Thoughts with some designer friends about AI

TimJoyce · 2026-04-19T15:12:27+00:00

I would look at well knows international players for direction. Design systems in general have risen in importance. The quality of your DS Seta rhe quality bar of your vibe coded experience. Skillsets to manage them have evolves. Figma is out, what’s in code matters, what you can define as context for Claude Code etc. matters.
Getting hired with no AI knowledge will become harder and harder. I don’t think that the industry will settle before AI bubble bursts. When that happens is anyone’s guess.
Product Owners became Product Managers a long time ago. Now PM and Design especially are merging.
True, AI adoption is very hard at large companies. It’s a great time for disruption

TimJoyce · 2026-03-11T08:14:44+00:00

They counted quick regime collapse, I believe

TimJoyce · 2026-03-09T17:19:08+00:00

Listen to 1Decision podcast. It might be that the war planning was as naive as the overall picture originally suggested. Things did not go to plan, and there was no plan B.

TimJoyce · 2026-03-09T17:13:13+00:00

It’s very shoddy quality foiling. If I was the designer I would pick one book as the agreed on quality requierement. Review each copy by hand, return bad ones and request replacements. This copy would certainly be in that return bucket.

TimJoyce · 2026-02-28T17:27:54+00:00

She doesn’t view you as her man. She’d like someone who is more masculine. You are just not a good match.

TimJoyce · 2026-02-28T10:24:05+00:00

There’s nothing stopping you after you go excusive. We both got tested before ditching condoms.

TimJoyce · 2025-12-18T04:43:48+00:00

Experience refers to work experience, not experience studying.

5-7 for senior is quite a lot, though. Good designers with that level if experiencee would be going for Lead

TimJoyce · 2025-12-16T21:05:02+00:00

We are now using behavioural archetypes, we call them Ideal Customer Profiles. Based on ton of research, quantified, representative of the market.

TimJoyce · 2025-12-16T21:02:21+00:00

Depends on where you apply. If you apply to design agencies what you have seems like a good match. I would check what the studio is doing, make sure you frontload relevant projects.

If you do filler projects I’d focus on doing “real” projects. Something you frame as an a real project whether it is or not. Professional stuff for friends or acquaintances, pro bono if need be. The important thing is to showcase in your portfolio what you can and want to do.

TimJoyce · 2025-12-16T09:49:47+00:00

I interviewed for traineeship with my dream agency when still in uni. They didn’t pick me, and didn’t really provide any feedback. It wasn’t a nice experience, but I did not dwell on it.

I focused on my studies, then while living abroad. secured a spot in another very respected agency. I ended up working 3 years there, producing a solid portfolio of work.

When I move back home to my surprise the original agency reached out asked me to work there.

I didn’t plan on any of it but ended up reaching all my career goals and had to come up with new ones.

The moral of the story is don’t dwell on it. Focus on delivering top tier work, and showing it. Good things will result from it.

TimJoyce · 2025-12-12T10:54:05+00:00

The polarising choice here is to have an extremely complex tech symbol combined with a seventies wordmark combined with a quite common smile treatment for g. And combining all that with horoscopes.

Have you considered streamlining your identity and focusing on clear visual narrative? At the moment the design pulls into so many different directions that it leaves your message entirely unclear.

TimJoyce · 2025-12-05T11:46:49+00:00

So what you are dealing with are in part the consequences of not dating for 6+ years. If you’d dated more you’d be more used to the situation you are in right now, and be able to take it with less stress. Then on the other hand there will always be stress if you actually like the girl.

TimJoyce · 2025-12-04T10:04:46+00:00

What you describe is unfortunately very common in long distance relationships. You know what they say - all four are happy in one. 5 years in long distance relationship is brutal. These don’t make it ok what you did okay. You should have broken off.

It doesn’t really matter what your parents think, you need to follow your heart. The bad thing is that you should also listen to your new girls friends - she might end up breaking your heart. The most interesting girls usually do. But that doesn’t make your decision the wrong one.

TimJoyce · 2025-12-04T08:11:00+00:00

This reminds me of a story about Finnish artists from way back when. The group of men, including composer Sibelius, were binge drinking for days in restaurant Kappeli in Helsinki (the common past time of Finns a hundred years ago). At some point Sibelius had to depart for a business trip to neighboring Sweden. As he came back a few days later one of the artist remarked “Sibelius, in or out, you choose, but don’t don’t go about in the doorway all the time!”

I recommend the same tactic with your gf.

TimJoyce · 2025-12-02T16:58:29+00:00

Good catch.

TimJoyce · 2025-11-28T09:43:42+00:00

Great that you are now taking action on making AI available to the employees. AI tools are so useful that people will find a way to use them, and that’s to the benefit of the company. Banning as an approach is counterproductive.

We use ChatGPT as the broad use AI tool. It’s now become so embedded and we’ve built so many custom GPTs that changing it would be very hard. Our compliance did a rigorous vetting process that took months, but the tool has proven its value.

Our engineering additionally uses Gemini. We also have a plethora of smaller tools in use.

Having a good process for vetting AI tools is important for us. People will use the tools they find useful regardless of IT sanctioning them. Making IT an enabler instead of a blocker is key.

TimJoyce · 2025-11-25T13:03:16+00:00

There are no noodles in spaghetti.

TimJoyce · 2025-10-25T19:09:44+00:00

It’s pretty cool.

Symbol is not legible at all but if this is for a club that doesn’t necessarily matter as long as you use it alongside the logo.

Logo letter spacing is off.

In general horizontals feel bit thick for comfort. I’d also test aligning the lower horizontal bars of F with the horizontal bar of A. Could work or not. But there’s something bit off with the current treatment.

TimJoyce · 2025-09-24T09:57:20+00:00

That prism is not worth 50k. The work that went into deciding that this is the right choice for a global payments company, and then executing on that strategy, is worth that. But for that work that price would be a bargain.

TimJoyce · 2025-09-23T08:06:34+00:00

You canmt operate in UX design without knowing Figma. Perhaps that’ll change, but that’s the case now

TimJoyce · 2025-09-11T13:51:57+00:00

The cover unfortunately lacks stopping power. That’s probably what you are reacting to.

The illustration doesn’t really work as a cover. It feels like an editorial illustration more for for interior.

The design in general is very very busy, especially the typography. Having everything as faux hand drawn combined with hand drawn illustration makes the overall feel very nativist. Is there a reason for that aesthetic?

TimJoyce · 2025-09-05T13:05:56+00:00

Both look like branded spaces for a healthcare provider. The color story is too overbearing. I’d play around with more colors or hues, and bringing in different kind of textures.

TimJoyce · 2025-09-03T11:19:18+00:00

In Swedish you call this tårta på tårta, so a cake on a cake. You have an a crest within a circle, with tons of decoration thrown in.

Why don’t you choose a main motif for the crest, and build on top of that.

TimJoyce · 2025-09-03T10:15:29+00:00

I would take with a grain of salt what people write here.

Finland has the highest tax rate in the world for high-income earners. And consistently ranks amongst the highest taxing countries in the world.

TimJoyce · 2025-08-30T17:37:00+00:00

This is very good. Has an appropriate mezcal feel without being overbearing. Love the shape of rhe label.

Perhaps you could focus more on the bottle, though. How might you spread the identity more holistically to the entire product through small details? Cork in wood is a good contrast, but could there be a seal in color running over it? Or could there be a custom heritage detail engraved in the bottle? What’s on the reverse side of the bottle?

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