There's a way to create beautiful designs, beautiful websites, beautiful apps, beautiful motion,
and I just learned about it. And it's through this thing called Google MD. It's using skills,
and the entire process of this is what we explain on this podcast. I had my friend Meng To, who's one of the best designers I know, come on and share his entire workflow to how to create jaw
dropping beautiful designs that by the end of this episode, you will become
a designer. You're gonna be able to create better design than 99.99%
of this planet. And what does that mean? That means that your startup, your idea, your app is gonna have a higher chance of getting people to install it, to buy it, to share it, and we all can use that. So enjoy the episode, and I'll see you in there.
Meng, welcome back. Second time on the pod. Uh, by the end of this episode,
uh, what are people gonna get out of this?
Google just came out with Design. Md,
and this is one way to create a blueprint
to take one beautiful design,
whether you made it or not,
and then spread
throughout the all the formats and the mediums
for your startup idea.
Right? So you can turn
a beautiful design system
that is created by a master in their craft, like a designer,
and then you can turn that into motion design,
a landing page,
different sections of the landing page,
uh, mobile design, and so on. So a lot of people struggle right now
with, you know, this idea, you know, they start really strong with one shot
and then suddenly they get into the the other pages and they suddenly have something
more and more generic.
So this is what we're gonna be learning. I'm gonna teach you all the tricks,
remix,
iterate,
what is the design system, typography,
colors, all the things that people struggle in design.
Perfect.
In in your world, feel like a lot of people are talking about DesignMD.
Uh, in my world, not that many people are talking about it, but they want to be able to create
jaw dropping beautiful designs even if they're not a designer
because they're, you know, we're using agents now, we're building startups,
we're taking ideas out of our head,
but you know, we don't want a purple vibe coated website or app. We want something that's beautiful, that's consistent,
and so
I'm excited for you to explain what DesignMD is. I'm excited for you to explain how you can actually get inspired by other designers
and use some of their systems to create something of your own.
Meng, thank you so much for being generous with your sauce and and tactics and tips and tricks.
Uh, there's no one I look up to more than you in this in this regard, so, uh, thank you.
Yeah. I I just wanna mention something before we start. People don't realize how hard it is to to get the right distribution,
the marketing.
And I wanna thank you, Greg, because, you know, remember the first time I came to your podcast, I started with a $3,000
MRR,
and it shot up to 15,000
MRR
just by going through your podcast. And, obviously, there's
a ton of value over time.
So, you know, to those
who don't know, like, going to, you know, Greg's podcast is like the bucket list, like, the number one thing you wanna, uh, you know, reach towards to. And, yeah, I prepared presentation,
you know, slides and all that stuff because, like, you know, Reply just introduced slides and, you know, we started doing, uh, you know, hyperframes.
We started doing,
uh, remotion.
So
I prepared all of this. Uh, as a designer, I feel very strongly about this. So let me just share my screen.
First things first, I realize a lot of people are vibe coding their apps, they're vibe coding their startup marketing,
and so on.
Everything I do today,
including this tool that I'm showing you,
which is my own Notion with slides,
is VibeCoded,
and I made it by myself. So
I also wanna say that all of these images
are all generated
using
the context
of the title,
and I'm using
the new GBT,
uh, image too.
So with that said,
you know,
I prepared the slides,
and I wanna go through one by one what is design.mt.
So
but first of all, you know,
I just wanna also preface on what we're gonna be discussing,
you know, the things that I wanna teach everyone about design and how we get there, and then we're gonna end with a demo.
So
these are the kind of five main points I wanna I wanna go through.
And then
we we're gonna get started. Uh,
design, as I mentioned before, design.md is just open source,
and I can find the tweet right here. They have a ten minute video. You can watch it. Essentially, it means is that
just the same way a lot of people
are using
agents.md
or skill.md
or soul.md
for those who are using Cloudbot
or in in this case, it's it's OpenCloud now. So,
basically, this is for designers.
And if you wanna take the soul of the design and you wanna bring that to the agent
and you wanna bring a design system, the colors, the typography
that makes a design beautiful, well, you port it and you put it all into an MD file,
and then you put it into your prom as an attachment, and then boom, you have a beautiful design. So this is what design.md,
and
you will see
extremely
efficient ways
to use this across multiple medium, not just web design,
but also,
you know, like,
uh, you know, like motion design nowadays and slides.
So,
you know, for exam Quick break in the pod to let you know about a free workshop I'm doing that answers some of your biggest questions. The first is, in the AI age, what are some categories
that are ripe for startup ideas? I'm gonna outline a bunch of those different categories, the ones that I think the most opportunity is.
