Dive Club 🤿
Episodes
Henry Modisett - Designing a unicorn AI startup from nothing
04 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Imagine leading the design of an AI product that skyrockets to a billion+ dollar valuation in under two years…That’s the story of Perplexity and t...
Ryan Scott - Making strategic impact as a designer
29 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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 hu...
Oliur - Grow your personal brand and get noticed as a designer
28 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Investing in my personal brand has been the best investment I’ve ever made in my career. So I wanted to find the perfect designer to give a personal...
Maheen Sohail - Navigating ambiguity in AI design
22 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This week’s episode is with Maheen Sohail who is a senior staff designer working on generative at Meta. She joined as one of the earliest designers ...
George Kedenburg - Pushing past the pixels
15 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
After 8 years designing at Meta, George Kedenburg III pulled a 180 and joined Humane as a design lead. So this conversation is a deep dive into design...
Colin Dunn - What it takes to design a breakthrough AI product
07 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Visual Electric has quickly become my go-to product for image generation and in this week’s episode we get to learn from the founder and designer, C...
Nate Parrott - Going from engineer to founding designer of Arc
01 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Arc browser is one of the best products I’ve downloaded in the last few years which is why I’m so excited about this interview with their foun...
Dan LaCivita - A glimpse of the future of design tooling
24 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This week’s episode is with Dan LaCivita who is a co-founder of Play—a new way to design mobile apps using native iOS materials. As soon as I saw ...
Gavin Nelson - Prototyping, interaction design, and learning SwiftUI
18 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Gavin Nelson is currently designing the Linear mobile app in addition to the best app icons on the internet. So this episode is a deep dive into proto...
Vincent van der Meuelen - The story of Figma’s big AI pivot
11 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
If you watched last week’s episode, then you heard Jordan Singer say how visual search was actually the “killer feature” (not generative AI). Wh...
Jordan Singer - The future of AI in Figma
05 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Live from Config, this episode with Jordan Singer follows his journey from the Diagram acquisition all the way to Figma’s 2024 AI release. We go dee...
Kathy Zheng - How to make the jump to staff designer
26 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This week’s episode is with Kathy Zheng who is currently the Head of design at a Web3 protocol called Optimism. But before that she was the first de...
Alex Cornell - Mastering the art of influence
20 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
When you think about storytelling in design... Alex Cornell is often the person that comes to mind. And that's a big reason why he's one of the most r...
Maggie Appleton - Becoming an AI-native designer
12 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This week’s episode with Maggie Appleton is a deep dive into designing for AI products and LLMs. Maggie shares about her experience as the first des...
Ian Wharton - The secret to great storytelling
06 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Remember how Michael Wandelmeier told us Metalab hired a storytelling coach? Well that coach is Ian Wharton. He’s an Apple Design Award winner, CEO ...
Amy Lima - How to turn a layoff into a dream job
04 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
~6 months ago Amy Lima was laid off and has been preparing for this episode ever since. So in this interview she gives us an inside look at her proces...
Julius Tarng - Dissolving the line between design and engineering
30 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Julius Tarng is the ultimate generalist designer.He started the design tools team at Facebook where he made a massive impact on products like Origami....
Raphael Schaad - Designing a startup from 0 to acquisition
23 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
When it comes to design founder stories, Raphael Schaad’s is one of the best. So this episode is the first-ever telling of how Raphael designed and ...
Alex Schleifer - How design at Airbnb creates a culture of craft at scale
16 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Alex Schleifer was the long-time Chief Design Officer at Airbnb where he grew the team from ~35 to over 600 people. So this conversation is an inside ...
Noam Segal - Tools and tactics for modern user research
09 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Noam Segal has led research at companies like Meta, Airbnb, Wealthfront, Twitter, and most recently Upwork. He also teaches the #1 user research cours...
Helen Tran - Designing with a founder mindset
01 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Helen Tran was an early designer at Shopify and is now leading product design at AngelList. But in between those two roles she also ran her own startu...
Hunter Hammonds - Positioning pt. 2: How to scale to $1M+
25 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today we're talking with designer and entrepreneur, Hunter Hammonds, who has grown 5 different agencies to millions in revenue in less than a year. So...
Nick Pattison - Positioning pt. 1: How to make $15k/week
24 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Ready for a masterclass in positioning? Nick Pattison has been working for himself for well over 10 years... but recently he's laser-focused on runnin...
Dennis Müller - Designing with soul
18 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This episode is the ultimate design founder story. Dennis shares all of the ups and downs along his journey to build Amie—a new productivity tool th...
