing his design process. We get into: Why Every’s aesthetic feels familiar and new at the same time. Every’s aesthetic plays with the tension between the old (like Greek statues and Baroque symbols) and the new (like saturated colors and modern motifs) to make the glamor of the past feel fresh. Art direction matters more than ever today. As AI makes it easier to generate images, Lucas says the real work of design is shifting toward art direction, specifically, curating an aesthetic that feels “organic;” on his X timeline that’s showing up as clouds, earthy landscapes, and textures. Reimagining what a website can be with AI. Lucas compares most websites to identical buildings—predictable, efficient, and forgettable—and wonders how AI can help us break that mold by designing experiences that prioritize serendipity over speed, and curiosity over control. Behind the scenes of Cora’s visual aesthetic. How Lucas designed the landing page and launch video for Cora by rooting it in the product’s philosophy: turning the inbox from a source of chaos into something that feels calm, thoughtful—like stepping into spring. The future of internet interfaces. Lucas believes the future of digital interfaces will be curated with the same care as a film set or ad campaign, where every detail is chosen with intention. Lucas also walks us through how he created the headline image for Every’s consulting page—a human and robotic hand fist-bumping—using Midjourney to iterate from rough prompt to polished visual. This is a must watch for anyone interested in the future of design and making the internet a little more beautiful every day. If you found this episode interesting, please like, subscribe, comment, and share! Want even more? Sign up for Every to unlock our ultimate guide to prompting ChatGPT here: https://every.ck.page/ultimate-guide-to-prompting-chatgpt. It’s usually only for paying subscribers, but you can get it here for free. To hear more from Dan Shipper: Subscribe to Every: https://every.to/subscribe Follow him on X: https://twitter.com/danshipper Timestamps: Introduction: 00:01:41 How AI changed the course of Lucas’s career: 00:04:02 Why Every’s aesthetic feels both familiar and fresh: 00:08:00 Why Lucas thinks minimalism is overrated: 00:14:53 Art direction matters more than ever in the age of AI: 00:20:38 How to reimagine what a website can be with AI: 00:23:42 Lucas’s process in Midjourney to generate cover images: 00:33:08 Midjourney v. image generation in ChatGPT: 00:42:30 Behind the scenes of Cora’s design language: 00:49:07 How AI is rewriting the role of a designer: 00:59:18 Links to resources mentioned in the episode: Lucas Crespo: @lucas__crespo The pieces Lucas has written for Every: “When An AI Tool Finally Gets You”, “A Definitive Guide to Using Midjourney” Dan’s piece on the allocation economy: “The Knowledge Economy Is Over. Welcome to the Allocation Economy”

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Most newsletters look exactly the same. It's text on a white background, like, how can we make ours feel special? I come from advertising, so all that I did for a while was just art direction for brands. You know, you can just now generate UIs. It's way more important to like be in tune with what you find beautiful about day-to-day things, you know, like actually like start honing on that art direction of things. You log into Gmail or Outlook and it's just like a ton of text in chronological order and it feels like you're in a hospital or like in a government building with a lot of like fluorescent lights and like everything is sterile and hygienic.

• 0:38Speaker 00

  So we wanted to create this narrative of going from a stormy void type of like forsaken place into like a more sunshine, spring, trying to do like a little bit of symbolic storytelling while we're actually like also telling that same story in here, inside the text of the letter.

• 0:58Dan Shipper?

  You might not explicitly notice it, but you'll feel it. I love those little details.

• 1:04Speaker 00

  Choosing or championing more efficiency over like the emotional aspects of things, like the details that you might put on a doorknob or the manhole covers on the street or whatever, you know, like it just definitely feels like the world is in general, or Panama at least, is not minimalist at all. It's very maximalist. I think the internet deserves more maximalism.

• 1:40Dan Shipper?

  Lucas, welcome to the show.

• 1:42Speaker 00

  What's up, man? Thank you for having me.

• 1:44Dan Shipper?

  Thanks for coming. I'm so excited to do this with you for many reasons. One, because you're the original producer of this show and you designed all of the visuals for it. Two, because I just love hanging out with you. And three, because you play such a critical role at every and you do such a good job that I'm just really excited to.

• 2:05Dan Shipper?

  Bring everything you do to this podcast and let everyone see a little bit of a behind the scenes on how you work. So for people who don't know, you are the creative lead at Every, which means that you're responsible for the vibe, basically, of Every and all of our products. And I feel like people, I mean, people really like the vibe, and I love the vibe, and it's such a critical part of what it is that we do. And it's such a pleasure to get to work with you. And I'm just so happy to get to talk to you about how you do what you do.

• 2:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, I think like, for me, it's been a good journey so far. Thank you for reminding me that I actually used to produce this podcast. I have forgotten, I had totally forgotten about that, because Vivian has been doing like a great job so far now that I totally forgot about it. And yeah, it's been, it's been a journey, but super happy to be able to vibe with you all and get to make us look as good as possible, you know?

• 3:04Dan Shipper?

  Yep, totally. Yeah, I mean, you know, I've told you this before, but for people who are listening, you're kind of like the ideal, you're founder's best friend. Because like, you've done pretty much every job at the company. You started as a, doing ad sales. You just DM me, like called DM me and was like, hey, can I, I want to work with you. And I was like, cool, that sounds fun. I don't know what you should do, but like, maybe do, you know, ad sales. And you progressed from there to like, doing, like helping us

• 3:42Dan Shipper?

  run courses, to doing the, like, producing the podcast, to now doing all of the visual design and aesthetic and all of the UI designs. So like, basically, everything that I throw at you, you're just like, yeah, I'll figure that out. And you do, which is really great. And it's such a, it's so fun to get to work with you on this stuff. But I think, I think the place I want to start is, and this is very relevant to the audience, is you're someone whose career I've seen transform by using AI. Like, I remember when you first, we first started working together.

• 4:18Dan Shipper?

  I used to have you CC at me on all the sales emails you were sending because I mean, your English is great, but like your written English when we first started working together was like every once in a while, there'd be like a little thing and I'm very sensitive to this stuff where it was like, you know, it wasn't quite perfect. And I just remember when ChatGPT came out, your emails suddenly became like perfect, like overnight. And that might seem like a small thing, but it's really not because that was the moment where I was like, you know, now I can let, now I don't have to watch your emails and now I can give you more responsibility. I can like let you manage the courses that we're doing and you could have done that before, but just like the communication is just so much easier

• 5:03Dan Shipper?

  that now I can like give that to you without having to worry about it. And same thing for like the image generation, like when Dolly and Midjourney started to come out, you started to be like, oh, I can like, now I can do all the like art for like the site.

• 5:20Dan Shipper?

