Remember spending hours studying the UI and interactions in these?

These apps introduced patterns we’re all familiar with today:

Tweetie invented pull-to-refresh:

Path popularised the floating compose button:

- Mailbox introduced horizontal swipe-based email actions.

Rdio popularised the flat, translucent aesthetic:

Clear pushed gesture-first interactions further than any other app at the time:

However, when it comes to product/business success, arguably only Tweetie made it (acquired by Twitter and became its official app):

• Path, Tweetbot, and Paper shut down.

• Mailbox and Rdio teams were acquired, but the products were shut down.

• Flipboard and Clear are still around but never became hugely successful.

These apps changed how we interact with software today. But they also show that great craft/design doesn’t necessarily predict or guarantee product or business success.

The current design workflow reminds me of how we worked 20 years ago.

Back then, we used Photoshop, a photo editing app, to design interfaces. We used Flash, an animation app, to build websites.

Now we’re using Terminal and IDEs like Cursor and VSCode to design.

In both cases, we use tools that were not intended for designers but ended up being the best way to do our work. Then and now, the high friction of bending non-design tools to design work is worth the gain in output.

However, while designers always put so much focus on their tools, tools were never the long-term edge for designers.

writes:

Tools have never been a significant source of alpha in product success and that is not changing with AI tools.

The same is true for design. In the long term, everybody switches from Photoshop to Sketch, from Sketch to Figma, and so on.

Eventually, everyone will catch up, even with the AI tools.

Zoom out, and you’ll see that your advantage was always in your judgement, agency, and ability to work well with other people – never in tools.

If you’re enjoying my writing, check out my books.

Over the years, we've seen what I call Figmaism – an obsession with tooling and visuals at the expense of other (and often more important) skills.

We knew hard skills are only a fraction of designers’ competencies, but we still kept talking mostly about new Figma features and creating visuals to impress other designers (instead of customers).

One reason is a defence mechanism - it's easier to hang out in Figma than to face KPIs, OKRs, and roadmaps (AKA the things that actually matter).

Designers shouldn’t be surprised that design is being reduced to output because they helped create that reduction.

So if designers failed to make the case when the profession had more leverage, I’m not sure why we expect others to buy it now.

When you’re employed, it’s easy to blame PMs who “don’t listen to designers”, the company for not being “design-driven”, and executives for not giving you a seat at the table.

When you start a business, all of that disappears. All these obstacles, real or imaginary, are gone. You probably think this is when you finally feel unchained and reach the design nirvana.

In reality, you will go through these three phases:

1. You realise you can’t afford design

In my previous venture, my co-founder and I spent $50K of our own money on engineers. In my current venture, I develop it myself – spending my time instead. That's when you really learn about prioritisation.

When you are the one paying for it – with money out of your pocket or with your time – you think ten times about what’s important to build.

When you realise that you can’t afford many aspects of design, you start cutting things. Things you used to get into fights over with your PMs suddenly seem unimportant.

2. You panic

Your product starts looking much worse than you’re capable of. In your previous life, when you saw a product like yours, you would have thought whoever built it was a mediocre designer with little taste.

But now, suddenly, that person is you.

So this is when you panic and start fearing you’ll lose the respect of other designers.

3. You accept the ego death (or not)

But you start noticing something else – your customers don’t miss the things you cut. You realise there is a gap between what matters to customers and to designers.

That’s when you face the choice: hold on to the respect of other designers, or accept the ego death and prioritise your customers and your business.

Only if you can let go will your business have a chance.

***

Designers who went through this will always be more valuable as employees. They know what matters and what doesn’t, so they do higher-leverage work. And in healthy organisations, that's what gets rewarded.

If you don’t want to start a business, you can learn these lessons on a smaller scale with lower stakes by starting a side project.

If you’re looking for inspiration and ideas for a side business, check out my book Generating Product Ideas.

It’s good to be reminded of the power we have. But I think it’s gone too far.

For years, designers were brainwashed with the “you’re making the world a better place”, which has created a gap between how they imagine their work and how it actually is.

