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- [00:00]
A
For us, it's more like, well, does this evoke curiosity and wonder? And if it does, then, like, whether or not it looks like a retro futuristic poster or a retro futuristic scene versus like an illustration of a curious cat reading a book, it doesn't matter, because those two things are creatively consistent versus, like, being visually consistent across the board. And what I hope that people can experience when they look at all these different visuals, it's all coming from a place of, like, experimentation and exploration. And there's no bound to that.
- [00:35]
B
Welcome to Dive Club. My name is Rid. And this is where designers never stop learning. Now, over the past six or so months, the Perplexity brand has totally taken over the design community. I mean, I can't even open up Twitter anymore without seeing one of their images. And a big reason why is because of the work that their brand experience designer Fee is doing. So this episode is a deep dive into how he thinks about brand strategy, and we get an inside look at his creative process and what it takes to bring all of these different brand experiments to life. But before we get into all of the details, I had to know what it took to launch the new Perplexity Merch store.
- [01:17]
A
There's a difference between merch and swag. Swag is what you get for free. You're just slapping a logo on, like a really basic T shirt that you can just get on, like custom ink, right? Like, there's a. There's a time and place for those. But then on the merch side, it's like it just opens up beyond apparel, right? That's where you kind of get into like custom made garments that are really tailored to the consumer, like the fan of your product. These are like the die hard people who are willing to spend however much money on like a sticker pack or a T shirt or a hoodie because they really just want to represent the brand itself. We clearly know we need to have Smith and Diction be a part of the first drop. And so we brought Mike and Khan and team in their process. It was like, hey, here's a Figma file and we're just going to start gaining on this, right? They basically did like a shotgun of like different designs. There was like no set direction. It was just more like, what can we come up with? And then how can we take all the designs, like the variations and just sort of distill it down to, all right, this is going to be like a good first collection because we believe it's simple. We can basically make it feel like, like a Vintage collection and ultimately, like, make it feel timeless. We thought that we were going to launch in April and like, the original, like, intent behind the merch store was just a brand team design team. Just launch a store and just ship it. But ultimately we had someone on our team who joined like a little bit later, who had a lot of connections overseas to help us basically, like create the merch from scratch. And so that whole process was, you know, reaching out to those, these vendors and manufacturers, showing them, like, references of shirts and sweatshirts that we personally liked or owned ourselves and say, hey, like, let's figure out how to design this. It took a few weeks for them to send back a sample, but ultimately we got to basically, like, pick and choose. Hey, we want an embroidery patch like here or on the sleeve or like even on the hats. That was like its own cycle, which was a lot harder than doing just like digital design, where we like, it was just so iterative, right. With hardware or software, what we're calling it. It was pretty long process just to get to the point where. To where we're at now, which it seems like when you're looking at the merch, it's like, oh, this is just a simple hat and a simple T shirt. But just like, what went behind? It just, it just was just like a lot of work to basically make it look like a streetwear brand.
- [03:45]
B
Real quick message and then we can jump back into it. Meet Trevor Nielsen. He's been designing products for the last decade plus. But after 14 months, he canceled his Mid Journey account because he found a tool that he likes even more after listening to this show. And it's called Visual Electric. It's a new image generation tool that's built specifically for designers. It's the most photorealistic one out there. Even more than Mid Journey, they also have a bunch of beautiful predefined styles. And it's so incredibly easy to iterate because the entire experience happens on an infinite canvas. So you'll feel right at home. Honestly, the whole product is the epitome of taste. So the next time that you need imagery for a project, I cannot recommend Visual Electric enough. Head to Dive Club Slash Electric to check it out today. And if you like it as much as I know that you will, you can use the code Dive Club to get your free first month for free. My favorite animation tool, Jitter, just had a game changer of a release. They just dropped their first set of community templates created by some of the best designers and studios that I know. And get this, they're all free. You don't even have to download anything because Jitter is like Figma, only for animation design. Just head to their new community page. It's full of incredible animations and when you find one that you love, you can remix it in a single click and make it your own with their intuitive editor. If you want to give it a try, head to Dive Dot Club slash Jitter. That's J I T T E R. Okay, now onto the episode. The fact that I know multiple people that immediately bought Merch from a search company, I mean like, man, that really speaks to just what you've been able to create with the Perplexity brand. So maybe even as an entry point for this conversation, we could start pretty high level. Like in your opinion, what do you think makes for a great brand? Like, why have you been able to turn Perplexity into this company that people really want to tie themselves to and to support?
- [05:54]
A
I think it boils down to like, basically like the one word that we're owning is curiosity. And I'm going to keep saying that over and over and over again because that's what we want to evoke with people. When you feel curious about something, we want to be the first place or like the first thing you think about when you want to, like, it's that curiosity, right? Like my 4 year old, I feel like I'm. I'm kind of ingraining this in him. When I say, well, I don't know, like I don't know how to answer that question. The first thing he tells me is, why don't you just ask Perplexity, you know, and like a four year old's telling me that we're just ingrained to basically just stick to our own. Our old habits of like he's cracking open Google or Bing. If you use that, I don't know, like whatever search engine that you're just used to is like, how do we break into that without like feeling icky or just really like hounding people to just like, hey, make sure you use Perplexity. He was like, no. Like, how do we stir that emotion up just by having people be curious about the brand and then ask that first question in that search box when you see like where knowledge begins or whatever the tagline is at the moment. And so once people feel that they can come to Perplexity, the marketing and everything sort of like behind that should just like reinforce their curiosity. That feeling that we were able to capture when they asked that first question.