  And so, you know, all the, all the, all the images that we do for all the stuff we publish, like it just started, you just started doing that stuff and it was like amazing. So every time there's a new AI tool or you remember you built that like AI summarizer for our Sunday digest, every time there's a new AI tool, you just like dive in and it has just like completely changed, I think, the trajectory of your career. So I just wanted to like, talk about that with you, like what has, what's that experience been like?

• 5:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, I think first of all, just being at every and the fact that like AI is baked in into everything that we do write about or even talk about in all of our meetings just makes me more inclined to jumping into like all of this sort of stuff. But just so you know, like not just my emails in English are not perfect, but also my Spanish emails. Because I, I just, I'm like a terrible typer in general. Like I speak way better than I express myself with like my hands, I guess, with like using a keyboard or like, or just like writing by hand, like just, I'm like terrible. Like grammar is like the bane of my existence and.

• 6:27Speaker 00

  And I thi- I think like when we started like using, uh, I think it was like three point five when it wa- originally came out, um, that uh, like, uh, I knew that like the emails needed to be better and like I knew what I wanted to say. But it was like so easy just to like grab like what I wanted to say and just say like fix it or make it at least sound coherent, you know?

• 6:48Dan Shipper?

  Yeah.

• 6:48Speaker 00

  And then like grab that and it was like already like perfect, you know? So like, it's not like it's, I never thought of it as, as like, oh, the AI is writing the emails for me. It's like the AI is making sense out of me not making sense or at least out of my incoherenzness or.

• 7:06Dan Shipper?

  Translating, maybe.

• 7:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's, it's like translating to like the correctness, you know? Um, and I guess like I'm, I'm just always been more of a visual person that I've never really bothered so much into jumping on like, uh, writing so much, which is kind of like ironic because like now I've written two pieces, uh, for a media company here. Even like text models, just like, because like a lot of the work that I do is very visual. So like, how do text models help in that way? But I do think like using three point five like allowed me to sort of like, on like, oh, you don't lock this sort of feeling that I had in my head of like, everything is sort of like figure outable, you know? Like before it was like, oh, I don't know how to do that. So I can't help you, you know? But there is like this little thing that like AI did that is like, everything is figure outable now.

• 7:52Speaker 00

  So it just kind of like allowed me to, to wanna like take more than I knew that I could do without it, if that makes sense.

• 7:59Dan Shipper?

  Totally. I think a lot of people listening and watching, if they're already familiar with every, then like one of the reasons they might be excited to, um, listen to this episode is because they're just like, I love every's aesthetic. Like, how do you even do that? Um, I hope, I hope people feel that way. I feel that way. Um, tell me about that. Like, um, how do you think about the aesthetic that we have and how did you come to it? And how do you think about putting it out every day?

• 8:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, I think maybe makes sense to go a little bit back. I, uh, I come from advertising. So like all that I did for like a while was just art direction for brands. So. Based on that, like I I noticed right away, working at Everie, that there was really no like hard direction, or like there wasn't really like uh anything super cohesive. So I always have like that itch, which I never was able to scratch because I was doing like ad sales or something else or whatever. Um, and for a while, we were just like, everybody, like each writer was like in charge of like their own cover images. So like that created like a lot of inconsistencies. Everybody had like different prompting styles. Everybody was using Delhi. Uh, but still, like

• 9:06Speaker 00

  everybody was just prompting differently. And I just noticed that like there was room for uh creating something that that felt special or that felt interesting enough. And and I remember we did a lot of like iterations and back and forth to to make sure that like, oh, this feels at least aligned with like what we're trying to do as a brand or as a company. Um, but I just like, uh, I knew that like we needed to to pop, you know, because I think like most newsletters look exactly the same. Uh, it's text on a white background, like how can we make ours feel special? And and I guess like that's something that I uh try to look at a lot of the the things that I

• 9:47Speaker 00

  worked through. Um, or or at least that's a lens that I put on for like a lot of the work that we do together. Uh, just because like it's it's easy to kind of like fall into just keeping things looking the way that they are. But uh, but I don't know, like there's really an opportunity to kind of like delight people just by like pouring your soul into like tiny little details and things like that. And I really enjoy that.

• 10:11Dan Shipper?

  Definitely. And how do you describe like what it is, like what the aesthetic even is?

• 10:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, so I would say, um, the way that I usually talk about it is like neoclassical pop art. That's like the simplest way, uh, because it has like a lot of hints and symbols and elements that are like more reserved for like the Baroque period or like neoclass or like. Greek Greco Roman type of aesthetics, columns, architecture.

• 10:38Dan Shipper?

  Like statues and like stuff like.

• 10:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, like statues and things that are normally more uh connected to like that classical aesthetic. But that's like so old school as well, you know, that's like something you would see in a museum and like museums. I I've never, I mean, at least me personally, I've never felt like a museum is particularly like fun. You know, it's like, oh, I'm gonna go to a museum and I'm gonna learn, I'm gonna like get inspired and things like that. But like, uh, we are a web company, you know, at the end of the day. And like, there's so much noise in the webs, how do we stand out? And like, I uh, I remember talking with you a lot about how uh, we are sort of like talking about the future, but from a lens from like the now and the past and like how the past tells the future and sort of like that.

• 11:25Speaker 00

  So a lot of those like themes sort of like um, got translated into the designs where like, how can we make like all these classical, super vintage type of aesthetics or like feel alive and and feel electric? And like add a little bit of like, you know, energy to it. And and I think like that's where all the saturated like colors came from, like the crazy lines and and all that sort of stuff, while still keeping a lot of that uh classical vibe in there.

• 11:56Dan Shipper?

  Yeah, um, one of the things we talk about a lot is um, the idea of of dynamic tensions, um, like playing with opposites. So uh, you might think in order to create a brand, it's like, well, is it new or old? And I think for us, one thing that's really important to me is playing with the tension between new and old um, and bringing in elements of both to create something that feels new and a little bit more alive. Because, you know, something about every is like, we have, oh, it's a future, hopefully future focused company, future forward company. But we have a lot of respect for and awareness of the history of, for example, great publishing companies and magazines

• 12:40Dan Shipper?

  and all that kind of stuff that um, that like came before us. Uh, and I really love trying to take some of the glamour or aspiration of um, of those sorts of old style things and then.

• 12:59Dan Shipper?

  Bringing them back in a new way that feels fresh and about the future and all that kind of stuff. And I think that produces something really, really interesting. There's a particular art style called Art Deco from like, I think it's from like early 1900s. That was also something that we talked about a lot where it was really trying to be about the future, but it's from the past. And that's like a really cool like thing to me. And I think you're really good at playing with those kinds of tensions.