Vercel’s Glenn Hitchcock & John Pham - Design engineering deep dive
11 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Over the last few months, design engineering has by far been the #1 most requested topic. So I wanted to get the inside scoop from the team at Vercel ...
Michael Wandelmaier - Envisioning the art of the possible
04 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Since the beginning of my design career, I’ve looked up to Metalab. So this interview is a special one because we get to learn from their Head of De...
Adam Mura - How to design and build websites faster with AI
03 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
One of the tools I'm most interested in right now is Relume. 200k+ people are using it to design and build websites faster with AI. They have a massiv...
Rich Arnold - Becoming a creative problem solver
27 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Rich Arnold was the Head of Design at Vine, a design lead on the early Instagram Stories team, and now he works as a design manager at Coinbase. So th...
Brad Frost - The new frontier of design systems
21 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
If you’ve dabbled in design systems then you’re no doubt familiar with Brad Frost and atomic design. He’s laid the foundation for design systems...
Gabe Valdivia - Storytelling, freelancing, and designing 0 to 1
14 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
One of the most requested guests has been Gabe Valdivia. He was an early designer at Facebook, a designer manager at Google, and has led design for di...
Andy Allen - What’s wrong with software design today
07 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
As soon as I read No More Boring Apps I was hooked. Andy Allen immediately became one of my design heroes and now I use his Not Boring apps daily. So ...
Jenny Wen - The art of designing for delight
29 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode we get to hear from Jenny Wen who is the person who originally designed and brought Figjam to market. This conversation is full of ins...
8 key takeaways from season 4
22 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This episode expands on 8 key insights that I took away from interviewing designers like Soleio, Kevin Twohy, Molly Hellmuth, Soren Iverson, etc. 1. A...
Soleio - What makes a truly great software designer
14 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Soleio made a name for himself as the 2nd design hire at Facebook and eventually went on to lead design at Dropbox. Now he invests in extraordinary so...
Bonus Episode: Helen Zhou - How designers can get the most out of AI tools
13 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Galileo recently broke design twitter with the launch of their new generative AI tool for builders. So in this episode we talk with their co-founder a...
Kevin Wong - How design works at Webflow
08 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Webflow has had as big an impact on design as any company over the last decade. So this episode is an inside look at their design culture, rituals, an...
Ryo Lu - Systems thinking for product designers
01 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode we get to hear from Ryo Lu who was one of the very first designers at Notion. This conversation is an inside look at the Notion design...
Molly Hellmuth - Building design systems with variables in Figma
25 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode we’re talking with Molly Hellmuth who is the creator of UI Prep where she has an incredible newsletter, design system, and course wh...
Derek Briggs - Creating a culture of craft
18 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
There’s a new design super team emerging at Clerk and in this episode we get a behind-the-scenes from the leader, Derek Briggs. We get into the weed...
Tommy Geoco - How designers can bring their ideas to life
10 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode we get to learn from Tommy Geoco who has launched countless projects, sold a startup, and built an audience of almost a million design...
Kevin Twohy - How to build an independent design practice
04 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This episode looks at Kevin Twohy’s 10+ year journey going from solo freelancer to independent design studio. We cover a LOT including:- Strategies ...
Lauren LoPrete - Inside design systems at Dropbox and Cash App
03 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Lauren LoPrete shares lessons from her experience leading design systems at Dropbox and now at Cash App. We talk about: - What design systems actually...
Kate Syuma - Designing with a growth mindset
27 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Kate Syuma was the 3rd designer at Miro and went on to become the Head of Growth Design during her 6+ years at the company. This episode is a mastercl...
Soren Iverson - Training your creative muscles
21 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
If you’ve opened Twitter in the last year then you’re definitely familiar with Soren Iverson’s satirical designs like Uber Hotbox and the iMessa...
Kathryn Gonzalez - Defining the visual language for DoorDash
14 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, Kathryn Gonzalez walks us through how she built the DoorDash design language as the first designer and frontend engineer. We talk abo...
Figma prototyping masterclass (from the team who designed it)
07 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This Deep Dive is a special one because we get to hear from Niko Klein and Garrett Miller from the prototyping team at Figma.We get a behind-the-scene...
Marco Cornacchia - The man who broke design Twitter
30 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 2022, Marco Cornacchia was coming off of a failed startup and started working on his new portfolio. Little did he know this project would land him ...
How to level up as an IC (feat. Steph Engle, Maheen Sohail & Brian Lovin)
21 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This episode is a panel discussion hosted by Maven where we talk about specific strategies that you can use to become more valuable as an individual c...
