Works But Makes Noises

We're going full World Cup fan-mode this week. We make some personal picks for the tournament and talk best and worst of the national team kits. Also in the world of public and civic branding projects, we call out some personal do's and don'ts related to the week's most-commented design RFP: NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani's call for branding NYC's new public grocery stores....

This week we're getting moooooody – moodboards, that is! First we talk David's new iOS app Archiv , which lets you photograph and catalogue what's around you. Then we wade into the thorny world of design inspiration, copying, and downright plagiarism, vague posting without credit, and the blurry line between inspiration and theft. We tackle wether moodboards are lazy shortcuts, expl...

This week we're joined by Estee Kim , VP of Design at Soft Services , the cult-favorite body care brand known for its meticulous design and packaging. We talk on multi-generational design families, her parents’ graphic design and signage shop in Philadelphia, and her grandmother Rose's collage practice. Estee walks us through Soft Services’ design philosophy; how they capture sensory exp...

electric car shopping and EV tradeoffs, figma comments and modern design feedback, fragmented feedback across tools, structuring better client critique, feedback psychology and confidence, figma shortcuts and workflows, productivity tools we don’t use, are.na websites and spatial, caveman codex, spring in upstate New York https://www.44xdesign.com/spatial https://tiny.garden/sites by @gndclouds WI...

surf forecasting tools and building personal software, jacob’s 70’s surf rack archive and design lineage, figma config branding and pushing beyond the parent brand, using ai to study and learn through narrative instead of memorization, planning a retreat for type designers and the limits of structured “fun” https://www.infinitemachine.com/ https://jheftmann.github.io/wavekit/ https://config.figma....

This week we’re joined by Allan Yu , designer and co-founder of community messaging app, Output . He previously worked as an early designer at Svpply, a cult favorite among designers, and later at Google Labs, Meta, and Shopify. We talk on designer to founder reality checks, pivoting your startup (again and again), Svpply nostalgia, type foundry UX rants,  building a Discord for normal people, des...

Robot vacuum fleets, Claude code experiments, Personal SaaSpocalypse, closed loop design workflows, building before designing, design is the bottleneck, pushing to prod, the death of wireframes, grey box trauma, and unlearning the process. David McGillivray is a designer and creative director in upstate New York, designing for early stage tech companies through his own practice . He also co-founde...

Ive's Ferrari collab, tactile design, electric performance, AI copycats, creative IP, opt-in consent, database tools vs model training, human-washed tech, the Granola rebrand, analog aesthetics, faux authenticity, proof of humanity, OpenAI vs Anthropic, authenticity vs costume. Jony Ive x Ferrari https://www.highsnobiety.com/p/ferrari-luce-jony-ive-marc-newson-lovefrom/ Stripe Sessions: Jony...

How to pay off sleep debt, ancient internships, should designers c*de? design engineers, teaching at RISD and Parsons, experimental branding briefs and constraint-led projects, what design school doesn’t teach, archives versus mood boards, Arena as a second brain, collecting and scanning physical references, folk packaging and diner placemats, obscure illustrators and forgotten ephemera, taste as...

The 52" monitor, home-cooked software, claude code, vibe coding, personal tools, craft, authenticity and imperfection, authorship and taste, designing without scale, having an independent design practice, freelancing vs studios, building a career on your own terms. Tesla Optimus Fail https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/1pfzxt0/tesla_optimus/ Dell's Big Boy https://www.engadget....

Snowstorms in the Catskills, Jacob’s month on the North Shore, selling the Audi and becoming a full-time Subaru guy, mechanics doing power slides in your car, talking lamps and unhinged home robots, Terminator bots and the sci-fi week online, Apple entering a new design era, Google’s Nano-Banana and AI faking sketchbooks, Bloom and the rise of brand-asset generators, the new CNBC logo mess, Utah 2...

Ten foot skeletons, Gen Z nonchalance vs. Millennial effortfulness,  Zohran's campaign design, Al Gore was the worst client. Links mentioned in the show Zohran Mamdani’s Campaign Logo Looked Nothing Like a Campaign Logo https://www.curbed.com/article/zohran-mamdani-campaign-logo-graphic-design.html Fully automated 'private chef' https://x.com/miyuselene/status/1982517846124192011?s=...

Surfing in Mexico, Gap is back, having a personal ‘uniform’, Electric Bikes, NYC Subway design, AI slop (oh no), edible rocks, 90’s ad agency offices, naming things. David McGillivray is a designer and creative director in upstate New York, designing for early stage tech companies through his own practice . He also co-founded Offhours and runs Corners , an art and design store in the Catskills. Ja...

New Grillitype launches, social battery collapse, Palermo wedding gossip, buying a 2008 Subaru on Facebook Marketplace, DMV purgatory, LL Bean collab trim, new iPhone and AirPods takes, AI brand builders, Jacob hates moodboards, designer existentialism David McGillivray is a designer and creative director in upstate New York, designing for early stage tech companies through his own practice . He a...

Catskills nervous system reset, tiny New York party memories, birthday art pilgrimages, Mass MoCA, basic-taste art confessions, work-life blur, Apple event ambivalence, light-phone fantasies David McGillivray is a designer and creative director in upstate New York, designing for early stage tech companies through his own practice . He also co-founded Offhours and runs Corners , an art and design s...