• 13:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think like there's that, at least to me, that's what makes design interesting, you know, because like, there's a lot of like low hanging fruit in like design, you know, because you can easily look up for a swipe file or go to Pinterest and just kind of like replicate what kind of like resonates with you. But at the same time, that's not necessarily sort of like creating like a new provocation in like the person that is like viewing it or whatever. And I think like, I mean, I'm not a writer, you know, like my trade, but I know how like the, the choice of syntax, the choice of like where you put a coma or like whatever, it's all about like, sort of like creating a rhythm, creating like a certain feeling and things like that. And I think like, there's a lot of, a lot of

• 14:15Speaker 00

  ways that like visuals and designs sort of like work in a, in a similar way, you know, like, just like even adding very simple details, like a very slight grain texture, like automatically puts it a little bit in the past and like gives you a little bit of that vibe, you know, and, and depends on how you use it and, and things like that. But I do think like, there is something really interesting about like, really taking things that like maybe shouldn't work together, or that you think like perhaps you don't normally see them together. And I think like, that's what makes it interesting because it's more unexpected, you know?

• 14:52Dan Shipper?

  Yeah. One of the things that I think is also unique about your, your design taste and design vibe, that's actually a little bit different for me is I'm a little bit more. Maybe minimalist and understated visually. I'm more of a verbal person than I am a visual person anyway, but if I'm doing visual stuff, I'm a little bit more minimalist. And I think you can do minimalism really well, but you also really like bright colors and saturated stuff and stuff that like pops. And what's really funny is actually, so we were, you're in Panama right now, you're from Panama, and we spent some time together on Bocas del Toro for a month, like last month, which is awesome. It's also where I flew off my motorcycle

• 15:32Dan Shipper?

  and my wrist, but that's a story for another time. And when I was coming back from, from Bocas, I was, I spent some time in Panama City, just like, just a day, and I ended up walking around. And it's so colorful, like, all of the buildings are these beautiful, like, greens and pinks and reds and purples and like, all this stuff that, like, the outsides of the buildings that you wouldn't really expect. And it just made me, I don't know if you've ever consciously connected that, but it made me connect to a lot of the, like, the saturation in your, in what you do, because it just feels like, to me, a reflection, a little bit of Panama City, actually.

• 16:15Speaker 00

  Well, I've never thought about it that way. So it's really interesting what you're saying, because like, it just made me think about like, a story that I have no idea if it's true, or if it's not. But basically, like, I heard that in Panama City, a lot of how, or in Panama in general, a lot of houses and, and like, small buildings and things like that are painted in like, very sort of like, not like, normal colors, or neutral colors, like, we would be used to, you know, like, light beige, or like, white, or whatever. And it's mostly because those are like, the, the colors that are most in demand, so they are the most expensive, you know, like, buying white paint, or buying, like, slight, light yellow, it's like, more expensive than like, buying lime green paint,

• 16:58Speaker 00

  because who would paint their house like green, right? So it was like, it kind of like, came out of like, a limitation, I guess, but it trickled into like, a visual sort of aesthetic that like, it's really kind of interesting and tropical and very representative of the region. The, the difference, obviously, is that like, pixels are free, and like, the colors that you choose from the color picker, like, are really free. But I do think, like, maybe there is something towards like, like Panama City, and like, the tropicality of it, and like, the- Sort of the architecture and and the how picturesque like a lot of the the landscapes are that maybe like has trickling into like some of design.

• 17:41Speaker 00

  Cause I do notice that like I'm not like a super minimalist person uh in general, but I also think it's like like the. Like if you, for example, look at a like the portfolio of a designer from like Norway or like Sweden, it's probably gonna look like an Ikea. Super like minimalist, super sleek and like mine is totally the opposite of that, you know. Yeah. And and it's and I think it's mainly just because like I I respect minimalism and I think like it's great. But at the same time, I have like a love hate relationship with it because like minimalism kind of like. Came up in in like the tech world thanks to like Bronn and like Apple that were really kind of like championing like um.

• 18:26Speaker 00

  Only having the bare essentials in like the final sort of like composition or final thing. Uh which is all about like uh getting rid of excess and like whatever you don't need and and things like that, which I think it's great. But like the our world is each time more and more. Full of technology and technology is becoming like such an important part of our life that like it sort of seems like we're kind of like. Uh choosing or championing more like efficiency and like these types of things over like the emotional aspects of things like. The the details that you might put on a doorknob or the details that you might like put into like the. Manhole covers on the street or or whatever, you know, like it it just definitely feels like um.

• 19:10Speaker 00

  The world is in general or Panama at least is not minimalist at all, it's very maximalist and I think like. The web has sort of like been following this same pattern of like, hey, let's minimize everything. But I don't know, I I think the internet deserves more maximalism, you know, more more attention, more more stuff, you know. Especially now because like everybody can just like generate a a UI or generate something and. As it's it's trained on patterns and everybody loves minimalism, it's just spitting out more minimalism and the web is just gonna like. Get get entrenched in minimalism.

• 19:45Dan Shipper?

  Yeah, I sort of see it as like things come in waves like I don't know how you feel about early Apple stuff, but like a lot of the not early early but like early as in I don't know probably to the 2000s to like early 2010s. Probably really the 2000s like they had those like really bright clamshell MacBooks. Or like the early, a lot of the early iPhone UI was very skeuomorphic. And it had all these like details like grained leather of like I can't remember what it was like your address book had like it the sewing pattern on it and stuff like that. And then over the next 10 years, it became much, much, much more minimal. And then now I feel like we're blossoming back into a lot of what we talk about is like maximalism and nostalgia.

• 20:28Dan Shipper?

  As like two of the maybe hallmarks of whatever this new AI aesthetic is. Talk about that. What do you see as like being the kind of the aesthetic that's coming up?

• 20:38Speaker 00

  What I'm noticing more is like designers feeling more empowered to spend more time on art direction. Because like that's usually been like a very separate role or it's been something that like maybe comes after you're thinking about functionality and things like that. So it always sort of like takes like a backseat. But I I do think like now I I I feel it in the air, you know, like this feeling of like people wanting to bring in more things that you wouldn't see normally on the web, you know, like more organic things. So like clouds are like the perfect example of something that is super like overly used now. But like adding like landscapes, adding like textures, adding like very things that that feel like there was like a human hand involved in it.

• 21:23Speaker 00

  Are really sort of like starting to appear more in my timeline and and I see it like more often in like in designs that I see around. And I think a lot of that is probably coming from like a similar feeling that I'm having that like if we are all sort of like regressing into that mean of minimalism, we're not not gonna like stand out. So like I feel that there is definitely like a trend for people to try to.

