From the conversation:

Books

• Alchemy by Rory Sutherland

• Build by Tony Fadell

• Creative Selection by Ken Kocienda

• Good Strategy Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt

• Looking for a Story by Noel Rubinton

• Ogilvy on Advertising by David Ogilvy

• The Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi

• The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu by Tom Lin

Talks and essays

• “A Conversation with Jony Ive” at Stripe

• “Before the Startup” by Paul Graham

• “How Art, Technology and Design Inform Creative Leaders” by John Maeda

Studios and designers

• Alex McDowell

• Alexander Diner

• Ben South Lee

• Kelly Wearstler

• The Office of Ordinary Things

• Wiseman Editing

Tools and creative influences

• Balsamiq

• GIMP

• Linear

• Team Fortress 2

Podcasts

• Dive Club by Ridd

• Ridd on Design Discipline

onlook.com | @D_R_Farrell | danielrfarrell.com

From the conversation:

Newsletters and podcasts

• Dive Club by Ridd

• Hiring Humans by Danny Martinez

• Ridd on Design Discipline

People and portfolios

• Rich Cahill

Companies discussed

• Arrows

• LiveKit

• Superpower

decimals.co | @dannydecimals

From the conversation:

Books

• Geometry of Design by Kimberly Elam

• The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst

People and studios

• iA / Oliver Reichenstein

Tools and projects

• AMP

• Fuchsia

• iA Writer

• Pilcrow

impeccable.style | paulbakaus.com | @pbakaus

Produced in collaboration with Palette, the matchmaker between businesses and design studios, The Brief is a series of live-streamed conversations on how designers and clients work together.

From the conversation:

Related episodes

• Ridd

• The Brief: Niclas Ernst

Tools and resources

• Adobe After Effects

• Attio

• Epidemic Sound

• Figma

• Higgsfield

• Remotion

Companies discussed

• Bolt

• Contra

• MagicPath

• Poke

People

• Alex Hormozi

skale.solutions | @SkaleSolutions | @MarkKnd

From the conversation:

Books and articles

• “Aesthetics in the AI Era: Visual + Web Design Trends for 2026” by Ioana Teleanu

• Grid Systems in Graphic Design by Josef Müller-Brockmann

• Surviving Design by Ioana Teleanu

Tools and platforms

• Claude

• Decimals

• FAUNA

• FLORA

• Granola

• Miro AI

• TouchDesigner

• UiPath Clipboard AI — TIME Best Inventions 2023

People

• Kim Alban

• Marisa Chan (Design Team of One)

• Marisa Chentakul

Events and places

• Fusecon

• Hatch Conference

• Museum für Gestaltung Zürich

Related episodes

• Danny Martinez

• Ridd

aidesign-os.com | x.com/uxgoodies | instagram.com/uxgoodies

Produced in collaboration with Palette, the matchmaker between businesses and design studios, The Brief is a series of live-streamed conversations on how designers and clients work together.

From the conversation:

Companies and organizations

• Antimetal

• Attio

• Interfere

• National Design Studio

• Pipe

People

• Joe Gebbia

• Soleio

Design references

• Jacques Marie Mage

n16t.com | permanent.is | x.com/niclasernst | x.com/permanent

Dan is the author of Making Software, a reference manual for people who design and build software.

From the conversation:

Books

• Making Software by Dan Hollick

• The Art of Computer Programming by Donald E. Knuth

• The iOS App Icon Book and The macOS App Icon Book by Michael Flarup

Tools and software

• Adobe InDesign

• Affinity

• Cursor

• LaTeX

• Raycast

• Tailwind CSS

• tldraw

People and resources

• 3Blue1Brown

• Museum für Gestaltung Zürich

• Nick Pattison’s studio, Primary

Related episodes

• Carl Rivera

alcohollick.com | x.com/DanHollick

From the conversation:

Books

• Alternative Layout Systems by Giliane Cachin

• Geometry of Design by Kimberly Elam

• Influence by Robert B. Cialdini

• The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene

Talks and interviews

• “Musical Thinking for Design Engineers” by M.A. Baytaş

• “The Winding Journey of Designing an AI Product” with Sam Stephenson on Dive Club

Tools and platforms

• Claude

• Conductor

• Granola

• Paper

• Superwhisper

• Wispr Flow

Education

• Alpha School

• Synthesis

Related episodes

• Dan Hollick

dive.club | inflight.co | x.com/ridd_design | instagram.com/michaelriddering | youtube.com/c/MichaelRiddering

With over 15 years in the industry, he has worked with major global brands and agencies, blending storytelling with technology to push branding beyond static visuals.