Second is there's a million AI tools out there, which are the ones that matter when I'm trying to build a business? I'll walk you through that. And lastly,
how do you actually build a business with some of these AI tools? So I'm actually gonna show you live how I do this with my ideabrowser.comteam
and I can't wait to see you there. It's this Thursday
at 12PM eastern and if you go to the show notes, if you go to the description, you can click a link, RSVP,
and learn a few things. I hope it'll get your creative juices flowing, and I'll see you back at the pod. I'm gonna give you just some quick examples of what I created. So for example,
when you have a design, right, you can sort of, like, take one design
and using whatever medium, like, whether it's React or HTML,
you can create,
like, a
a nice promo video
or you can create, like, a slide.
And this is all using the same DNA,
which is the design. Md.
So as you do this, for example, this is a slide and this is a promo video. You can see that this is two different approach to a design.
And this is the result,
and, uh, if you want, there's a ton of resources
that allows you to
save those design dot m d. So one of them, obviously, I created them myself, but they're totally free. You can just download them. Uh, right now, my Internet is super slow. So here, you can see
we have a lot of these design systems,
and it's essentially just one file. You click here, you download it, and it it contains all of this visual stuff, typography,
colors,
spacing.
And if you look at
the, you know,
the the the markdown itself,
if you've used markdown, it's essentially a structured text
with tables,
uh, titles,
and code.
And you can if you read through all of this, you have the weapons
and the arsenal
to essentially prompt efficiently.
And you can sort of commit this to memory,
and then it becomes
your design.
So
it's very simple. You add all of this to prompt. Right? And then it becomes
the the HTML
or the design.md.
The HTML is more like
the sort of a finished dish,
and the m d file is more like the recipe.
The skills
are like the ingredients.
So you put it all together,
and it becomes your design, which is what I just showed earlier.
And that's a big deal because,
you know, why like, honestly, I want to have you on the pod is,
you know, it's such an advantage to
to having
scroll stopping design. Like, the video you shared,
like the the the m p four there that you shared, like, that was that was beautiful.
And
so I guess my question is,
like, how do you if you're not a designer, coming up with these
systems yourself, like, from scratch is really hard. So how do you what's the process for
for for finding,
you know,
for finding
brands and identities that resonate with you?
Right. So,
you know, coming back to the slide, right, oftentimes,
you know, people, they one shot something. They saw, like, a a beautiful prompt.
Oftentimes, it's bigger than the code. They copy and paste that. They have no idea how it's done, and they also have no leverage on how to change it. So the first screen is not the hard part.
So, you know, right now, it is you kinda feel like you're the one who's always, like, telling AI what to do, and you don't have control.
And the question is, like, how do you solve this problem, which is a design drift?
Okay? You you you start something, you're kind of satisfied with it, but then you get into the other stuff, and it becomes completely different. So that's that's why we need design.md.
And,
you know, you don't want to end up something like this.
You want to to end up with a system, a process
where you can bring whether it's a screenshot,
an HTML,
a design. Md,
or all of those ingredients
and recipes.
And back to your question, Greg,
there's a ton of resources that share all of these things, but designermd is new.
Most places, they share templates. Right? We all know,
you know, like, you go to a template,
and obviously, I'm taking my mine as an example,
but
you can go to any, uh, of the templates that you find on v zero, Lovable,
um, you know, all of these other place Framer, Figma community for for people who are more familiar with designs.
And the problem with those is that they are highly close behind
the techniques and the the rectangles and the pixels
of Figma or Framer of Webflow.
But, you know, then how do you tell that to an agent?
And that's the big question. So nowadays,
you can go to new communities
that share the actual blueprint,
which is the design.md.
So for example,
I want a design that looks like this, that has this animation, that has the blue color, that has these
systems of, uh, you know, beautiful typography
and selections
and buttons
that, you know, I don't want everything. I don't want the whole template. I just want something to start with that I can tell my AI
to start with that and then be consistent across the board. Now if you only provide
a portion of it or something too specific,
the AI tends to sort of, like, take that too literally.
But if you provide something more, uh, like a foundational
system,
like a process,
agents.md
and what and whatnot,
then you get something that gives more flexibility
to your system
when you're gonna be working on new designs or new mediums
or, you know, you wanna be consistent across the board.
Cool. Yeah. I mean, when I see this, like, first of all, this is gorgeous.