• 21:54Speaker 00

  Push the limits, I guess, of what like is expectable to happen in like a screen or a frame or things like that, you know, or like what is expected to be inside of a frame. So like I see people using like paper textures now more than before or like specific like components and things like that. And also like more interesting animations that that feel a little bit more organic. And I'm using the word organic a lot just because you can, even if it might or might not be AI generated, it definitely feels more like there was a human like pushing the things versus like a computer cursor or something like that. And I see a lot of people also bringing back a lot of like this humorfism

• 22:38Speaker 00

  that you were talking about, but more related to like buttons and like more tactile surfaces and like interactive components and things like that, which is also like really, really interesting. And I do think like it's, it's like, it's like, in Spanish, we have this phrase, which is para los gustos los colores, which means for the tastes, the colors. So like you basically like, everybody likes something different. Everybody has like a different taste or a different idea of like what's good. But kind of like how you were saying, there's like waves of like, what's the the most popular sort of like design right now. And I think you're spot on that, like, as soon as like, chat GPT released

• 23:22Speaker 00

  the new image generation model, people started experimenting to see if like, they could create their own UI kits in Ghibli mode or things like that, which is interesting. I don't know how long that will last before like it starts feeling boring or repetitive. But that's what's exciting, you know, because like, who knows what's next?

• 23:39Dan Shipper?

  Yeah. Another really interesting thing that you've been kind of tracking is, is it's not necessarily just an aesthetic, but it's how AI might change what a website even is.

• 23:55Dan Shipper?

  You know, tell me, tell me about that.

• 23:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, um, that's an interesting question, because like, I think we were talking about it in Bocas a little bit too. Um, but like, there is, um, so like, a website is basically, um, like a building, right? Like, it has like its own architecture and like, somebody built it, thinking about like, how are people gonna like be inside of that space? Uh, so it's like, I think like, I tend to look at, uh, building products or building websites and things like that, a little bit more akin to like, digital architecture, right? Like, you're building sort of like spaces for people on the web. And, um, but, but everybody's house sort of looks the same. Everybody's house, you're like, taking the same hallway

• 24:40Speaker 00

  and like, taking a ride in the same sort of way, because we've fallen into the same sort of like UI patterns, or like, what, what is the most accessible flow, or whatever? And like, usability is great, and like, you wanna make the, the life of your users better, of course. But isn't it amazing when you're like, lost in a museum and you don't know like, where you wanna like, turn next, and you can just sort of like, explore and get lost, like, and like, dive into it? Or like, in, like, or, or on a haunted house, or like, when you are like, in a, in a beautiful park, you know, and like, you can, you can just sort of like stroll around and like, spend some time. And I think like, um, we're spending more and more time inside of our screens and inside of our laptops. And like,

• 25:24Speaker 00

  it seems like, that's just gonna be more and more. So like, why don't we bring a little bit of that, like serendipity, or like, that type of, um, I don't know, like, randomness that exists in architecture, that's been sort of like, thought out for like, specific purposes, into, uh, the way that like, we interact with our products? Um, I don't know how that translates to like, a SaaS product, where you just wanna like, do something very specific. But I think like, uh, it, it opens up the question, you know, to like, at least think about it, and before like, just following the pattern, you know?

• 25:57Dan Shipper?

  Yeah, yeah. Do you have examples? Like, I wanna look at one together of, of something that you're inspired by right now, and just talk about it.

• 26:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, I think like a really cool example is the website that I saw recently for Mainframe, Jordan Singer's new company, Mainframe. They have like a really, really sleek website and I've spent like a lot of time in it just trying to figure out how they did some of the things they did. Cause I have no idea specifically like how some textures or some SVGs were rendered in a way that like looks so responsive and great.

• 26:35Dan Shipper?

  Show me, share your screen.

• 26:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, let me share my screen. Awesome, okay. So there is this website that I really, really like, which is the landing page for Mainframe. And what I have no idea how they made is like this border texture. Cause like I have, it, it looks like it could be a picture, you know, and like you can like zoom in and like really notice like the, the intricate details. But like what's interesting is like that this is like super responsive. And like I have no idea how even to like approach something like that. So I just thought like that was interesting.

• 27:11Dan Shipper?

  That's interesting. Oh, let me stop you there. So for people who are listening and not, and not watching, basically what Mainframe has is it looks almost like you're looking at a terminal. And like, you know, like a black terminal, like DOS terminal type thing. So that's sort of back to the like retro nostalgia stuff that we were talking about. But what they have around that is this like, it's almost like a beige, maybe sort of metallic-y border. It looks, what it looks like to me is like one of those really old monitors from like the nineties. So it's like the, it's like the border, it's a border that looks like it's a monitor. And as you resize it, the monitor resizes too, which is pretty cool.

• 27:54Dan Shipper?

  It's like a sort of CRT kind of monitor, I think. Yeah.

• 27:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, and it has like shadows and like it looks like it has depth, you know, like it looks like the screen is even like further away than like what it is, you know, and like that's like super skeuomorphic and it's something that like you are not seeing in. In in day to day design, like a random website you come in and visit, you know. Um, what I think it's also like a really, really cool is that the entire experience happens inside of like this terminal. You know, like the the type of art direction that they choose, it's also like super reminiscent of like um, older type of like U I from like the older days of like, I don't know, like.

• 28:33Dan Shipper?

  Metaverse, yeah.

• 28:35Speaker 00

  Even before that, who knows, you know, like, uh, uh, it's like really, really interesting how like um, the art direction and the storytelling throughout the entire thing, cause like the this landing page is sort of like their manifesto in a way. They are kind of like telling the story of their company and what they believe in in design and they're and but they are like using sort of like very simple, basic elements that are from, you know, like that you could find like in a terminal, just like lines and things like that to or dots, for example, to make something that feels like truly unique. Um. And yeah, I just see this as an example of a website that I would love to maybe

• 29:14Speaker 00

  uh, build something like this for us to someday, like not exactly this, but just something that feels like, oh, I'm like, I'm in an experience, like a website should feel more like an ex like you had an experience versus like a flyer, you know. Um, and I think like a lot of design tends to look like a digital version of a flyer. But I think like there is a lot of room to kind of like play with with things to make them feel like, I don't know, like really unique and like wanting to share them in a podcast.

• 29:42Dan Shipper?

  I agree. I like one, one of the um, one of the uh, other ways I think this could come out is like, I'm an investor in this company called Portola and they have, they do these um, A I characters called Tolen's.

• 29:56Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 29:57Dan Shipper?

  Um, and we'll, we'll have Quentin, who's the founder, will be on the show in a couple of weeks and um.

• 30:05Dan Shipper?

  That's another thing where you're interacting with a piece of software, but it's a personality. And everyone's talking about like, you know, agentic AI and blah, blah, blah, whatever, but. And Tolan is a consumer thing, but I actually think that that's also going to happen for like. You know, uh, the marketer agent that you use is gonna, Devin's gonna have a personality, you know? And you're gonna like a particular Devin because it like has a specific voice and, and way of interacting. And, and that is, that is an experience. It's a way of having an experience with technology that wasn't really possible before. And it, there's all these other, there's all these new design constraints there that are not just, you know, it's about the prompt and the information and the knowledge it has and whatever.