His work has received multiple international awards, including D&AD and Red Dot, and is widely recognized for redefining how design systems can be adaptive, data-driven, and alive.

From the conversation:

Books

• Design Unlimited by Patrik Hübner and Larissa Lenze

• How to Speak Machine by John Maeda

• Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse

• The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin

• The Generative Mind: A New Approach to Creative Thinking by Patrik Hübner

Learning resources

• Data-Design Dictionary

• Field Guide

• Learning Creative Coding

Tools and libraries

• glslify

• Node.js

• p5.js

• Processing

• TensorFlow

• Three.js

• Vue.js

• Vuex

Art and artists

• Imaginary Landscape No. 4 by John Cage

• My Boyfriend Came Back from the War by Olia Lialina

• Recharge by Dries Depoorter

• The Flemish Scrollers by Dries Depoorter

• Yehwan Song

Podcasts

• Daron Malakian: On Metal, Part 1 — Tetragrammaton

• Daron Malakian: On Metal, Part 2 — Tetragrammaton

youtube.com/@patrikhuebner | patrik-huebner.com | github.com/patrikHuebner | instagram.com/patrikhuebner

His work focuses on using VR to treat conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injury, autism, and anxiety disorders. One of his most recognized contributions is Virtual Iraq/Afghanistan, a VR exposure therapy system used to help veterans process combat trauma.

Rizzo’s career is defined by merging psychology, neuroscience, and immersive technology to create clinically validated tools that improve mental health outcomes. He is widely regarded as one of the key figures who established VR as a legitimate therapeutic medium.

From the conversation:

Research and resources

• “AI Chatbots Inconsistent in Answering Questions About Suicide” — RAND

• Autism Speaks: 100 Day Kit

• BRAVEMIND

• SimCoach

Tools and experiences

• Magic Horizons

• PsyTechVR

• TRIPP

• Unity

• Unreal Engine

Books and films

• Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

• Ready Player One — film by Steven Spielberg

ict.usc.edu/about-us/leadership/research-leadership/albert-skip-rizzo

Through The Waldorf Project, Sean has conceived and directed large-scale, radical performance environments often described as “empathy engineering” experiments. These works dissolve the boundary between audience and performer, combining ritual, architecture, sound, choreography, and psychological framing to explore connection, vulnerability, and collective consciousness. The project has been realised worldwide, involving over 5,000 participants in Thailand and a high-altitude performance for 400 people aboard a Lufthansa flight, an unprecedented context for live immersive art.

As a natural continuation of The Waldorf Project, Sean expanded his practice into virtual reality with Virtual Serenity, translating his principles of collective experience into a large-scale XR environment. Conceived as one of the most ambitious location-based VR empathy experiments to date, Virtual Serenity enabled up to 288 participants to share a synchronized virtual journey, extending Sean’s exploration of presence, emotional resonance, and shared human states into the digital realm.

From the conversation:

Performances and films

• Barzakh — Waldorf Project, Chapter Four

• Colour — Waldorf Project, Chapter Two

• Futuro — Waldorf Project, Chapter Three

• Futuro-A — the Lufthansa performance

• Futuro-X — the Wonderfruit performance

• Muskmelon — Waldorf Project, Chapter One

• Virtual Serenity

Artists and studios

• Alex McDowell on Design Discipline

• Aoi + Esteban

• Imogen Knight

• Punchdrunk

Music

• Futuro (Music for the Waldorf Project) by Not Waving

waldorfproject.com | instagram.com/waldorf_project

Her work in longevity centers on translating complex fields such as cell therapies into systems people can understand, trust, and navigate.

She founded her first company at the age of 22, building a software-driven business for collaborative 3D/4D/5D workflows in design and construction. That early venture bridged architecture, technology, and large-scale production, serving both infrastructure projects and high-end creative studios.

Her career shows a consistent pattern: entering complex industries and restructuring them through clarity, aesthetics, and system-level thinking.

From the conversation:

Design tools

• Midjourney

• Rhino

Research and events

• Muse-cell research at Tohoku University

• Unfinished festival

decimastemcells.com | lechacuel.com

Earlier in his career, Carl co-founded Tictail, the Stockholm-based social shopping platform and marketplace known for its design. Shopify acquired Tictail in 2018, bringing Carl into the organization. He has since held product leadership positions at Shopify, where he led major initiatives serving millions.