But what I would wanna refrain from is,
like, to your point,
duplicating that and just creating the same
cookie cutter website. You know? Because there's I'm sure you see this all the time. Like, you you know, you come across
a website. It's a Shopify. It's a WordPress. It's a Framer. It's whatever. And you're like, I've seen this website before. Right? I've seen this website,
but it's another brand. Right? And
that
like, cookie cutter doesn't work anymore.
And it's the same reason, like, you know, you go into a a downtown core city and, like, all the buildings look the same. Right? And and you feel like
there's, like, homogeneous
cityscapes that that are existing now.
Yeah. And I fully agree with you. Everything
is so high. Like, the baseline is so high nowadays, but also the baseline
is also very generic.
What used to be wow five, ten years ago now is generic, which is funny because, like, if you look at the purple gradient,
everyone was like, wow. Purple gradient. I wanna use that. But nowadays, if you see something with, you know, purple gradients, you just run.
Uh, so
I guess what I'm trying to say here is that we have evolved so much,
and humans have a way to solve new problems and to adapt. And I think that's the real intelligence.
And so I think the question nowadays for me
is how do you deal with taste?
Right? How do you
design something?
How do you make ultra quick decisions?
Right?
To,
uh, take something,
whether it's the ingredients, the recipe, the secret sauce. For me, the sweet secret sauce is is the design. Right? Because,
you know, you don't want people to run away from your landing page.
You don't want them to,
uh, to to to look at your brand and like, oh, shit. This feels like,
you know, just like the 1,000 start up that I've seen over the past week.
So
if you if you focus on design enough,
right, if you find these systems
that you can,
uh, bring to your own system
that is flexible enough,
then you can create something
way more powerful.
So I like to think of Designer. Md like a design memory.
And this
is great because it it it can transfer between platform.
So
if you're working in Lovable
and you like what you've done or in cloud design
and then you wanna
move it to Figma or you wanna move it to,
uh, you know, to Cursor
or to you know, nowadays, I use codecs a lot. I know a lot of people use Cloud Code,
but you can totally do all of that stuff because you can carry this this Designer. Md, and then you can commit it to memory
by telling your AI, your agent,
to remember. That I mean, I do that all the time. Remember this. Remember that.
And I think agents nowadays are are doing a pretty good job at, um, you know, trying to remember
the workflow
that you've just done. Right? Because that workflow is unique to you.
Like, a lot of things that I make nowadays, I'm I'm sure it applies to everyone out there who is making their own apps.
First of all,
for me,
when I make apps, I look at what is the moat. What what is something
that I can do with my app that Notion cannot do or Figma cannot do? For me, that mode right now is the fact that everything is local. So for example, this is all local.
And because it's local, it it it generates these MD files across
folders
and nested folders
that I can just open in codecs
and open that folder and and tell my my agent, look.
I have a Greg Greg Eisenberg
podcast.
I want you to prepare
all of these screens. I want you to prepare,
you know, 10 sections or 10 notes or do research,
and it has all of that knowledge, and it can create all of those files
in one single go,
which I think is such a big moat nowadays. Right? You can't like
sure, some tools can do that, but one, you have to deal with tokens, you have to pay for them, you cannot run locally,
and you don't have your own workflow embedded into it. But nowadays, you have something like OpenClaw or or Codex or CloudCode that can do all of that, and it's so scary how good it is.
A 100%.
So
what you know, you mentioned,
you know, Cloud Design. You mentioned,
you know, all these different platforms.
You know, we're talking about Google, so Google Stitch is another one. Like,
can you show us
how we can
how we can go from,
you know, MD file plus HTML to
creating something?
Sure.
First of all, I just wanna start with
sort of, like,
you know,
getting the MD file, but also
focusing on the design aspect. For me, it's really important,
but not everyone's gonna do that. But I think it makes sense to start with that. So for example,
you know, I don't know if you know varian. Varian is also very good. Yes. Varian.com.
You know, I like tools like this because they allow me to get into the sort of
creative stage, which I think is incredibly important. And essentially, what you wanna do is just to remix, you know, click one button, remix, click one button, remix. You find something that you like, you remix, and so on and so forth. So that's why, you know, for me, as someone who build aura, I also find it incredibly
enticing. So I go to community, right,
and I find something that I like
and, uh, you know, I just I just remix it,
uh, really quickly. In one click, I I have a bunch of skills. Like I mentioned before, skills are like ingredients.
And, you know, if you go to to to some of these skills,
you're gonna see that some of them are so so powerful.