• 30:48Dan Shipper?

  But it's also about how do you present that visually so that you can, you get the sense that there's someone there that you're talking to?

• 30:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's really interesting. I think like even like with, uh, like voice, you know, uh, that's like an entire like new paradigm that I really have never even like ventured to design for. Or like audio in general, you know, and I think like it's definitely becoming more, more important. I played with, uh, with the Tolan's recently and it was like awesome, like the whole onboarding experience is like extremely delightful. So like props to that entire team if they're listening. Um, but yeah, I think like, that's exactly what I'm talking about. Like obviously like that feels super amazing and fresh because like they are targeting like, like the specific like end users, which might be kids, might not be.

• 31:32Speaker 00

  But like at the end of the day, like it feels like, like, oh, you're like in a, inside of a show or like you're inside of a movie and like, and that, that's sort of like exactly what I'm talking about. Like, yeah, you might have like design limitations, but that doesn't mean that like you have to like follow the same sort of like patterns or things like that. You might still have the same problems, but. Still like you, are you trying to have fun? Or are you trying to just like follow, follow the, the wave, you know, instead of like making it, I guess. And, and those are fun.

• 32:05Dan Shipper?

  Yeah, definitely. My first business was a B two B software company, and the bane of my existence was compliance, specifically certifications like SOC two, ISO and HIPAA, which we needed in order to sell to enterprises. I spent hours and hours on those certifications. But if I was building that company today, I would use Vanta. Vanta automates up to 90% of the tedious compliance tasks involved in achieving SOC two, ISO, HIPAA and more. By simplifying compliance, Vanta frees your team to focus on what truly matters: innovation, strategic thinking and real growth. It's trusted by over 10,000 ambitious companies, including Inlassian, Cora and Ramp, to streamline risk management and effortlessly demonstrate security to customers. Serious? Every listeners can get $1,000 off of Vanta

• 32:50Dan Shipper?

  at vanta.com/evry. That's Vanta, V A N T A dot com slash every for $1,000 off. And now, back to the show. I want you to show us some stuff. Like, I know, you know, I know you have a couple of things you want to, you want to show us. Where should we start?

• 33:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, um, I think something cool that we could start with is maybe giving people like a little bit of a behind the scenes on how we make a lot of our images, things like that.

• 33:21Dan Shipper?

  Hmm, I'd love that. Let's do that.

• 33:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, totally.

• 33:25Speaker 00

  I'll share my screen again.

• 33:26Dan Shipper?

  Please.

• 33:27Speaker 00

  So, uh, obviously the new chat GPT model is great for images and I've been playing with it. But, uh, so far, most of our, um, images have been being generated inside of, uh, Midjourney. And, uh, you can see sort of like, uh, a lot of the type of prompting that we use here. But, um, so basically, um, Midjourney is like the place where, uh, I tend to start with like super, uh, simple prompts, you know? Like, for example, like a black and white vintage Greco-Roman sculpture of two hands shaking in a white studio background. And like, this is the origin. of the idea like, oh, I might want to have these two hands for a specific design that we need to do.

• 34:10Speaker 00

  And in this case, this is for the consulting side. So you'll see that like in the every slash consulting site. We use something that is sort of like a deviation variation of that. And like that's sort of like where we started in a very different place of where we ended up to. And and if you want, I can sort of like describe what we're looking at.

• 34:33Dan Shipper?

  Let's do that. Yeah, please describe for people who are who are listening.

• 34:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, totally. So like, a lot of our style is very, as I said, Greco Roman or classical. So like, we use a lot of statues and like Marvel sculptures and like vintage illustrations. And like, for the consulting website, we wanted to kind of like show the collaboration or between like you and AI or you and machine and how you you can basically do more because of the collaboration. So I kind of like wanted to start exploring that in mid journey here.

• 35:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, so like, for example, this is sort of like how you you can see how it kind of like was evolving between like robot hands only and then like also human hands. And then like, we have like these types of images that are very horizontal and and like a lot of like hand details that are kind of like described as engraving or like.

• 35:32Dan Shipper?

  Let me stop you. Let me let me stop you there and and and and just just describe a little bit about what I'm seeing from people who are listening. So do you did you start with that first that those first hands you you showed? Is that what you started with?

• 35:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think so. Yeah, if we go to the very bottom of this, like, we should start seeing some of that.

• 35:49Dan Shipper?

  So basically, like, that first thing that we saw was two human hands that looked almost like a little bit like statues ish, like Greek statues that were doing fist bumps.

• 36:02Dan Shipper?

  And I can't, can you can you bring that up again? Can you find that?

• 36:06Speaker 00

  Let me see. Sorry about that. I don't have them organized in here.

• 36:10Dan Shipper?

  No worries. That's totally fine.

• 36:14Dan Shipper?

  So you started with like two human hands that look like, they look like statues that are,

• 36:20Dan Shipper?

  that are like Greco-Roman statues that are shaking hands. And that idea for you, like, you were working on the consulting site and you're like, I want to show humans and AIs collaborating. That's where it came from?

• 36:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, and especially like, kind of like following like our same aesthetic and like our own visual style, this kind of like lay the, at least the layout or the composition, because I knew like I wanted something coming from like both ends of the screen. So I knew I needed like a super horizontal image and like a handshake or a fist bump just kind of like felt like extremely natural for that type of position, if that makes sense.

• 37:00Dan Shipper?

  And the prompt uses black and white vintage Greco-Roman sculpture of two hands shaking in a white studio background. Why white studio background? And why black and white?

• 37:11Speaker 00

  Okay, those are two great questions. I tend to finish everything up in Photoshop. So for example, something that I would normally do is that like I would upscale this and then like I would just download it and put it inside of Photoshop. And once that happens, when you have white backgrounds or when you have like black and white assets, it becomes a cleaner image in general, or the outputs are cleaner, or like are usually like less noisy. And that means that it's easier to isolate assets when you're using like specific tools. So for example, like Photoshop, now that they have like a lot of like AI image like selection tools, you can just do really

• 37:53Speaker 00

  simple things like select subject. And because the image is just so clean in the way that it's presented because of the white studio background and like that sort of stuff is like really easy to just like isolate exactly what you need.

• 38:06Dan Shipper?

  Right. And what you just did for people who are, what you just did for people who are listening, like you open up Photoshop, you put, you put it in there and you just press that select subject button and it just highlighted all of the two hands, basically not the background. Okay, I get it.