Designers want the privileges of those who changed the world, simply because other designers did. Many designers end up believing that (only) they understand what people need, while everyone else is just greedy or incompetent.

Sometimes they might even be right. But this mix of idealism and elitism leaves designers frustrated, burned out, and hating their jobs.

I believe any designer can become more effective, enjoy their work more, and increase their impact by reflecting on three things.

#1 - Designers aren’t special

The reputation of the tech industry is getting worse. Some designers feel frustrated or even uncomfortable being associated with the industry.

However, it isn’t new and may have nothing to do with tech. Designers have felt dissociated and often “above all that” for decades.

In 1964, the First Things First Manifesto was published and received widespread support in the design community.

In the manifesto, designers complained that their profession is mostly utilised to sell more consumer goods instead of ‘other things more worth using our skill and experience on: signs for streets and buildings, books and periodicals, catalogues, instructional manuals, industrial photography, educational aids […]”

These are great aspirations. However, they apply to any profession. So why do we never see engineers, accountants, or copywriters publishing such manifestos? What is so unique about designers? Why do they feel special?

Designers may think: “It’s because we have a strong community / greater integrity / a better understanding of what business needs.” This thinking may even reinforce the feeling of being special.

In any case, it becomes clear that there is a gap between how designers imagine or wish their work or profession to be and the reality.

Scott Berkun writes:

“What I learned when I switched from UX to a project leadership role is: no one cares. Most of the common arguments UX folks use are noise. As a leader I was up to my neck in problems. If someone showed up at my door with a solution, they quickly got support and resources.

“Alternatively, if they asked for things like seats at tables, or lectured me about fighting for the user, without solving project level problems, they were easier to ignore. Why? Everyone in the organization wants power and influence, but few help solve important problems.”

While doing research for my recent book, I read a few books on career growth for engineers. If you replace the word ‘engineer’ with ‘designer’, 99% of the problems described in these books would still apply. And still, designers often feel that they are the only ones who need to fight “to get a seat at the table,” “to get into the room,” and secure resources, etc.

The moment designers stop feeling special and expecting special treatment might be exactly what will help them get a seat at the table and be taken seriously.

#2 - Design isn’t enough

“Build the best product, and they will come” is the mantra designers love to believe. Partially because it gives designers a sense of self-importance.

But if you ever start a business, you will quickly realise it isn’t true. In fact, you can get that reality check even by just launching your side project. After the initial traction from a semi-viral tweet and Product Hunt launch fades, you will realise that no one knows about or cares about your product.

The conclusion designers default to is that their product just isn’t good enough yet. But the reality is that ‘changing the world’ you were promised as a designer is a privilege that is rare and dependent on the functions that some designers like to hate.

If you’re willing to reflect honestly on such an experience, you may realise how lucky you are to have a creative job, while others figure out how to get customers and make money so you can keep doing what you love – designing.

#3 - It’s not a contest (anymore)

In design school, you present to designers, get critiqued by designers, and are graded by designers. But once you get a job, that's over. The opinions of other designers matter far less. What matters is your ability to sell ideas to non-designers.

But still, designers (including myself) often fall into the trap of optimising for peer validation.

Instead of focusing on customers, we think about how other designers will judge our work - internally at design critiques or externally on X/LinkedIn/Dribbble and design awards.

Nassim Taleb writes:

«Professions thrive when their work is judged by “skin in the game” – the real world, customers, markets, or survival. They decay when quality is defined and judged internally by peers, panels, or award committees.»

This dynamic isn’t unique to designers - architects plan buildings loved by other architects, and creating films and books can become awards-driven, etc.

A healthy amount of peer validation can help your career by increasing your visibility and getting job referrals. But the companies worth working for will always judge you on merit.

Impressing other designers is more predictable and easier than impressing customers, but the latter is the only judgment that will matter in the long term.

Outro

Brian Chesky, whom I mentioned at the beginning, is a designer who changed the world. But he couldn't have done it without internalising these lessons.

Instead of demanding a seat at the table, he built his own – something designers avoid.

Instead of over-optimising for design, he applied design principles to growth, sales, and marketing.