And this is your moat in design because you don't wanna look generic.
You don't wanna have purple gradients. So the only way to do that is, for example,
you you create a skill for lasers.
Okay? So I know it sounds funny, but whenever I create a landing page with lasers, everyone clicks on it. I don't know why,
but people love it so much because they love special effects. Right? If you go to a movie, what you know, you wanna see special effects. You wanna see, you know, the Avengers kind of, you know, doing these grand things.
So
that's the mode. Right? Like, nowadays,
just having the typography,
just having the colors is not enough unless it's a secondary page or unless it's something that is very serious. But if you're talking about a landing page or a promo video or, you know, a slide, you need a moat.
So,
uh, yeah. You know, like, remix super fast, blah blah, you know, like,
uh, you're gonna remix this, click one button, you know, and then do that until you're happy. Once you're done with that with that flow,
then you get into the prompt. Right? So each skill has a prompt, so you can copy this.
And anything all of that stuff, like DesignMD and skills are free.
And, uh, this is not
why you should be paying money. But you you pay money because of tokens.
You pay money for the finished results such as a template,
um, and sort of like the whole sort of automation
and whatnot.
So,
you know, you're gonna go to a template,
you know, like, uh, I don't know. Let let's go to to this one.
And and then
you're gonna download
both the HTML
and the DesignerMD.
The reason why I'm saying HTML is that's, you know, design.md
may not hold all the information
that that you need to keep to create your first result.
It does hold sort of, like, the
typography,
colors, the foundation, the spacing.
Some of them, including my own, holds also the WebGL, which I find for those who don't know, WebGL is the animation
that powers the laser. Right? Without WebGL or Three. Js, which is for three d, you don't have any of that stuff. You only have the typography and some of the reveal animations and some of the rules. So that's why these two elements here for me is really important,
and that's what gives you these beautiful animation that makes your site a lot more unique. It goes from, you know, zero to 50 or 50 to 80 real fast.
And so, yeah, I would download the two of them.
And, you know, back to here, so we already had the demo, so I might as well show you guys.
Uh, on Aura,
you can go to design.md.
This is why where you're gonna find all of this stuff,
the design,
and then you you take something that you like
and you add that to your prompt. So the same way that I download design.md
in HTML, I add it to my prompt,
and now I'm ready
to to tell
what I want for my landing page. So for example, I can say something like,
okay,
create a landing page
for my startup
call,
you know,
I don't know, like,
Aura.
And, uh, I know, really original.
So
and then it's going to be a chat app that is, um,
you know, that that is using AI
and that
ships stuff to people, uh, to their email, whatever.
So let's see what it does. Okay.
So now we have the design.md.
We have the HTML, and then we we're just gonna create it.
Let's hope for the best. But, uh, you know,
it's got this this obviously, you don't have to use Aura. You can just use whatever tool that you want. I just wanted to show you that that's essentially what you're supposed to do. You download
the two files or just a design. M d, however you want that to be, and then you start creating your, uh, your page,
uh, through that system.
And from there,
you can generate more,
you know, elements, more sections,
more because you have the designer.md
always with you. And also, you can bring that to another platform.
It's not specific to one platform.
And what's your take on Google's
Google Stitch? I haven't I haven't gone deep in it.
Right. So
for me, honestly,
as someone who builds a startup
using tokens,
you know, it's it's really unfair, to be honest,
because they they're they're able to give all of these stuff for free.
And I just realized, you you know what? Like, I spent almost half $1,000,000 in token for my startup right now.
Right? It's it's insane.
So, yeah, you can do basically the same thing. Uh, I don't know if this is the correct one,
but, you know, like, uh, create the landing page
for Aura.
And, uh, you know,
you're gonna select web,
and you're gonna select 3.1.
Now
what makes it different
is that it has an infinite canvas.
Oh, I don't know what's going on here,
but it's
it's also doing stuff differently. And this this concept of, like, attaching DesignIMD,
which I feel very strongly about,
is still, like, new to a lot of platforms. So as someone who works in AI, your moat is basically you have to be new. You know? You have like, I I don't I'm sure any anyone can relate,
but
you always when there's a new model that comes, you have to talk about it. Otherwise, you're kind of losing a lot of that sort of edge
that you have all over all of these companies.
So
the same way with tools,
you
you know, and and the same way when you build a start up,
you have to
utilize
all the best technologies and tools.
And in this case, we're using a Designer. Md. It's recreating exactly
that foundation
that we saw on Aura.