From the conversation:

Books

• How to Be a Graphic Designer Without Losing Your Soul by Adrian Shaughnessy

• The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious by Carl G. Jung

• The Bhagavad Gita

• The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell

Tools and products

• Attio

• Cursor

• Dia

• Lovable

• Notion

• Screen Studio

• Shopify Sidekick

• Stability AI

• Vacation

People and studios

• Adrian Shaughnessy on Design Discipline

• Joe Gebbia

• Molly — joining Shopify’s Product Design Studio

x.com/carlrivera | shopify.com

Adrian teaches at the Visual Communication program of the Royal College of Art in London as an associate lecturer. He has contributed essays, critiques and editorial work across major design publications, and under Unit Editions has published monographs on figures such as Herb Lubalin, Ken Garland, Lance Wyman, and Paula Scher.

From the conversation:

Books

• Graphic Design: A User’s Manual by Adrian Shaughnessy

• Herb Lubalin: American Graphic Designer by Adrian Shaughnessy

• How to Be a Graphic Designer Without Losing Your Soul by Adrian Shaughnessy

• Manuals 2: Design & Identity Guidelines edited by Adrian Shaughnessy and Tony Brook

• Margaret Calvert: Woman at Work

• Paula Scher: Works edited by Tony Brook and Adrian Shaughnessy

• Pentagram: Living by Design by Adrian Shaughnessy and Tony Brook

• Studio Culture Now edited by Mark Sinclair

• What Is a Designer: Things, Places, Messages by Norman Potter

People and studios

• Brody Associates

• Dada Projects

• Intro

• Office of Possibilities on Design Discipline

• Spin

Talks and education

• Adrian Shaughnessy on Design Education Talks

• Resonance FM

• Visual Communication at the Royal College of Art

Design tools

• Framer

• InDesign

• Next.js

• Webflow

uniteditions.com | x.com/AJWShaughnessy | shaughnessyworks-prints.com

Sari is an active thought leader in the spaces of creative work and AI productivity. She has spoken on how to be un-LLM-able at the Sana AI Summit in Stockholm; and written about how creativity is the new currency of success, how storytelling is the most differentiating business skill of the 21st century, and how we can use AI to expand our creativity and our humanity.

Sublime’s Whoa, Vol. 2: Conversations on AI × Creativity features in-depth conversations with original thinkers, including Seth Godin, David Perell, Venkatesh Rao, and Substack’s head of design Mills Baker.

From the conversation:

Books

• Being and Time by Martin Heidegger

• Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh

• God, Human, Animal, Machine: Technology, Metaphor, and the Search for Meaning by Meghan O’Gieblyn

• Phenomenology of Perception by Maurice Merleau-Ponty

• Ralph Lauren: A Way of Living by Ralph Lauren

• The Disappearance of Rituals: A Topology of the Present by Byung-Chul Han

• The Work of Art: How Something Comes from Nothing by Adam Moss

• Tom Ford by Tom Ford and Bridget Foley

• Whoa, Vol. 2: Conversations on AI × Creativity by Sublime

• Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values by Robert M. Pirsig

Talks and essays

• “Design for the AI Age” by Karri Saarinen

• “From Product/Market Fit to Language/Market Fit” by Sari Azout

• “How I Stopped Worrying About AI and Learned to Value My Humanity” by Sari Azout

• “How to Be Un-LLM-able” by Sari Azout

• “Soul-Making Productivity: A Process Manifesto” by River Kenna

• Ten Principles for Good Design by Dieter Rams

• “The Creative Director in the Age of Luxury Software” by Baytaş

• “The End of Productivity” by Sari Azout

Tools

• Attio

• Cosmos

• Dia

• mymind

• Notion

• Raycast

• Roam Research

• Typefully

sublime.app | x.com/sariazout

Weber has a background with diverse experiences spanning venture capital, investment banking, poetry, history, and more recently, studies on interactive art at the NYU Tisch School of the Arts. We discussed how these experiences shaped his approach to building one of the most exciting startups in the space of design and creative work today; and his unique perspective on the present and the future of design.