Instead of clinging to the idealist vision of a community-driven platform where strangers rent out their spare bedrooms, he let the market lead. Today, roughly 75% of Airbnb listings are managed by businesses — something many designers would resent him for.

If designers want to change the world, maybe the best thing they can do is show that they care about it — and are useful to it — more than about the opinions of other designers and their own ego.

If you’ve enjoyed my writing, check out my books.

In May 2025, YC published a memo calling for more design founders. I looked into the data and checked if it helped them get more designers (and hopefully encouraged more designers to start companies).

I analysed 15 YC batches between 2020 and 2025 and how many of the participating founders are designers.

First of all, the call for more design founders hasn’t led to an increase (but to be fair, there was only one batch since the call).

In addition, across all metrics between 2020 and 2025, the design participation is down:

1. Fewer companies have designer founders (both in absolute and relative numbers).

2. The total number of designer founders is trending down (despite a larger overall designer pool than in 2020).

3. In 2025, only 1.6% of founders at YC were designers. Assuming designers are more than 1.6% of the tech workforce (which they likely are), they are underrepresented.

You may think that YC is just one accelerator, and it’s not representative. You might be correct. But if the biggest and most successful startup accelerator in the world can’t get more design founders, who can?

Designers are often frustrated with how design is perceived and how organisations function. According to Noam Segal’s analysis, designers are the most burned-out role (which strongly correlates with quitting intentions).

So why don't more designers take the opportunity to make it their way, start their own company and finally show how it should be done?

I have my speculations, but before I publish them, I’d like to hear yours.

Lovable, v0, Bolt, Replit, Cursor, etc, use the same LLM models. These tools charge a premium for convenience. The easier it is to set up, the higher the price.

For example, Lovable provides infrastructure like a domain, URL, database, and hosting. But once you start building and writing code with it, Lovable will be 10x more expensive than Cursor or Claude Code that do not provide infrastructure.

I’m happy to pay for convenience. But at some point, the price difference became too big, especially considering I’d spend most of my day in Replit.

90% of my bill with Replit, Lovable, v0 was for tokens to write code and not for infrastructure. So eventually I came to this setup:

1. Use Replit for infrastructure only (hosting, database, domain, etc.)

2. Use Cursor for building (10x cheaper than Replit for writing code)

This lowered my costs by 10x but still allowed easy setup.

You can open Cursor from Replit. All code you write with Cursor will be pushed directly to Replit via SSH:

I just hope Replit won’t block Cursor, since they’re competitors.

It is perfectly fine to decide that being on the cutting edge of design is not your priority. But if it is, you’re less likely to see it by looking at other full-time designers.

For example, I see designers comment on posts about vibe-coding: «But my PM would never approve X» or «It still doesn’t do Y».

But that’s exactly the point. If a workflow already works in a company like yours, you’re just catching up.

The same designers were saying:

• «Our VP will never approve switching from Photoshop to some Mac-only app built by some guys in Europe with no funding», until they did.

• “No way we will switch to a browser-based design tool that doesn’t even allow me to own my files”, until they did.

From whom to learn

In Silicon Valley, they say, “To know the future, see what the nerds are tinkering on weekends.”

In design, the “nerds” or early adopters are not FAANG designers. They’re freelancers, agency owners, and design founders. Two reasons why:

1. They can experiment without approval and with less friction.

2. They have a higher economic incentive to do so. (If a freelancer saves 1 hour, they make $100-200 more, while a full-time designer earns the same)

For example, in 2013, when I had an agency, we used Photoshop for client work, but started using Sketch for internal projects. In fact, it was my technical co-founder who suggested trying it because he felt he could finally use a design tool himself (while Photoshop was too overwhelming for him).

In my current product, I started it in Figma, built it in Lovable, realised it’s too expensive and not actually good, switched to Cursor and eventually migrated to Replit. No one could tell me no.

Right now, a freelancer is building a side project with the workflow you’ll use in the future.