And, you know, it's going to create the same consistent design
whether it's from here
or on Aura. Uh, in this case, I used two different designs, so that's why we have two different designs. But if, you know, in this case, I'm using Auralist and the other one, I use the one that I I I click earlier.
But, you know, here, I can just say, you know, create the footer, and it's gonna create, like, add the footer, and it's just gonna create the footer. But you can see the design using this technique gives me exactly what I want. It also, uh, you know, it also
adapted to
my to my design, to my brand, to my copywriting.
And then from here, you can use skills. Right? Like, for example, I I love to use skills like
if you go to skills, copywriting
skill.
So this is going to
improve your copy
by a 100%.
You know, it's gonna look at your text,
and it's going to to make it so much better. So
skills,
Designer. Md,
HTML,
all of these things, if if you merge all of them and blend all of them together,
you create something really, really powerful.
And, you know, to visualize all of this,
you know, this is a new tool that I built, which is called Newform.
You know, you can sort of, like, in one click,
I turn this,
you know, which is a motion design. Right? I go to prompt,
and I have all of these skills that I already saved.
And then I can just click, oh, I want laser. I'm gonna click on laser. And it you know, I can just create another one and another one. So I love the the idea of queuing, which is why we have a different products is because, like, queuing is is such a powerful idea that I use all the time. Nowadays, I create, like, three, four products. At the same time, I have, like, multiple chats
with sub agents on on across all of them. So that's why, you know, I I wanted to create something way more focused on the creative aspect. And on top of that, we also have the remix type. Again, all of these are prompts, by the way. Like, I'm I'm not, like, you know, keeping anything behind closed doors. You don't have to use my tools at all. But, you know, I just wanted to show you visually how how it is like
to turn something into mobile.
Right? Or, you know, if I go here to mobile,
you're gonna see that I have
turned my designs into mobile design.
Beautiful. You know, I mean, if you look at this, it's hard to tell if this is made by a human
or by AI, but I can guarantee you a 100%
that this was made by AI. And from here, I can just say, okay. I want a slide deck. Okay. I want,
you know, a motion design.
I want
the hero section of a know? And then I'm doing six design at the same time, which is so good so good for the creativity.
It kinda reminds me of how mid journey works.
You know, on mid journey, you kind of
I haven't used mid journey in, a year and a half maybe, but, like, that that concept around you can, like, generate multiple things.
And what's really cool about this is, like, you get into this flow state of, like, okay. I want this. I want that. I'm gonna queue this up,
and it's really fun.
I I agree. Like, the concept of queuing is not new per se. I'm I'm just saying, you know, a lot of the things that we do
see here, it just transformed into mobile. And a lot of the things we do can just be transferred so easily because we have this this concept of, like, skills
and design. Md.
Right? Yeah. So, you know, uh, one of your guests, for example, was talking and he's he he calls himself, like, a a skills maxi, which I find it really funny because I totally agree. Like, for me, I don't put anything in my agents.md
because I have my design.md,
which I use per project,
and then I have my skills, which I use per workflow.
And if you only change the agent.md,
oftentimes,
you know first of all it costs a lot more tokens but also it's too general like it doesn't apply to every single workflow out there so here I added the laser
and here I turn it into a slide
you know like again it's so so fun to
queue and to sort of, like, expand your creativity
across all of this stuff. So you have something like Aura Lovable VZero, which allows you to chat and sort of, like, evolve into something
into a product.
But I think what people sort of, uh, underestimate a lot is the design aspect which is, you know, how do you come up with new sections that are unique.
Right? How do you, uh,
you know, work on the creativity and how do you learn about all of this stuff?
Because if you don't
learn this stuff, you know, you're you're just focusing so much on the chat and you're just chat chatting chatting and then giving commands in the AI. The AI do do all the work for you, then you're not making any decision
or at least you're not making the best decision for your product.
Can you quickly go back? I'm just curious more than anything, like, the skills section of Newform, I think it's called.
Yes. Like, it's what happens when I click there?
Yes. So you have access to
right now, have 63 skills, but I'm adding more every day. So for example, you have a skill for skeuomorphic design. For those who don't know, skeuomorphic design is kind of like the the realistic design that Apple used to use before the flat design.
And
it's a prompt. It's just a prompt and you can copy this prompt and you can just tell
your agent
to use,
uh, you know, to use this skill
and then to apply that. So for example, you're gonna have something a little bit more
embossing,
know, something like like this design for example.
