After a year of being a full-time dad, I'm looking for what's next. With a career in fintech, SMB and dev tools. I've built products, shipped code and managed teams as both a designer and director. I'm looking for small teams with conviction to be profitable. Building low and slow.

jonathontoon.com

I reckon AI design is close to having its Bootstrap.css moment. Clean and functional results that all look the same.

As new technology raises the floor for "good enough", distinctiveness becomes the new moat.

Weird beats optimal.

In 15 years as a product designer, I've seen early-career designers struggle with the gap between tidy processes and messy, real work. Inspired by this observation, I recently gave a guest lecture to design students at the University of Canterbury about navigating this gap, read on about it below.

"Steve Jobs would've never..."

Ya'll need to let go. Seriously.

This is how it's mean't to be, and how it was from the beginning, with institutions like Bauhaus.

The downside of software is designers have delegated too much. And instead we have focused heavily on the intangible (facilitating process) rather than the tangible (learning through building).

The website of Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway is a vibe.

More work today, now with a name – encryptanyfile.com.

Deployment done, now testing interactions: mostly quirks on mobile web and the different types of prompt responses.

Next is file processing and encryption via web workers.

Feedback welcome!

#yearoftheterminal

Made some great progress in the last week on a prompt-driven interface for a new app idea. Inspired in-part by @internetstudio.bsky.social's sacred.computer and @emilwidlund.bsky.social 's ponderings.

Since moving to Cursor, designing in Figma just feels like a drag. Creating components, variables, styles, and prototypes is all just busy work keeping me from something tangible.

The only value I see is easily comparing multiple ideas side by side.

Surely I'm not alone here?

Comparisons like these highlight for me that, despite all the talk of craft in design, the focus remains overwhelmingly on the visual—often neglecting deeper, less tangible aspects.

building the nuts and bolts of a simple terminal interface for a side project has so far been very rewarding.

especially once i was able to run synchronous blocks of code for arbitrary prompts.

In August, I had the honor of mentoring 7 designers. Discussing topics from cultural perspectives on design to planning growth experiments.

After a break I am resuming sessions in October. So if you know anyone looking for guidance I would love to help.

adplist.org/mentors/jona...

When I'm done with this it's over for y'all.

Bath time.

Solid evening. 🚵