Design Details

Last weekend we visited New York City to meet some of our favorite designers for Design Details! While we were there, we hosted our first-ever live meetup at the Etsy offices. More than 70 people came to catch up with Justin Edmund, Jessica Harllee and Joel Califa; we picked their brains about their journey, mistakes they've made, mentorship vs. coaching, learning new skills, and more - we even answered questions from the audience! Huge thanks to Aaron, Diana and Floris at Etsy for making this event possible; we can't wait to host our next meetup in San Francisco next year!

Last weekend we visited New York City and caught up with one of our favorite designers, Jason Santa Maria. We pick his brain about process, mentorship and typography, and he walked us through his journey as a designer.

Today we caught up with Gene Ross, a designer at Luxe currently NOT living in San Francisco. We picked Gene's brain about imposter syndrome, work life balance, his Runescape journey and coming to the west coast.

We've been waiting to chat with Dann Petty for months now, but finally after returning from Epicurrence No. 2 we made it happen! In this episode we chat about Dann's background as a designer, what's going on with Epicurrence, his advice for freelancers, and tips for young designers just getting started. If you enjoy this episode, go to Epicurrence.com and sign up to come hang out this February in Park City, Utah!

Today we sat down with Drew Wilson, a prolific designer, developer and product creator who recently moved to the Bay Area to build Plasso. We chat about Drew's background, how he builds so many products, taking risks and his observations on design in the valley.

Today we sat down with Justin Edmund, a designer well known for his work at Pinterest over the last four years. We chat about his background in design, going to design school, what the Pinterest process is like, and how Justin is looking into the future of design.

Today we sat down with Brent Jackson aka jxnblk to talk about all things design and development! Brent is a prolific creator and we love his tools here at Spec - we chat with him about side projects, being a designer and a developer, building design systems and how he got his nickname.

In today's episode of Design Details we caught up with Diana Mounter, aka Broccolini. Diana is a designer at Etsy, and in this show we chat about her journey to Etsy, why git is a valuable tool for designers and the hardest part about onboarding new hires.

This week we had the chance to sit down with Katie Dill, the head of experience design at Airbnb. We talked about her background as a designer, what she looks for in new hires, how designers can work more effectively with businesses, and the critique process used at Airbnb.

Today we caught up with Morgan Knutson, a co-founder and designer at Shift, notable for his previous work at Dropbox and Google. In this episode we talk about what it takes to get hired as a designer, Morgan's background, working at Google, and how to get things done as a designer.

In today's episode we sat down with Maykel Loomans, a designer and developer currently working on search at Facebook and is notable for his previous work at Instagram. In this episode we chat about Maykel's background as a designer, working at scale, mentorship and more.

For episode 70 we sat down with Ash Huang, an independent designer, illustrator and writer here in San Francisco. In the past Ash worked on brand design at Twitter, brand and product design at Pinterest, and has most recently published her own book, The Firesteel.

Welcome to our first live episode of Design Details! We recorded this show last week at Epicurrence North Shore with Haraldur Thorleifsson and Dustin Senos - we dig into inspiration, mentorship, identifying potential and more. Let us know what you think of this live format on Twitter!

Today we had a very fun, very casual conversation with Katie Rinkevich and Trevor McNaughton, both product designers living here in San Francisco. We chat about A/B testing, accidentally becoming designers and the concept car method of designing products.

Today we caught up with Soleio Cuervo, a designer, advisor and investor. He's well known for laying the groundwork of Facebook's early design team and, of course, his work on the original incarnation of the 'like' button. He currently advises many companies and startups in tech, and we had a blast digging into his stories and lessons learned!