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🤿 identity crisis

🤿 identity crisis

behind the scenes of Config 2026

Ridd
June 24, 2026

~1 month before COVID changed the world, this is what the entrance to the first ever Config looked like 👀

I remember losing my mind watching Dylan demo Auto Layout 1.0, and listening to Soleio declare design as the future of open source.

We’ve come a long way :)

And honestly… I think this is probably the strongest set of Config launches ever.

So I interviewed Figma’s new Chief Design Officer, Loredana Crisan, to go behind-the-scenes.

We get into Motion, code layers, shaders—all of it. But the thing that really stuck with me was this sentence:

”Design is having an identity crisis and a renaissance at the same time”

I’ve never felt so seen 😄

Figuring out AI’s role in design can be exhausting (and confusing).

But our conversation was surprisingly clarifying.

As she put it: “technology changes the world mostly by changing what we’re able to imagine”.

So Figma’s vision is to give designers the ability to express what is already in their head (not outsource creativity to AI).

Loredana is a joy to listen to, so I think you’ll really enjoy this one.

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

👥 FEATURED RESOURCE

New design opportunities

I’m officially doubling down on the talent network because it’s really starting to pick up steam and there are few things more life-giving than helping someone land a dream role.

Here are the companies who joined this week:

Owner
Conductor
ListenLabs
Iverson
+ a few stealth startups

If you want me to promote the heck out of you to these teams or any of the others (Lovable, Granola, Superpower, Livekit, etc.) then drop your info here 👇

🔗 FEATURED RESOURCES

A bull case for Figma

Yitong puts his finger right on the most interesting tension point for Figma in this article.

I actually asked Loredana about the value of playground repos vs. shipping to prod because of this article :)

A color system that disappears

Remember how Matt Sellers showcased the portfolio that got him hired at Lovable?

Well he’s started shipping some major visual improvements at Lovable and documenting the process. His behind-the-scenes of their new color system is fantastic work.

Honestly I was using Lovable the other day and they’ve cranked up the craft across the board.

StyleX

I’ve noticed multiple teams on Twitter (including Linear and Polar) talk about migrating from Tailwind to StyleX over the last week. Definitely something worth investigating.