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🤿 world's toughest CRIT

🤿 world's toughest CRIT

+ lessons from Perplexity's brand designer

Ridd
November 27, 2024

2024 was the year the Perplexity brand took over the design community.

And Phi Hoang is a BIG reason why 👀

So this week’s episode is a deep dive into brand experience design and creativity with AI tools. We get an inside look at:

Phi’s creative process with Midjourney
Why Perplexity thinks of the brand in “seasons”
Phi’s tool stack for creating marketing videos with AI
Behind-the-scenes of how Phi stumped the founder of Midjourney
Why Perplexity cares about creative consistency > visual consistency
+ a lot more

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

🤝 WITH VISUAL ELECTRIC

After 14 months, Trevor Nielsen cancelled his Midjourney account.

Why you ask? Well… he found a tool that he likes even more after listening to Dive Club. It’s called Visual Electric — a new image generation tool that’s built specifically for designers 💪

It’s the most photorealistic image generator out there (even more realistic than Midjourney).
They have a bunch of beautiful predefined styles
It’s super easy to iterate because the experience happens on an infinite canvas just like Figma

Honestly the whole product is the epitome of taste so I know you’ll love it as much as I do. I use it for everything now.

Use the exclusive code DIVECLUB to get your first month free 👇

🎓 KEY TAKEAWAYS

What makes brand design at Perplexity so unique

1 — Creative consistency > Visual consistency

You never know what aesthetic you’re going to get with Perplexity. The contrast from poster to poster can be a bit shocking at times, especially in a world where most brands strive for visual consistency.

But Perplexity only cares about creative consistency.

“Does this image evoke curiosity and wonder? Then we don’t care if it’s a retro illustration or a scene of a curious cat reading a book”

— Phi Hoang

Phi gets to play in the largest sandbox of any brand designer I’ve ever seen 🐚

2 — Planning for change

Another thing that stood out to me is how Phi thinks of the Perplexity brand in “seasons”.

Right now, he’s combatting the overly polished look of generative AI by leaning into imperfections and grainy textures to create a more human feel. But he’s already planning on the aesthetic changing (maybe significantly) in the coming seasons.

“We want to keep this as open as possible because the internet has no specific aesthetic”

— Phi Hoang

This strategy also helps Perplexity attract insane talent too (like Ryan Putnam).

Because you’re not working with templates or guidelines… you’re experimenting and pushing the boundaries of what the brand can be every day. It doesn’t get much more exciting than that for a brand designer 🤷‍♂️

3 — Phi’s approach to feedback

Too often we treat feedback as a box to check in our process. We don’t really want to be told what’s up… we just want to feel validated.

That’s why Phi makes a point to regularly do “CRIT” with his 4 year old kid 😅

Because an innocent child will tell you like it is… which makes them uniquely qualified to “help you get out of your own head”.

This is something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately as I’m building a new type of feedback company behind the scenes. If you’re a design leader and you want your team to be one of the first to get access reply to this email (or DM me) and let me know ✌️

4 — Phi’s video process

Work backward from the product roadmap to figure out what upcoming marketing events exist
Deconstruct the feature set to figure out what the essence of the idea is
Storyboard the video in Figjam
Prompt Midjourney to get more “fuel” for understanding what the composition should be
Move into Runway and potentially Luma and/or Krea as needed

💸 SPECIAL OFFER

How to Think && How to Do

Remember Tommy Geoco? He’s one of the most inspiring designers I know.

Anyway… For the rest of this week you can get both Figma Academy and his course Making UX Decisions for only $499 🤩

Tommy has taught 2,400+ designers to make smarter design decisions more quickly so it's the perfect course to pair with Figma Academy. Together you'll get:

90+ in-depth lesson videos
8 Q&As from expert designers
Example Figma files and prototypes
My starter variable system
75 UI patterns and checklists
500+ page e-book for designing at warp speed

If you want to learn how to become the Figma guru and fastest designer on your team... then this is the best offer of the year 👇

Oh and if you just want Figma Academy I'm offering $100 off through this weekend. Click here and use the code BF2024 . I got this message just a few hours ago :)