People to follow

I didn’t prepare a curated list of people to follow, but someone on LinkedIn asked me to give some examples. Here are some random picks:

• https://x.com/gizakdag

• https://x.com/0xcharlota

• https://x.com/thenickpattison

• https://x.com/soleio

• https://x.com/round

• https://x.com/dannpetty

• https://x.com/kevintwohy

Never forget how lucky you are.

I assumed companies are most likely to need branding right after incorporation. So I wanted to reach out to freshly incorporated tech companies with personalised logo options.

How I automated it:

1. Get a list of companies — Go to UK Companies House (they also have an API).

2. Filter for the right companies — Search for tech companies (SIC code: 62012) incorporated in the last 14 days and export their addresses.

3. Create logos — Vibe-code a logo generator using their company name (this already existed in my product), and export as PDF.

4. Send letters — Upload the PDFs to a service like Pingen to print and ship them (~$2 per letter in the UK).

Results

The point of this post is to show how I used vibe-coding not only for building my core product but also in marketing.

But if you’re curious about the results of the experiment itself, it failed on the numbers. We offer branding for $19, so customer acquisition cost can’t be higher than that.

• I sent 30 letters; 4 were undeliverable.

• I could only track the QR code—it got 1 scan.

• At least one recipient completed the full funnel but abandoned at payment.

However, if I were an agency looking for projects and could afford a higher CAC, I would continue experimenting with this channel. For example:

• Geography — I targeted UK businesses. As an agency, I’d try to go local. Other countries may also have better open rates (I’d expect close to 100% in Germany), and printing and shipping costs are lower there ($1.6).

• Business types—I targeted only tech companies, I’d test other industries.

I looked at both B2C and B2B tech companies designers often use as references: Airbnb, Stripe, Basecamp, Intercom, Squarespace, Shopify, etc.

One thing I noticed is that web design aesthetics peaked (or plateaued) in 2014-2015.

The websites below, designed 10 years ago, would probably work and convert well even today:

Every December, we see a Medium post about the «5 Web Design Trends for 20XX».

All of them have repeated for the last 10 years: big typography, expressive colors, gradients, immersive experience, minimalism, etc.

And we, as designers, love that stuff. Because it adds some excitement and freshness to our work and maybe even helps us feel important. In a way, these trends help us stay busy and have jobs.

But eventually, we always go back to the foundations.

The same designers following trends often praise Dieter Rams, but ignore one of his ten principles:

“Good design is long-lasting. It avoids being fashionable and therefore never appears antiquated. Unlike fashionable design, it lasts many years — even in today’s throwaway society.”

By following a trend, we intentionally set an expiration date for our work and are more likely to waste org’s resources + be embarrassed by our portfolio in 2 years.

Some of the aesthetic design trends I see remind me of fast fashion. It makes products feel fresh for a second and irrelevant shortly afterward. By contrast, getting a more timeless piece — even when it’s more expensive — would save you time spent shopping, create less waste, and save you money in the long term.

In fast fashion, the goal of creating short-term trends is to maximize profits by creating more demand among customers. It almost feels like, in our industry, the aesthetic trends’ customers are often the designers themsevles and not the customers or businesses.

I’m forcing myself to avoid design trends, and it has helped my work to hold up even after 5-10 years.

I wrote about creating timeless design in my last book, The Path to Staff Product Designer.

I feel that we might have come full circle. YouTubers "upgrade" their studios to look more "professional".

To me, it does the opposite of improving trust:

• The left looks like he has been in the trenches and is about to teach what he learned.

• The right is about to ask me to sign up for Skillshare or AG1 using his link to get 20% off. Also, he is more likely to be AI.

IMO video-gen tools like HeyGen will soon offer more avatars like the guy on the left to look more "authentic".

More examples of a 'resistance trend': “AI-powered” is a flex now, but soon “Human-powered” will be the next flex.

More niche examples: skeuomorphic design, dumb phones, vintage clothes, owning servers instead of AWS, handwritten marketing letters, physical to-do lists over apps, etc.

I find that spotting these resistance trends is fun – and often good for business.

P.S. The “bad quality video” also connects to the “anti-aesthetics” trend.