From the conversation:

Books

• Dieter Rams: The Complete Works by Klaus Klemp

• Digital Art: 1960s to Now edited by Pita Arreola, Corinna Gardner, and Melanie Lenz

• Hiroshi Fujiwara: Fragment

• Hiroshi Fujiwara: Fragment #2 by Hiroshi Fujiwara

• Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike by Phil Knight

• Softwar: An Intimate Portrait of Larry Ellison and Oracle by Matthew Symonds

• Source Code: My Beginnings by Bill Gates

• Strategy: A History by Lawrence Freedman

• The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman

• The Innovators by Walter Isaacson

• The Power Broker by Robert A. Caro

• Virgil Abloh: Figures of Speech edited by Michael Darling

Creative tools

• ComfyUI

• Cosmos

• Cursor

• Midjourney

• Pure Data

• Runway

• TouchDesigner

• Zapier

People and education

• Ethan Proia

• NYU ITP / IMA

• School of the Art Institute of Chicago

• UCLA Design Media Arts

flora.ai | x.com/weberwongwong

We discuss:

• Building systems and structure in creative work

• Imposter syndrome as part of personal growth

• Allowing time and others’ feedback to develop your creative identity

Read more

He has practiced design for more than 12 years and experienced multiple success stories in his career, including tenure at two technology startups that were acquired.

Currently Andres runs multiple ventures, all sharing a foundation of design. He is founder and creative director of ALL HANDS, the design studio that continues his practice of leading visual identity and product design. He also runs the SAFEHOUSE membership lounge in San Antonio.

From the conversation:

Books and design principles

• “Insert Complicated Title Here” by Virgil Abloh

• New York City Transit Authority: Objects by Brian Kelley

• Omotenashi

• Ten Principles for Good Design by Dieter Rams

Designers and studios

• Cole Buxton

• Eames Office

• LoveFrom

• Marc Newson

• Seventh

Furniture

• Camaleonda by Mario Bellini

• Togo by Michel Ducaroy

Tools and resources

• Cosmos

• Designengineer.ing

• Office Hours with Andres Jasso: How to Develop Taste

• Photoshop

• Pinterest

allhands.design | thesafehouse.studio | x.com/_andresjasso | instagram.com/_andresjasso

We discuss:

• Best practices for designing a UX portfolio website

• Why you should use a template

• Color theory and typography

• How to present case studies effectively

• Responsive design and mobile optimization

Read more

For decades, design engineering referred to the intersection of industrial product design and mechanical engineering.

Now, in tech, design engineering refers to the union of visual design and software development, and it’s one of the current things — In 2024, more than 10 thought leaders in the industry created discourse on design engineering with essays and educational material. (Links at the end.)

This popularity of design engineering in tech is a result of macro developments in the last 5–10 years, like the following:

• Hardware — It’s now feasible to run impressive visuals and motion on the average computer.

• Developer tools — With new web standards and the likes of Figma, React, Tailwind CSS, Vercel, and Framer Motion, design-focused developers achieve much more than before.

• Economics — Software is now a commodity, where design is a competitive differentiator.

As a result, my inbox is full of young people asking how to learn design engineering and get jobs. To set you up for success, I’ll throw light on 2 questions:

1. What are actually the jobs that design engineers do in tech, day-to-day?

2. How can you learn to do these jobs?

What Even Is a Design Engineer?

A design engineer is an engineer with design skills, so that:

• They don’t need designers designing what to build — they can take inputs that designers take and deliver the outputs that engineers deliver.

• When working with designers, they communicate very efficiently and make contributions to design work.

• They build with production-grade materials (e.g. code) for design decisions that can’t be experienced on any other material (e.g. interactions).

• They build tools to make designing easier, better, faster, and to design things that could not be designed before.

Doing these things today requires extensive skills in both design and engineering. There are very few educational programs and resources that specifically teach software design engineering. Most software design engineers learn by dual-classing: separately learning design and software engineering.

In the future, I expect books, courses, and other resources will emerge to specifically and efficiently teach this discipline — just like we have for industrial design engineering. Right now, software design engineering is a unique opportunity for creative self-learners.

What Do Design Engineers Do?

Despite the new technological capabilities that resulted in its popularity, design engineering in tech is not a new job — it’s simply a re-configuration of the jobs that designers and engineers have been doing for years.

Here are 4 kinds of things that design engineers work on in tech:

Marketing

Design engineers on marketing teams build impressive websites and make their company look attractive on the internet.

One reason why marketing hires design engineers is when the website is large and feature-rich — beyond what makes sense to do with website builders like Framer or Webflow. Large companies like Stripe have this need. This work requires strength in traditional front-end and full-stack development skills. With higher budgets, these projects also call for impressive animations and creative graphics while retaining accessibility.