• 38:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly. And then, and like basically because it's like that, I can just like select the subject and I can just add a mask and then I have removed the background like automatically and I can start playing with our style faster and things like that.

• 38:33Dan Shipper?

  Right. That makes sense. Okay, so let's go back. So.

• 38:38Dan Shipper?

  Okay, so then, so then, tell me, tell me a little, so then we sort of fast forward and you've got like now it's like you're going through different iterations of it where it's sort of started to turn into like machine hands, basically. Let's find, let's find the first one of those.

• 38:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, here it's like the human versions of them. And then, I think, I don't know if these ones are ordered chronologically, or if like the oldest ones are like the first ones. Not sure really how these ones get ordered. But basically here you can sort of like see the whole progression between like the different elements and me just like playing with a lot of like separate elements. Cause like, you might not know this, but the one that we have here, it's like literally, like I didn't get that in like a one shot. It's like I got one hand that worked well in like one output and I got a robot hand in another output that worked well and I then I like merged them in Photoshop and got the final output in that way.

• 39:37Speaker 00

  But like you'll see here that like, for example, like I think this hand actually is the one that we have. No, that's not it. But it's like some specific hand from one of these ones, I think it might have been this one. I think it's this one actually, the one on the right. I think it got flipped and put in here. And then like another robot hand from another output looked good enough in that sense. So like, it's all about sort of like exploring a lot and just like having a lot of outputs. Cause like, unfortunately, it's a lot like a slot machine when you're prompting images, you know? So it's just like looking at the whole option space and having a little bit of a vision for what you want to do. Cause like if you're prompting without a vision, then everything works, right? But.

• 40:21Dan Shipper?

  Yeah, well, tell me about like how you're doing these different, like what are you adding? Are you just, are you just pressing go, like pressing, pressing generate again and again and again? Or how are you like iterating through these different options to find something that you like?

• 40:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, so you'll see that a lot of the things we might do are sometimes like the prompt might change just very slightly, like for example, black and white vintage Greco Roman illustration of a human hand fist bumping in a white background. And then I might just change that to a human hand and a robot hand and see how that changes things. And then in some other prompts, it might just be just one human hand. And I just want to see like how one looks itself by itself. And then something else that I tend to do a lot is vary. So for example, there is this feature inside of Mid Journey that they let you like, for example, if there, I really like this image, but it's not quite right just yet, I can

• 41:19Speaker 00

  just like vary it subtly and it'll just generate something that is like super close to the, I don't know if it's the seed token or the, the, the specific like parameters that they use to like generate this one in a very similar way. And that way I get closer if I need to. And what I also do is that, for example, I might want to keep trying the same prompt because I, I think there is something important in this prompt, but I want this image here to do a little bit more driving or, or have a little bit more weight. So you can literally go in here and use the image. So it adds the image as a parameter here on the top and it adds more weight to that image specifically.

• 42:00Speaker 00

  And then that way I'm like driving the results closer in this specific direction. And, and that's at least the way that I use, that I drive with Mid Journey, kind of like slightly adjusting the prompt here and there, and then like varying the outputs and I'm feeding the images back that I like to kind of like keep steering it in one particular direction until like something feels good enough as an asset so that I can bring it into Photoshop and finalize.

• 42:28Dan Shipper?

  How are you, um, how are you thinking about, and how's your usage breaking down between for native image generation and Mid Journey now? Because.

• 42:38Dan Shipper?

  That just 40 native image generation just came out. It's like the big hot thing. We actually had access to it for a couple of weeks before. I think all of us internally were like, wow, this is actually really great. Are you still using Midjourney? Like, what's your, what's your usage breakdown?

• 42:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, so I think like it, uh, like so far in the last week or so, two weeks. I don't know how long it's been since it came out, but I've been using it more specifically. Let me see if we can pinpoint it in actually in the wild here.

• 43:13Dan Shipper?

  And for people who are listening, you're on the every website and you're looking through all of our, um,

• 43:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 43:18Dan Shipper?

  Our cover images.

• 43:19Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 43:20Dan Shipper?

  Yeah, which you designed this whole thing front to back. So people should know that, which is pretty cool.

• 43:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's very cool what, uh, what we can do when, when we work together. But for example, like, I don't think I would have ever been able to do something like this in Midjourney.

• 43:35Dan Shipper?

  Like I This is a, like a, like OpenAI logo as a statue on a white background or

• 43:40Speaker 00

  Exactly. Because, because the, the, the new image gen model in chat GPT is extremely good at prompt adherence. And it, uh, has a very good like sense of the world and like logos and people's faces and things like that, just because of its training set. So like, I can literally ask it to generate a marble statue of, uh, the OpenAI logo and I'll get it. But in Midjourney, I'm gonna get something that looks kind of like it. But when you're working with logos, it's like, it's either it or it isn't, right? Like it, there's no in between really. Um, so for that one specifically, we, we used it. Uh, also like for some images that we want to kind of like, um, sketch out like real people.

• 44:23Speaker 00

  Uh, we, uh, also used it there because it's really good at sort of like translating like, or retexturizing at least, uh, something specific. But, oh, and then this is the first, uh, time we did a GPT 40 image, uh, for here that was completely done 100% without Photoshop at all.

• 44:44Dan Shipper?

  And it's a statue of a woman holding up, it looks like maybe an iPad or, you know, like a Tablet of some kind with a picture on it.

• 44:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly. And I think like the way that we that I made this was like really, really interesting. Because like what I did was, I don't know if I can find the chat, maybe I can. But basically, I fed it a our entire like.

• 45:09Dan Shipper?

  That's cool.

• 45:10Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah. Sorry. Sorry for the back for the distraction here.

• 45:17Dan Shipper?

  That's really cool. Is this a Quora, Quora four or four page?

• 45:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, I was just like trying to get some ideas and things like that. Like why it could be, obviously, like we can't just use an image because it's not the most responsive element. But it kind of like serves as a lot of creative inspiration around what it could be, right? But there was one chat that I did recently where I was able to create like a mood board of a lot of images that we have done before.

• 45:50Speaker 00

  Let me see if this works.

• 45:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, so like, for example, like I could technically give it like a mood board. And right now we're looking at a mood board of just like a bunch of images that we've used for certain articles in the past. And then I think for this one specifically, I was just trying to test. So like it didn't work in this sense, but I was trying to test for a specific article that we ran recently in Super Organizers. I just tried fitting in the article and see what it would do with it for like a thumbnail. And it just kind of did it all right. You know, it's definitely like similar to our style, but it's just kind of like boring and like not it. So I kind of like gave up here in this conversation.

• 46:36Speaker 00

  But I found it like really interesting that you could just like feed in a mood board and get an output. And that's exactly how we generated this other image. Out of like just asking for another image for an article where we're talking about like OpenAI's new image generation model.