I’ve noticed it again and again: If you swap the word “engineer” for “designer,” 99 % of the advice still applies. In career planning, collaboration, and politics, designers aren't unique in most of their struggles.

However, there are ~10x more engineers than designers worldwide, so there are naturally more (and better) resources for them.

So, to escape the daily "8 tips for your portfolio" posts, follow engineering, business, and product people. Read books and subscribe to newsletters by non-designers (e.g. , , , Lara Hogan, Kate Huston).

Extra benefits of this approach:

1. Beyond a certain point in your career, the ROI of learning about engineering/business/else is higher than doubling down on design.

2. Some aspects of the design role were taken from other roles (e.g. the dual career track from engineering), so you can see what's coming before it reaches design.

Example for management

If you're considering becoming a design manager, the best materials to read are books for software engineering managers. For example:

• Become an Effective Software Engineering Manager

• Engineering Management for the Rest of Us

• The Manager's Path: A Guide for Tech Leaders Navigating Growth and Change

To grow your design career, check out my books for progression to senior and beyond.

1. Replit/Lovable/Cursor are incredibly hard to use for visual changes

This is how it feels to use Replit/Lovable/v0/Bolt/Cursor as a designer:

These tools are amazing, but often it takes longer to adjust the visuals than to build the functionality.

Chat isn't the right interface for changing spacing, grid, or layout. I assume (and hope) it's just a matter of time before they launch better design editors.

2. Visual skeuomorphism is easier with AI

One reason flat design took off: it lowered the barrier to creating apps. UI design was hard, making a mobile app icon was practically an art form.

More people in the world are capable of designing an icon on the right than on the left:

Now that AI makes complex visuals easier, theoretically, it's easier for skeuomorphism (or the “3D style” of it) to be brought back.

3. Taste as designers’ edge

Designers hope taste will stay their edge in the future. Mainly because it keeps them in their comfort zone.

It's easier to keep focusing on pixels than face KPIs, OKRs, people, and politics.

However, the problem-solving in design will change soon, too. According to studies, all UX usability issues fall into six categories:

1. Knowability (it isn't clear)

2. Operability (it doesn't work)

3. Efficiency (it doesn't supply the right thing on time)

4. Robustness (it can't handle errors, misuse, abuse, etc.)

5. Safety (it isn't safe to use)

6. Satisfaction (it's not fun to use)

Each category of course has a sub-categories, but all are well-documented:

The solutions are already on UX StackExchange and UX Movement.

With a finite number of problems and known solutions, it's likely to be automated. So, not only in tooling but also in problem solving, designers' work will change.

What should we do

The point isn’t that we’re going to run out of problems to solve soon. But that AI will touch not just tools/pixels but also the problem-solving aspect of design work.

However, most of the AI-automation discussion today is around tools and pixel/code tasks automation. It is understandable because this is already happening and not something to will happen in the future.

Another reason is probably what I call Figmaism—a continuous obsession with tooling at the expense of other (and often more important) skills.

What AI is NOT going to solve is working with people: alignment, politics, influence, decision making, agency, etc.

Becoming good at these is still one of the best ways to stay relevant and grow as a designer.

If you’re looking to improve your skills beyond pixels, I wrote six books helping designers grow their careers.

Everybody's building the same thing—Lovable, v0, Bolt, Replit — now Canva and Figma.

So why do designers stick to Lovable?

When you build the same thing as others, you may try to target an underserved audience. Lovable has targeted designers by offering an (arguably) better Figma integration and better UI output.

However, the fact that Lovable targeted you in their marketing and potentially did a good job at specific tasks doesn’t mean you should use it for all other projects.

Other tools are slightly better at certain things.

So when you start building a new product:

1. Identify the most complex part of my product idea first (or the part you have doubts will be possible to build with AI).

2. Open tabs with Lovable, v0, Bolt, Replit, etc.

3. Run the same prompt in all of them (extra tip: start two projects in each tool with the same prompt to see if you get different results)

4. After a few prompts, stick to the tool that gets you the most further.

Otherwise, if you only try one tool, you may just conclude that AI is incapable of building it or requires too much time and give up.

