🤿 stealing from smith & diction

When it comes to brand design, Mike and Cara from Smith & Diction are pretty much top of the game (you might recognize them as the ones who did the brand identity for Perplexity).

During our interview, it didn't take me long to realize that these two have more hacks and mental models for creativity than just about anyone I’ve met.

I believe brand will only become more important in an AI world so here are a few creative tactics I’m definitely stealing 👇

👉 Watch the full episode with Smith & Diction here

🤝 WITH GENWAY

I've been using AI agents to do research and something surprising is happening 👇

For context, I use Genway AI's AI agents in two ways:

1️⃣ Contextual interviews — I prompt the AI with what I'm hoping to learn and then it has a dynamic conversation with each person.

2️⃣ Usability testing — I upload Inflight Figma prototypes and explain to the AI what I want to test.

Here's the surprising part though... At the end of the interview most people say they're MORE comfortable opening up to an AI agent than a human 🤯

It’s a big reason why I’m hooked on the product and their new self-serve offering means you can start using it right away too!

There's even a secret Dive Club landing page where you can get 2 months free and 10 credits to recruit participants at that link 🤝

🔗 FEATURED RESOURCE

How I’m using variables in my Figma prototypes

I’ve done 70+ demos as I sprint through the idea maze for Inflight.

Throughout that iteration process, Figma variables have been very helpful. So I made a ~5 min walkthrough video to show you exactly how I’m using them to level up my prototype.

🔗 FEATURED RESOURCE

Remember Ben Blumenrose the founder of Designer Fund?

He recently asked what skills are most important for new designers in 2025 and received a lot of great replies on Twitter so I wanted to pull out a couple of my favorite responses for you here 👇

🧃 INSPIRATION JUICE

3 things I saved this week

1️⃣ New Alma Foods mobile app

Remember how Mike and Chara from Smith & Diction talked about designing the Alma brand?

Well the mobile app just came out and the design is good. Like… really good. Even if you don’t care about tracking your nutrition it’s worth downloading just to study the onboarding 👇

See it live →

2️⃣ Fey modal

Thiago Costa is easily one of my favorite designers on the planet. The longer you look at a design like this the more you learn about visual techniques.

It’s a big reason why last week’s episode about taste is quickly becoming one of the most popular ever.

Check it out →

3️⃣ Skeumorphic finder UI

I’m pretty obsessed with the finder controls in this concept. The way they captured the lighting and curvature is elite.

Show some love →

Meet the Dive partners 

I made a list of my favorite products and asked them to come on as sponsors of the newsletter/podcast. They said yes 🥹

The #1 way to support Dive Club is to check them out👇

Dessn → How I ship like a design engineer

Framer​ → How I build my websites

Genway → How I do research

Jitter​ → How I animate my designs

Play → How I design mobile apps

Raycast ​ → How I do most things on my computer

Visual Electric → How I generate imagery

Thanks for reading! I'm working hard to bring you the best design resources on the planet 🫶

If you want to go even deeper you can always:

☞ Read all ​ideas​

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