Marketing websites might also involve rich animations, 3D, and game-like experiences. Also known as “creative development”, Unseen Studio’s work is a great example in this category. This kind of work requires advanced skills around HTML/CSS, 3D graphics, motion design, typography… These devs often push innovation on immersive design and interactivity, at the expense of conventional accessibility.

Product

There are two focus areas for product design engineering:

1. “Polish” of the user interface – motion and interactivity – which is challenging to hand off from design to engineering.

2. Design systems, which accelerate design, and facilitate the design to engineering handoff.

The scope of shipping a product involves user research, backend engineering, test-driven frontend development… So, this role is highly collaborative — this job posting from GitHub lists “product design, design systems, design ops, front-end development, and illustration” as the talents that span the team. The design engineer speaks all of those languages.

Product design engineers do whatever it takes to steward product quality — a mix of front-end development, graphics, UX, UI, and motion design skills, in a way that plays with others on the team.

R&D

R&D design engineers build prototypes of new things, to visualize and test new products in the real world.

This kind of design engineering has been around for much longer than roles focused on websites and product interfaces. However, these jobs are rare, found at larger and economically stable companies — see Ivan Poupyrev’s work at Google, and Jordan Singer’s Figma-funded innovations.

Worth knowing, from a job market perspective: At the first signs of distress, R&D is the first to get canceled at even the most stable companies — see Ikea’s innovative Space10 lab, which closed doors last year.

In R&D, you constantly learn new skill trees. I’ve done 10 years of R&D and learned the Python, Lua, C#, MATLAB, Unity, JavaScript, Arduino, and Processing platforms, as well as electronics, robotics, physical fabrication, and photography. It’s the Wild West — you have to draw quickly.

Founding

The founding design engineer can execute UX, growth, and brand identity design as well as product-building — life-altering combination for solopreneurs and small early-stage teams.

Arguably, all of the internet-famous software solopreneurs like Pieter Levels, Danny Postma, and Marc Louvion are design engineers: They not only build but also publish themselves, taking care of UX design and marketing as well as their core engineering work.

I have been selling this skillset as a service to early-stage founders since early 2023, and done some of the most valuable work in my life. Of course, there are downsides: early-stage ventures have massive economic uncertainty, and demand extreme breadth of skills across business, design, marketing and engineering.

How to Learn Design Engineering

As said above, we don’t have many resources today that specifically teach software design engineering. However, if you have an existing foundation in design or engineering, there are resources tailored to help you dual-class.

For designers, here are my favorites:

• Harvard’s CS50 – one of the top online courses in the world – teaches computer science and programming from the ground up

• The Odin Project and freeCodeCamp are free resources that teach web development, highly acclaimed by professionals

• The UI Engineering 101 for Designers course by veterans Mariana Castilho and Derek Briggs. goes for “polish” in frontend

• Scrimba is the most innovative online coding school, for all levels

For developers:

• Refactoring UI is one of the most efficient textbooks on interface design

• Ellen Lupton’s Thinking with Type demystifies typography and layout theory

• Awwwards Academy offers courses on visual design and creative skills taught by seasoned professionals

• Animations on the Web is a cutting-edge course by Emil Kowalski

And once you feel ready for the challenge, the job board at designengineer.io is an excellent place to start looking.

Tech moves very fast. Some of you might be already working on textbooks, courses, and other resources that specifically and efficiently teach interface design engineering. If that’s you, please reach out and say hi.

Thanks to Dmytro Kondakov, Mert Düzgün, Emil Kowalski, and Mariana Castilho for improving this article with their comments.

Others on design engineering:

1. I think I might be a design engineer by @trysmudford (2021)

2. The Case for Design Engineers by @jimniels (2022)

3. The Case For Design Engineers, Pt. II by @jimniels (Feb 2024)

4. Comprehensive analysis of Design Engineer as a term by @david_luhr (Feb 2024)

5. Why a Design Engineer career is an investment for your future by @emilwidlund (Feb 2024)

6. Design Engineering at Vercel (Mar 2024)

7. A Collection of Design Engineers by Maggie Appleton (Mar 2024)

8. Design Engineering: An emerging role in software by David Hoang (Mar 2024)

9. The Attributes of a Design Engineer by @ryngonzalez (Apr 2024)

10. UI Engineering 101 for Designers course by Mariana Castilho and Derek Briggs

11. Animations on the Web course by Emil Kowalski