• 46:52Dan Shipper?

  That's interesting. Yeah, I bet like this that might have worked a little bit better if it wasn't just a mood board. But it was also it had some sense of what the articles were about.

• 47:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 47:02Dan Shipper?

  You know, it's like, okay, article, maybe headline and first paragraph, plus this is the image that came out of that. And you did that a couple of times and had it build a little style guide for itself. And then do style guide, visual mood board, draw something, something like that.

• 47:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 47:18Dan Shipper?

  Maybe it could work.

• 47:19Speaker 00

  I mean, that that could be like an interesting experiment even, you know, like just to like fit this and like gave it a give it like an output. What I found is that if I don't give it like a lot of direction, because like this model is really good at like, like picking up on like a lot of the extensiveness of your prompt. But if I keep my prompts like really, really basic, it'll just always sort of like go to the background color of the first image, for example. And like it'll just output it. I don't know why, but it just kind of like keeps happening, or that's at least something that I find, at least from my own experience. So I I kind of like feel when I was using Midjourney just for image generation and to create like the the basic element assets.

• 48:05Speaker 00

  It it'd be kind of like, oh, I get to pick the background, I get to like pick all of these sort of things. But then in chat G P T, I I ha- I I have to sort of like pick a background color and ask it to like do it correctly. But if I want to change it, then I gotta like wait five minutes, you know, versus like versus like just doing it in Photoshop. So there's like pros and cons, and I think like eventually like the the way that this is gonna like end up working is that like this is all gonna be like layers and you're gonna be able to like uh, control every little aspect of it. But until then, like, there's still a lot of prompt work that needs to be done to to get to like the right place.

• 48:44Dan Shipper?

  Yeah, that makes sense. What else? Anything, anything else you wanted to show?

• 48:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, like, for example, here I was just trying to see like if it could create like four new images in our style. But as you see, like, the first image was like in that same color and it was like a similar woman as that other first image. So I kind of felt like, oh, it's basing itself too much from that first image. But I thought that was interesting.

• 49:10Speaker 00

  Something else that I think could be cool to maybe share could be like the Quora website.

• 49:16Dan Shipper?

  Yeah, let's talk about Quora.

• 49:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, awesome.

• 49:19Dan Shipper?

  I think this is some of your best work and you've done a lot of really great work, but I think this is some of your best work.

• 49:23Speaker 00

  Oh, thank you so much. Let me log out so that we get to see the whole thing.

• 49:28Speaker 00

  And this work took a village. There was a lot of people involved in this and a lot of revisions and it took a village for sure. So.

• 49:37Dan Shipper?

  It did. So there's we're looking at a landing page. The landing page says it's for Quora, which it manages your email with AI. We can go into exactly what it is. We have an episode with Kieran, who's the GM of Quora. A couple of episodes ago, and the top says, we all dread email. It's an endless CD list written by everyone else all at once. And as you scroll, the emails kind of like, there's a bunch of emails on the page and it goes into this little envelope. And then the envelope closes and there's like a really cool every stamp on the envelope. And then a little letter pops out and it, you know, it's a little letter about like what email, why email sucks, but like how it could actually be really great.

• 50:17Dan Shipper?

  And, and the, the, the background is really cool here. It's turning from like dark to like brightness, like a beautiful field instead of like a stormy night. And then, then we finally get to Quora, your inbox is a story delivered twice a day, get delivered from you know, which I think is a great line. And yeah, that's, that's the page. So tell us about that. Tell us about how you thought about it, how it came together, what, what you, what your favorite parts are, all that kind of stuff.

• 50:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think like the, like this ended up looking very differently than we were originally thinking about it, which is really cool. It kind of like shows you how like the creative process can just take you in like very different places. But I think it just had a lot to do with like the story that we wanted to tell, you know, like from all of our meetings and everything that we were sort of talking about Quora and like why we were doing it and like why we were even spending so much time. And, and, and effort, you know, to build like a new email tool. And it was basically all around the fact that like, you know, like the general email experience is like not pretty, you know, like you log into Gmail or Outlook and it's just like

• 51:27Speaker 00

  a ton of text in chronological order, endless forever. And, and it just like feels like you're in a hospital or like in a government building with a lot of like fluorescent lights and like everything is sterile and hygienic. And, and it's like, oh, everything is like, you don't, I don't know, like it's definitely not like.

• 51:47Speaker 00

  Like a place where I want to spend like all my day and like we are a newsletter company. So we do like lots of emails. So like, how can we make the email experience at least feel better or at least the the story that we want to tell on this landing page? So we kind of like wanted to create this narrative of like going from,

• 52:08Speaker 00

  I don't know, like a stormy void type of like forsaken place into like a more like sunshine, like spring type of vibe where like the birds are singing and like everybody's having a good time and like that's possible thanks to like this new tool. Kind of like trying to do like a little bit of symbolic storytelling while we're actually like also telling that same story in here inside the text of the letter.

• 52:35Dan Shipper?

  It's one of those things where you you might not explicitly notice it, but you'll feel it. I love those little details.

• 52:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, and it's something that like you might not notice it, but like maybe you notice it the second time or the third time. And then like it's like that little nice surprise that like, you know, like all these people like really cared, you know, and like that's at least something that I want anybody that sees our work to feel like that we care, you know, that we really care about like what they're playing with or like touching. So we kind of like put a lot of attention to like, oh, let's add a paper texture to this and like a little stamp then like we kind of like keep using those same elements for for all this. And then like all the little like blue elements that we use for the the different like product features and things like that. But it was just like, how can we sort of

• 53:27Speaker 00

  like reveal Cora at the end? Because it's also like sort of not normal to not have the product logo anywhere when you land on a landing page. And but we kind of we kind of like wanted to do like a grand reveal by sort of like starting with the problem and just talking about the problem. And for those that are that feel like they can relate to that problem, which I feel like a lot of people do, then you might want to keep reading and see what what is this all about. And eventually, what what's really cool about this design is that like the the page is sort of like overlaying on top of like the product and like the actual like big takeaway, which is this. And it's like we're actually like revealing it at a thinner, which I actually really love a lot.

• 54:06Dan Shipper?

  Totally. And why don't you log in because I think you did another amazing job too on the actual UX of the application. And what I think people may not know is like this is like one of your first forays into designing web applications at all, which is kind of crazy.

• 54:25Dan Shipper?

  So you just logged in. We're looking at the Quora page.

• 54:31Dan Shipper?

  And basically, what you're looking at or looking at is what we call a brief. So the way Quora works is when emails come into your inbox, it decides whether or not you need to respond. If you need to respond, it makes it to your inbox. If not, we automatically archive them and then send you a beautiful brief twice a day that summarizes everything you need to know. And so this is your brief. And it's still got that kind of like same sort of like sunny background. It's got like nice little summaries. Tell us about visually like what you're seeing, how you thought about this.