You know, it has
some of these, you know, shading and stuff like that. A lot of people still love that. I love that when it makes sense. So for example, if you do like a DJ app, you might want something with a little bit more realistic.
You want a button that is lickable as Steve Jobs says, well, yeah, you need a skeuomorphic design. Right? And we also have a skill for, uh, you know, for the three d.
So, you know, this this little globe here that you put, well, that's three d and then you can move that on top of the text which makes it look really nice.
So a lot of like, every skill
can be anything, you know, it can be like a batch design,
uh, like this one,
and you can have, uh, you know, all of these are also copyable. So for example, if you only want just the colors, can just copy the colors or just want the typography.
So not only do you learn how to sort of like add to your arsenal all of these keywords that you did what is font smoothing, what is sound font, what is system font, what is a body font, or what is the secondary color, what is a secondary button. So all of these things are really
useful when
you, you know, chat with your AI agents
and, you know, sometimes I condense it into just one word. Okay. Fix the spacing. Fix the gap. You know? Fix this. Fix that. And it's just so powerful to learn all of this stuff because it's all part of the Designer. MD and it it holds so much richness
to how you can manage your design.
And it must be cool for you because you've been, you know, you've been teaching designers
for years now and these are, you know, mostly,
I mean,
trained designers.
Now anyone
is a designer.
That's such a good point, honestly.
You know,
when when I first started, nobody was using like, most designers were not coding.
And nowadays, everyone is coding including nondesigners.
Uh, you know, before, like, ten, twenty years ago, everyone was using Photoshop
and then Sketch and then Figma.
But nowadays, everyone is a designer, and everyone is kind of, like, downloading a template or an HTML or a design. M d, and then suddenly they have the most beautiful landing page.
Sure. They one shot it. Sure. They don't know how to change it or make it better,
but they still have an amazing one shot,
you know, one shot
prompt.
Uh, but what I wanna teach here is the whole workflow so that you don't end up with just a one shot shot thing. And how do you you know, can you guess how many prompts that I use to build these products?
Just give me a number. How many prompts do you think I use?
It's definitely not one shot.
I don't know. A couple dozen?
Twenty? Twenty five?
At least a thousand.
Yes. This is how obsessive
one can be Wow. When it comes to creating. Yes.
Like,
I'm building four products right now,
you know,
Aura,
Newform.
Well, this I don't really count it as a product.
I have DreamCut,
which I'm gonna be real revealing soon. It's a Mac app.
And,
you know, I'm also rebuilding design code from scratch.
So four product all at once, and I'm not even including a side product like this one, which, honestly,
I love using it just because I'm able to tell my agent to write everything for me, and I'm able to just generate these images, these YouTube covers using
a history of my portrait that I save into this because there's no tool that does this. Right? Like, you you build tools
literally because nothing else is doing it. And there's nothing else that has a slider that says,
okay. I want this to be exactly or I want this to be loosely inspired.
Like, have you seen this UI before? I've never seen that. And I see a lot of products.
Exactly.
Yeah. And the the only reason why you we're able to kind of get there is because we're building something for ourselves.
Right?
And it's
such a powerful thing. So if you look at the whole workflow, right, you you start with a reference. Every every designer, every someone who starts drawing something,
they always copy first. They always start with reference to design the MD or in in most cases, they're just taking, like, copying a prompt some somewhere. And then we generate, we inspect,
and then eventually using the designer MDU systemize.
And then like I said, you iterate. This is where I get, like, to a thousand iterations.
And then you, you know, and then you remix it to turn it into more
mediums such as the slide, you need marketing material, Instagram slides,
promo videos, you need like intros, you need,
you know, something for your hyperframes or for your remotion.
Whatever it is, you're essentially remixing at this point because you're
happy.
Because you you've done a thousand iterations,
you're happy with your product, you're happy where it's going, you you feel there's a salt to it. Because I think most people, what they tend to forget is that humans, they don't see the soul across the screen.
We do.
Okay. We like, we're innate to that. When you you you can feel I don't know how how to say it, but Steve Jobs said it very well. When you use a product
and when you really, like, take a magnifier and you look into it, you really feel the care that is put into it. It's not because we have AI
that we we can just skip all of that care. Right?
It just happens that that care is now residing into the prompting and the sort of the workflow,
the club, the, you know, the open claw,
you know, the things, the thousand iterations that I do.
I've never worked more more in my entire life on more products
on on, like, on more problems in my entire life than now.
AI is not making me lazier. AI is making me more work more.
And, yeah, you know, and, you know, we we get into the expansion
and we export our product and it becomes like a final product that we can ship.