If you’re concerned about the costs, you can pay for a few tools only when starting a project. Afterwards, you can cancel all subscriptions besides the winning tool. Paying <$100 to kick off a project is a fraction of what you'd pay in lost opportunity / development costs otherwise.

I’m building my second product, skipping Figma now. While applying this technique myself, Replit won in both cases. However, you may get different results for your needs.

Designers can choose two main career paths: individual contributor or manager.

Each path has its reasons. Here is one way to look at which option has more opportunities using rough estimations.

To answer the question whether you should become a Staff/Lead or Manager, let’s look at:

• Demand—how many open jobs for ICs and Managers exist?

• Supply—how many Staff/Leads and Managers are out there competing for these jobs?

• Preference—what career track do designers on senior and below levels prefer?

The data

Preference

Before I start writing my books, I validate a few concepts.

For my last book, I knew I wanted to write a guide for progressing beyond senior. But I wasn’t sure if I should focus on the IC or management track.

I ran a few surveys among junior/mid/senior-level designers to check which track they prefer.

Surprisingly, I got almost identical results across two different sources:

2x more designers want to stay ICs and NOT manage people (2.3:1 ratio).

Later, I ran an A/B test of two landing pages for two concepts of books, and the staff track won over the management as well:

Supply

Let’s take a look at how many designers are on LinkedIn with ICs/manager titles:

There are 1.7x more ICs than managers.

We do not know how many of them are employed, so it represents the overall pool of talent in each category per job.

Demand

Design job postings are split on LinkedIn in the US this way:

There are 3x more design job openings for ICs than managers.

How IC/manager data is collected on LinkedIn:

I checked how many people on LinkedIn have the following titles in the US:

• Staff Product Designer

• Lead Product Designer

• Product Design Manager

Lead can be a management position at some companies while it’s an IC role at others. To resolve that, I sampled 30 US companies—80% of leads were ICs and 20% were managers. I used that split to divide leads between these two categories.

Insights

Now we can cross-check between the supply, demand and designers’ preferences to see which track could potentially have less competition. Here are my conclusions:

1. Short-term: better to stay an IC

1. The IC path has significantly less competition—13 ICs on job opening vs. 23 managers. So if you only care about being on the path with less competition, the IC path is “safer”.

2. The fact that more than 2x junior/mid/senior designers actively say they prefer the IC is in balance with the overall demand and supply in the market. As a result, it doesn’t significantly change the competition.

Hence, if you ignore all personal and professional growth factors—and look only at the numbers—the data suggests it is easier to find and keep opportunities as an IC. Purely on data, management is a tougher market to penetrate or stay in.

2. Long-term: management may have more opportunities

However, we’ve been only looking at the first position after senior (staff/lead vs. manager). If we look at Sr. Staff/Principal vs. Director/VP positions, the situation may look different.

The later you are in your career, the more management positions there are than ICs at the same level. For example, there are 13x more directors than principals on the same level.

Here is how levels are distributed among a dataset of 13,074 employed designers (thanks, Pave for the data):

You can see that the trend reverses—after tracks split, the more senior you become, the more managers and fewer ICs companies employ.

The good news: many companies let staff designers move into management, and managers can return to IC roles. You don’t have to choose forever.

This analysis looks at the market today. In the future, additional factors that are hard to predict right now will affect the market. For example, some claim that AI will reduce the need for managers.

If you’re looking to progress beyond the senior position, check out my last book.

I've taken over 6 months to answer this question in the most actionable way in my new book.

Most senior designers do not want to become managers. So, I focused on the IC-track researching how designers progress to the next IC-level after senior (whether it's called Staff, Lead, or Principal at your organization).

I researched how 50+ companies evaluate designers and employees, including Etsy, Medium, Dropbox, Square, Figma, Zendesk, and Intercom.

I also interviewed 19 product designers on their progression at Figma, Instacart, Dropbox, Etsy, Twitter, and smaller companies.

The book includes actionable techniques that helped other designers get promoted beyond senior: understanding business, finding project opportunities, setting standards, selling ideas, mentoring, increasing visibility, and more.