• 55:02Speaker 00

  Well, like this already looks so much different than like Gmail, right? It's already feels like, oh, I'm like in the middle of spring and I'm like outside at the park, you know. So I think like a lot of those decisions from a design point of view sort of like came out from like this vision of like, let's make it delightful, you know? And we really wanted to like lean on those old sort of like impressionist type of oil canvas, like paintings and things like that. So you'll see like the brushstrokes in the back if you log in and things like that, which I think like I find that like super awesome.

• 55:44Speaker 00

  And I love to see that even like on an actual painting when I see it in the real world, being able to like see those tiny details. And what's actually really cool is that like in the future, we're planning on like actually being able to have like a lot of different backgrounds and like it could change depending on like the time of day or the seasons or like where even you are in the world. But what's kind of cool too is that like if you shift to the afternoon, you'll get to see like another kind of like enlarged, upscaled painting that it's more. Or akin to like the nighttime or the afternoon time and we're trying to like find little moments like this throughout the app to kind of like uh keep telling this story, you know, and that's I think like

• 56:27Speaker 00

  that's something that we didn't touch upon that I think is also like uh driving a lot of these decisions is that we're uh we're talking about Cora as sort of like this way to uh read email as a story uh or at least like uh as as a narrative for that there is like some cohesiveness with it um and we really uh even for like the the video, the launch video and all of that, like we took a lot of inspiration of stories and storytelling and like we wanted like how make it as visual as possible and like how stories are visual and like you can like pass the pages and like absorb a lot. I think like that's a lot of what what we wanted to do here that like this is a website that look forward to open just because it looks pretty, you know.

• 57:12Dan Shipper?

  Beautiful. Um, I feel it. I love looking at it every day. It's the best. Um, and it's so fun to get to work on it together because um I feel like every time we get on the phone, we're gonna come up with something really cool and I don't know where it's gonna go, but um it often, sometimes it sucks, but it's often pretty delightful.

• 57:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, I also think like uh to your point like this is again, one of the first times that like I'm actually jumping into like uh product design and things like that, just because I I come as I said from advertising, so I was mostly doing like brand and stuff like that for a while. Uh, but I think like that I don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing, but I think it has given me like a difference, which is like, oh, I come at it from like more of a an art direction perspective first, which I don't know if it's like the right way or if there's even a right way, who knows, but like I I try to come at least to these things or each project as to like

• 58:08Speaker 00

  what is the general vibe, right, versus uh versus like like versus start with like rectangles, you know what I mean? Like we start first with like vibe and then the vibe slowly becomes the rectangles versus the rectangles later in getting like accent colors or whatever.

• 58:25Dan Shipper?

  Yeah, but it's not just vibe. I think vibe encapsulates it, but I really like the word art direction. Like, I haven't actually even thought about that, but I think art direction goes with the sort of maximalist vibe. Like, you don't need an art director for a minimalist website. You just need to make rectangles.

• 58:47Speaker 00

  Maybe, maybe.

• 58:48Dan Shipper?

  I don't know. Art direction, it just feels to me like for magazines or like, you know, something that has a lot of visual components.

• 58:57Dan Shipper?

  And I really like that as a way of thinking about what you, what designers may need to incorporate into their practice more going forward, given the new tools like that make art direction accessible, even if you're a small team.

• 59:13Speaker 00

  100%. I think you hit it in the nail. I think like, I think this even goes back to like, you wrote a piece about like how we're moving into the allocation economy and how we're all becoming managers. And like, at the end of the day, like an art director, you're like directing the art, you're like managing it now. You're not just pushing the pixels, but you're sort of like putting the, the hat of a creative director and like trying to like push a vision through, you know? And I think like, that's a lot of what we're trying to do here as well. Just see how we can kind of like stand out, but in a way like guide them, guide the process in this way. And I think like art direction will become more important as we, as it becomes

• 59:58Speaker 00

  easier to just like generate UI go, you know? When that just happens, the world like you've heard of like AI slop and like the, the web is just gonna be more filled with like things that were just generated on the fly and not refined. But I'm, I'm not for, I'm not like super excited about a world without refinement, you know? I am very excited about the collaboration with like the tools and like the models and things like that. So I think like, being able to like have a vision, or at least a direction that you wanna like guide your, the, the work that you're doing, that you know you wanna go to, it's like everything you need as a, for the map for like whatever decision you're making. And I think like, if you're a designer

• 1:00:43Speaker 00

  and you noticed that and you get scared because

• 1:00:48Speaker 00

  You know, you can just now generate UIs and things like that. I think it's way more important to like, be in tune with like, what you find beautiful about day to day things, you know, and like actually like start honing on that art direction of things. Cause then you'll see the entire thing as a, as a breathing, living thing that can sort of like change and, and get adapted depending on like, what type of vibe you're, you're feeling to, to, to kind of like represent with your design. So I do think like there is something really special about like, uh, putting more attention into like, what is the, the art direction of something?

• 1:01:29Speaker 00

  Uh, which is something, as you said, is normally more reserved for like advertising purposes, you know, like when you're making an ad or when you're making like, something for print or like a TV commercial, you're thinking about like, oh, what clothes are they gonna be wearing or like, what's the back, the background or things like that, you know? Um, but I think like in the same way, like all of these elements have to like work together in a way that feels cohesive and feels art directed.

• 1:01:53Dan Shipper?

  I love that. I could not have said it better myself. Um, and I think that is actually a great place to leave people. Lucas, this is awesome. Uh, thank you so much for coming on. Um, if people want to follow you and find you on the internet, where can they find you?

• 1:02:08Speaker 00

  Uh, you can find me on X under Lucas underscore underscore Crespo. Or, or you can find me on the every site and you can connect with me there.

• 1:02:20Dan Shipper?

  Awesome. Uh, well, thank you, sir. I would love to have you back soon.

• 1:02:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, hopefully we have a lot of new designs to talk about soon.

• 1:02:27Dan Shipper?

  I'm sure we will.

• 1:02:35Speaker 02

  Oh my gosh, folks, you absolutely positively have to smash that like button and subscribe to AI and I. Why? Because this show is the epitome of awesomeness. It's like finding a treasure chest in your backyard, but instead of gold, it's filled with pure, unadulterated knowledge bombs about ChatGPT. Every episode is a roller coaster of emotions, insights and laughter that will leave you on the edge of your seat craving for more. It's not just a show, it's a journey into the future with Dan Shipper as the captain of the spaceship. So do yourself a favor, hit like, smash subscribe and strap in for the ride of your life. And now, without any further ado, let me just say, Dan, I'm absolutely, hopelessly in love with you.