So
iteration
versus remix.
This is a very important concept. Like I like I mentioned in my slider,
iteration is when you're happy with the result and you wanna kind of like boost small incrementations.
And remix is when you wanna, you know, build a new product category, for example.
So I love the idea of iteration more, and I use this, I would say, 90% of the time and 10% of the time.
And then, yeah, I already did the did the demo. Okay.
So we can talk about what designer what what has changed for designers.
So what what I believe is that everything is changing,
and we're doing a lot less of the
moving pixels,
moving rectangle and resizing
things. We're doing a lot more judgment per minute.
In fact,
you know, for me, the agent is more like someone who's, uh, doing a lot of the sort of the moving pixels and the coding,
and then I have to make the right decisions.
I remember the CEO of Amazon was saying like if you make a really good, like one powerful decision in a day or a few powerful, then that changes your entire business. And I think, you know, I agree with that. You have to make these extremely powerful decisions
and also you have to make these incredibly
small decisions as well just because the AI is not intelligent enough to make the smaller decisions yet.
But eventually it's gonna get bigger and bigger. The decision is gonna become bigger and bigger.
Um, and then, you know, that's kind of what's changed. We're we're shifting
our, uh, you know, our creativity and
we're shifting to something that is more,
you know,
uh, looking for a high level. I've never done more marketing in my life. I've never done more YouTube videos in my life or or slides and and promo videos.
So yeah, this is what's changed. We're we're now everyone's like a creator, everyone's like an Instagram,
you know, a filmmaker
of some sort. So this is, you know, I think this is what's what's happening.
There's so many ideas
that we can create.
And,
yeah, you know, don't wanna get too too deep into the slides. I wanna get to your questions, obviously.
Yeah. I think, you know, just your point around, like,
you've never done more in your life. I think what's also interesting is, like,
you're you're a team of one. Am I is that correct? Like,
is that am I correct? I'm I'm a team of many, but not because of what I'm doing right now. Right now, I'm kind of like a team of one. Like, all of these products I'm showing right now is me building them by myself.
Yeah. But the reason why I still have a team is because I started in the days of Design Code and I built this team that I grew really fond of. They started from nothing. They haven't gone to school like myself. Haven't
gone to school to study design.
I drop out of college
and then I learned everything on the field. I started my first job at 18 and then you know started my first company at 22.
So you know
a lot of like everyone in my team started from nothing
And, uh, you know, I feel very
attached to them, which is why I have them with me. But you're right. You know? Like, all like, all of these products, I started by myself. I work on them for a month, a thousand iterations,
maybe more to to some some of them 10,000 iterations
and, uh, I arrive to a point where it's mature enough
and then we get to the team to to build templates and videos and and and sort of like the material
that expands on that.
And,
you know, I came across this this quote, this fake quote from Steve Jobs on his on his final,
you know, bed,
you know, when when he, uh, he he was passing.
It's it's apparently, it's a fake one, but it was saying, like, if you wanna go if you wanna go really fast, you start alone. You start solo.
But if you wanna go far,
you need to be in a team.
So that's what I think right now. Like, most of us, we start
solo because we cannot go any faster. Right? We we're, like, operating a fleet of, you know, ten, twenty agents
all at once,
and that's great.
But eventually,
you need to get people with you. You you know, you need to be part of a mission, and then you need to sort of sort of like,
you know, make these videos that feel more authentic because people crave authenticity.
They want real people. They want real craftsmanship
behind all of these pixel art at some point because,
you know, the cracks are gonna show if you only use AI the, you know, the whole way.
Yeah. I think there's I think there's two types of people. I think there's
the first type of person, which is what you're saying, which is like, go build product market fit, start scaling, and then from there hire a team. And the second type of person is the person
who just loves being a lone wolf, you know, who just loves doing everything themselves.
And I think what's cool about what you're doing,
you know, you're essentially building a holding company of products as a one person business.
Yes, you you know, some some of your businesses you're scaling with, you know, with people and stuff like that, but you know, the majority of it is is being run by one person, and
you couldn't do that a few years ago. And I think more importantly than, you know, within the context of this episode, it's like you're creating
beautiful
products. Like, these products that you're creating are stunning.
They're nuanced.
They look really good. And I wanna end just with, you know, what what you know, in terms of
building beautiful products,
you know, we talked about DesignMD.
We talked about skills. We talked about a lot of these other tools, Variant, Aura,
some of the new tools you're working on.