It has already become the #1 Amazon Best Seller in the UX category today:

Available in a digital format and as a paperback with worldwide shipping:

📓 Get your copy now

P.S. If you’re mid/junior-level, check out my previous book The Path to Senior Designer.

A few years ago, I had to design a logo for a client but couldn’t find a good place with well-designed, relevant logos for inspiration.

So back then I created Logggos — a site with ~1,000 curated logos of tech companies, agencies, and DTC brands.

I also analyzed 128 logos of tech/SaaS companies to see what typography, structure, and shapes they use.

I quickly gathered the results below showing what makes a logo feel “tech” (in case you want to achieve or avoid that look).

Logo structure

72% of Logos Use Icon + Text

21% use text only and 6% use an icon only.

30% of logos with an icon use the first letter of their name in the icon:

33% use basic shapes — square, circle, triangle etc.
67% use graphically complex forms (e.g. arrows, waves):

Typography

93% are using Sans-Serif font families:

While Serif, Serif-Slab, and Script fonts are very common in DTC brands, in Tech logos design they are very rare.

Typography Case

All-lowercase (“gusto”): 42%
Title Case (“Gusto”): 48%
All-uppercase (“GUSTO”): 10%

Switching from all-uppercase to title-case or all-lowercase has been a trend in the last several years. Big companies like Walmart, Staples, AT&T, and Target ditch all-uppercase. Brands like Mastercard, and Fisher Price switched from title-case to all-lowercase. Seems like similar trends are relevant in the tech industry.

100% of two-word names have no space between words

(e.g. NetSpring and not Net Spring)

30% of the companies we looked at had a two-worded name. Every single company with a two-word name choose not to split words in their logo (e.g. NetSpring and not Net Spring). This is different from consumer brands which prefer to separate words (e.g. Fresh Sends).

51% of the logos are black

When brands do go with colours, the most popular colours are: blue (18%), orange (10%), and green (8%).

This is another difference from the consumer brands that are more likely to use colours in their logo design as opposed to tech companies.

If you find my writing useful, check out my books.

As a designer, I skipped Figma and built an MVP for my new project directly with Replit.

Is it beautiful? Not at all. Is it good enough to test with real users? Absolutely.

Here are my impressions:

1. I tried Webflow, Framer, and Softr first. None of them supported the functionality I needed (e.g. calculating tax with multiple brackets and rules).

2. I paid for v0, Bolt, and Replit and started building with all three in parallel. The first two became inadequate very quickly, so I stuck with Replit.

3. Replit is incredibly inefficient for visual edits. What takes 1 minute in Figma/Webflow/Framer can take 10–30 minutes in Replit. Having said that, I assume that it’s just a matter of time until v0/Bolt/Replit/etc. will get a Lovable-like visual editor. In fact, Replit’s CEO suggested that such improvements are coming soon.

4. It’s difficult to build custom-designed UI and landing pages. But if you're ok with the standard UI kit they use (ShadCN / Tailwind), you'll move super fast.

5. Building functionality and the database is shockingly easy. The more technical you are, the faster you’ll build with Replit.

6. I used Wispr Flow to transcribe my voice into prompts, so I didn’t even have to type. I just say what I want Replit to do. It feels like living in the future.

7. Using Replit will make you a better designer. You’ll develop greater empathy for engineers, become more technical, and gain awareness of edge cases, viewports, information architecture, etc.

8. Originally, I intended to hire a developer or find a technical co-founder. Replit gave me the option to invest my own time instead of paying a few thousand dollars or giving up 50% equity (or at least delaying that decision).

I’m incredibly impressed by Replit, and I’m shocked it managed to build a shippable product.

It took me a few weeks and 6,607 prompts to build that MVP. Replit costs: $125.

If you decide to give Replit a try, use my referral link to get $10 off.

If you’re looking to relocate to a lower-tax country, check out the project I’m building using Replit—TaxRanked—and feel free to reach out if you have questions on the topic.

*I used Figma to create a few assets for the landing page and the logo.