James McDonald - Staying ahead of web design trends
09 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In this deep Dive, James gives us a behind-the-scenes of his creative process and how he is reimagining every pixel of the Clerk brand. We get into th...
Brian Lovin - Confessions of a two-time design founder
02 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, Brian Lovin talks about his journey as a second-time founder and gives a behind-the-scenes of building his new startup, Campsite. He ...
David Hoang - How to prepare for design in 2025
25 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In this Deep Dive, David Hoang gives us a peek into where he thinks the industry is headed and how product designers can prepare for the future. We ta...
Erik Kennedy - Landing page techniques used by the pros
19 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we analyze four different websites (Lemonade, Formcarry, Stella Domo + Runway) to help you confidently write and design landing pages...
How Loom design went 0 to 1 on their new AI product
12 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode we get to go backstage with the design team at Loom! They teach us all about their design process and share takeaways from their recen...
Perry Wang - How to land your dream role as a Junior Designer
05 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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...
5 things I learned in Season 2
28 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This episode of Deep Dives highlights the 5 things I learned from interviewing designers like Dan Mall, Grace Walker, Adrien Griveau, Yuan Wang, and L...
Adrien Griveau - Lessons from the founding designer at Linear
21 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
It’s impossible to overstate the impact that Linear has had on the design world. So you can imagine how excited I was to have the opportunity to lea...
Yuan Wang - Leading high-stakes design presentations
14 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
🗣 This interview was special because I got to reconnect with former team member at Maven — Yuan ✌️Yuan led design at Twitter, Airbnb and Mave...
Grace Walker - How to avoid drowning in your first year freelancing
07 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Making the jump and diving into that first year of freelancing can be pretty daunting… 🥲I wish I could’ve had this chat with Grace about 5 year...
Dan Mall - What designers get wrong about design systems
31 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
If you’re familiar at all with design systems then I definitely don’t need to introduce you to Dan Mall. He’s as OG as it gets.In this Deep Dive...
Anthony Hobday - Mastering the pillars of great visual design
23 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Anthony Hobday, a self-taught interface designer, became an expert by obsessively studying the works of top designers around the world. 🌎Now he is ...
Grace Ling - Standing out in today's job market
17 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This episode is all about engineer turned designer Grace Ling, who scored her dream job as product designer at EA and is also now the founder of the b...
Luis Ouriach - Strategies for using variables in Figma
10 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
If you're looking to level up how you use variables in Figma then this episode is for you ✌️ Luis goes deep into strategies based on team size, pr...
Steph Golik - Going from designer to founder
27 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Steph Golik was an early design leader at the self-driving car startup Cruise 🚗 But 2 years ago she left to launch her own company Huddle. In this ...
Fons Mans - How to design brands and visuals that stand out
20 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Fons was the one who originally designed the Dive brand 🤿 so this episode is a branding masterclass. We walk through a mock project and Fons goes d...
Charli Marie - Lessons in career growth and creativity
25 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, Charli takes us behind the scenes of her role as Creative Director at ConvertKit. She shares all kinds of insights about brand and ma...
Bonnie Kate Wolf - Growing a freelance business as an icon designer
25 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
BK shares lessons learned on her journey to becoming one of the most well-respected icon designers on the planet (including stories from designing the...
Femke - Product strategy and selling your ideas
18 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
If you're looking to level up your storytelling and make a bigger impact on product strategy, then this is the episode for you 💪 Femke shares pract...
Dan Hollick - Framer, AI, and designing for Jay-Z
18 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, Dan shares his insights on using Framer from his experience as an early adopter. He also discusses his approach to learning to code w...
Mia Blume - Increasing your influence as a designer
11 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, Mia shares stories and lessons learned from her time as an early design leader at Square and Pinterest. We discuss all sorts of pract...
Fonz Morris - How to drive business impact
11 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Fonz gives a masterclass on growth design in this episode as he pulls back the curtain on designing at Netflix and what it takes to ship to millions o...
Jorn van Dijk — Framer + AI's impact on Design
04 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, Jorn shares the full Framer story starting with his journey as an early designer at Facebook. He also provides insights into Framer’...
Steph Engle — Storytelling + design presentations
04 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In this interview, Steph shares valuable insights from her experience designing at Facebook, Cruise, and currently at Snap. We delve into effective st...
Joey Banks — Design systems + Figma strategies
04 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, Joey Banks gives an in-depth look at what it’s like to lead design systems at Twitter and Webflow. He shares his strategies for str...