Is there anything else you wanna leave people with in terms of how you can create jaw dropping designs?
Yeah. So like I said, your only moat
is you being able to catch up with what is going on. Because if you look at everything that is legacy,
that is already solved with all of these big companies that have millions and and nowadays hundreds of millions in the bank to tackle
on these big things. So as people who are starting new ideas,
the only mode that we have right now is just we can, you know, just click a button and we can say,
we'll you know, we found this new model. It literally,
uh, cooked all the designers and whatnot.
Uh, it's funny. I know. I know we all hate it and it it becomes a meme,
but at the same time, it it reflects the reality in which we are today,
which is that
that's how we survive as a space sheet. Right?
We cannot compete anymore with the big companies and we have so many ideas in our head and we can finally realize them with just a few prompts
at at least to get to an MVP.
And that is usually, uh,
good enough to launch a product. And there's just so many ideas
because of it. So for example, Design. Md just came out and I already built like a bunch of features.
And I could totally build a startup out of that if I wanted to.
Right?
Uh, QA,
right? Uh, design,
uh, memory, uh, this is what's solved a lot by by OpenClaw nowadays is when when the idea is like it has the whole memory inside your disk, inside your computer.
You know, reusable taste marketplace. And I wanna leave with one final thing which is that
taste
is
the real value here.
And when I say taste, I don't necessarily just mean design taste. Obviously, design taste is very is very cool and is very powerful and I think that's my secret sauce. But for a lot of people, your taste
can be, you know, like if you look at Barista, the taste of going of making so many cup cup of copies every morning,
you eventually knows exactly how to do it. Taste in coding,
taste in building apps. You have to
just be surrounded by good design. Right? You have to look at good designs, not just be served by it, but also to look for it everywhere.
You have to use every app in your niche. You have to follow every,
uh, you know, makers and creators in your niche.
And niche is the keyword here because you cannot compete anymore
with people who are generalized. It's too difficult.
Nowadays, we want authenticity,
we want niche, we want taste,
and if something looks like another thing,
it it kind of reduced the value by like almost 10 to a 100 x in my opinion. Right? Like nowadays I see a website with purple gradient I'm like I don't wanna I don't wanna even wanna scroll anymore and I'm sure a lot of people feel the same way when we see like a website that looks just like another one. So yeah develop your taste, rinse and repeat,
you know, follow what's going on and you know,
get get that to that moat that you have
and learn the workflow. Like everything that I taught here, get your designer MD,
get the the templates,
learn about the skills and the prompting behind the skills,
and then I think you're gonna be doing just fine. Mhmm. I love that. I also think
a lot of us have second brains for our notes, our meeting notes, ideas that we have, but a lot of us don't have a second brain for design inspiration.
So
I think the idea of when you see something in the real world or on the digital world where you're like, this is really cool,
capturing that and putting it somewhere
where
you're like, you can you know, when you're when you're trying to create something new, you can refer back to your second brain for creative inspiration. What do you think about that?
A 100%. I mean,
I think whether you call it a second brain or your creative side of the brain or, you know, something that keeps you going because, you know, we crave purpose.
We crave to be praised.
And you cannot get if you you cannot get there, uh, you know, you can get not get to that purpose
if you don't somehow get excited by it and and kind of explore something new and adapt to a new reality.
And I I think, like I said, taste is so so important.
This is where we develop that we make all of these micro decisions super quickly.
Uh, in in an instant, you can tell right away if the design is good or not or if there's a care behind it or not. You know, you touch like a phone, like an iPhone, and you're like, you feel right away this is extremely high quality and you wanna use this, uh, as your, you know, as your main daily driver. So,
yeah, you know, please use your your your creative brain. Please use your second brain. Please use your,
uh, you know, your taste
every step of the way, and don't don't let AI do everything for you.
And even if you do let AI do a lot of things for you, make sure that it's part of the workflow that you already mastered.
Right?
Meng, I appreciate you coming on. I'll include links where you can follow Meng
to get some creative inspiration
as well as links for some of the tools he's working on that you can go and play with. Go check it out in the description, in the show notes. Thank you so much for coming on.
I hope you come back on soon again.
When when Google or, you know, or, uh, you know, OpenAI and Cloud come up with something new about design, I'll be happy to come on again. I'm I'm super, super honored to come here. You're you're a good friend of mine. You also come from the same town as me. You speak French like me, or at least your family do. So it's always a pleasure, Greg, and thank you so much. This means the world to me. I appreciate you, man. I'll catch you later.
Alright. Bye bye.