🤿 40 million shaders

Author

Ridd
September 15, 2026

Ready for a sneak peek into Eleven Labs’ internal design tools?

This week's episode is with Nev Flynn (their Head of Design) and we're doing a deep dive into how he's bringing artful expression into enterprise design.

Some highlights:

  • Inside look at ElevenLabs internal brand tools

  • Why Nev is prioritizing specialists over generalists

  • What Nev looks for when evaluating a design portfolio

  • How they built a shader orb system for 40 million voices

  • What happens when non-designers are designing with AI

  • How the team is making their design system agent-native

  • + a lot more

Watch on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts 👇

📣 FEATURED RESOURCE

How Designers Are Getting Hired in 2026

I’ll be honest… I think last Thursday’s deep dive into design hiring was one of the most valuable pieces of content I’ve ever been a part of making.

We heard from hiring managers at Linear, Shopify, Notion, Railway, as well as a bunch of stories from designers who recently navigated the job market and landed a new role.

So if you’re open to new opportunities:

  1. Make sure to hop in the Dive Talent Network

  2. Bookmark the design hiring deep dive

🔗 FEATURED RESOURCES
Design Work Survey 2026

I’m partnering with Tommy Geoco on the State of Design Work survey.

The goal is to paint a clearer picture of where design work is headed and what the heck is going on in today’s landscape.

We’ll be doing these quarterly and sharing the results here.

I filled it out and it only took ~2 minutes :) Appreciate the help!

How to make your own design harness

“Harness” is a bit of an ambiguous (and maybe even intimidating) word for designers. But it’s honestly much simpler than it seems. This article from Will Newton does a great job of showing why it matters and how to go about it.

Interface design library

ICYMI Dive Radio last week, I shared Conductor’s new composer pattern and Chris from Rogo quote tweeted it with this awesome inspiration library. It’s basically Mobbin but for game design.

🧃 INSPIRATION JUICE

3 things I saved this week

1️⃣ Figma and SwiftUI interactions

I love everything about this microinteraction from Nitish 👏

2️⃣ John Bai’s portfolio

Remember John Bai’s episode about designing Grok Bot?

Well I was on his portfolio the other day and I think it’s definitely worth sharing. I like how clearly it:

  1. Puts the work first

  2. Paints the picture of his career journey

3️⃣ Dark mode components

Some nice details to give these components some depth/texture even in dark mode 👌

📻 DIVE RADIO

Calling all (aspiring) founding designers

On Thursday we’re doing a deep dive into what I consider one of the most valuable roles in all of tech: the founding designer.

The call-in lineup is stacked so we’re going to hear from a bunch of awesome designers about what it takes to thrive in the role (and some lessons learned the hard way).

Tune in to Dive Radio on Thursday at 4pmEST/1PST (or you can add it to your calendar) ✌️

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See you next week ✌️ 
- Ridd

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