- [07:12]
B
I love how intentionally you're tying the brand to this emotion and core part of what it means to be human, rather than even the outcome or, like, the core value propositions of the product. I definitely think that comes through in a lot of things that you're doing.
- [07:27]
A
It's been mostly intuition and taste within the team. We have no traditional marketing people in our team. It's just the product managers and the product owners, and even some of the executives are like, this is just how we feel about it. How do we represent it in that way? We are so young, and we have that ability to be flexible with our brand and our messaging. Even though we're valued at whatever it is this week, there's still an opportunity to just continue to experiment. And I still appreciate that about the executive team to, like, allow us to do that and for them to even, like, push that experimentation.
- [08:00]
B
I want to get into the experimentation piece and your process. But first, can we go a little bit deeper on that word flexibility that you said? You know, you're talking about curiosity, being this kind of north star of the brand and what feelings you're trying to evoke in people. But, like, was it always like that? Can you talk a little bit about the journey of the brand, how it's evolved, and maybe were there any specific points where you had, like, a breakthrough in understanding what the Perplexity brand can or should even be?
- [08:29]
A
I mean, when it first started, it was just Henry, you know, just sort of like, first stab at the brand. And when he asked me if I wanted to join, I don't know, it was sort of like this. This challenge, because there was already this momentum behind Perplexity, the product, and not necessarily the brand. Because, you know, I think when a new product emerges, there's always the neophiliacs or the people are just, like, very into the new. They're not really loyal to any particular product because what. What they ultimately want is the value out of the tool that they're using, which is fair, right? But, like, at the time, like, Henry was just like, look, we don't need a brand designer right now until we can actually see, like, even more momentum out of this. But once we get to that point, let's make ourselves look and feel bigger than we actually are. We need to feel more polished, just across the board, like our visuals. Because, you know, at the time, that's just something he wasn't really focused on. That was when he was like, hey, do you know anyone who would, like, want to take this, like, branding project on? And I was already in a slack Channel with Mike Smith. And I was just like always a fan. I loved what he was doing at any distance and the exposure rebrand he did for Luke Beard. And I just loved his style and just like the core fundamentals of graphic design. And it just looked different than, than any other agency that was already doing AI branding or just like tech branding. And so did a quick introduction and maybe a month or two in, I'm not sure what the timeline is. He brought me in to like, own the brand from the perplexity side and just work with Mike and car and team to come up with the, like, a new brand.
- [10:10]
B
One of the things that really stood out to me when I was interviewing Henry was he talked about how they didn't really want to put like, you know, traditional brand guidelines and templates in place and really, really wanted to prioritize this level of creative freedom. So my question is then, as a brand experience designer, how are you even figuring out, like, what initiatives to push forward, what to work on? What are some of the like, you know, top level directives that are even shaping how you show up on like a week to week basis? Can you talk a little bit about how that strategy element comes out in your work and kind of even just shed a light on like how you as a team operate too?
- [10:49]
A
A lot of the brand work that comes out really driven by the product team and our growth team as well. Like we work, we as in our brand team, work really close with our head of growth and Johnny Ho, who's our chief strategy officer. Like, a lot of the initiative and the roadmap really comes from them. Like, hey, we're launching this feature. Help us visualize it. No one really comes to us with prescribed direction or creative direction. Every week we have an all hands meeting just like kick off the week. Like, hey, this is what we're focused on. This is what we're launching. And then for our team, we sort of look at that and say, all right, that's what we should be prioritizing. So we just all huddle around that big launch, which again, like, it feels like every week we're launching something big. And so the timelines are really short. And that's where using AI tools like Mid Journey or Luma or Runway or like using these different tools gives us the opportunity to like, move just as fast as the product teams. By the time we start marketing it or like designing assets for it, we sort of already know the intent or the essence of what that features is supposed to evoke in people, like spaces. We Launch Spaces, where it's just like a collection of all of your. Your searches, but you can basically prompt it to format your answer and in your way and in your own voice. And so this is just more of an example, but we took that and said, all right, well, we're going to call it Spaces. And what does spaces actually mean? And how do we visually represent, like, a collection of what you're trying to learn? And so there's a brand video or, like, just even visuals of, like, a person in an empty room or a dark room where you have these panels sort of floating. It's a surreal type of composition, but it. It was a way to sort of represent, like, hey, this is your space, and each one of these panels represents, like, something new that you're learning. And. And ultimately, like, how do we make it feel like you can even, like, enter these individual panels as, like, oh, this is what this subject is about. Like, this is how I would represent the collection, but just a different way, you know, rather than being just very literal about spaces and, like, just showing folders. And it was just, like, an opportunity for us to just make it feel the cinematic scene that you're about to step into. That's how we can go from just one week just kicking off to thinking about, like, the essence of what we're trying to launch. And then, of course, like, collaborating with these tools to help us visualize something that we wouldn't have been able to do in such a short amount of time. But, of course, applying our experience and our tuition and our taste to these images or these videos so that it feels branded, it feels intentional. Yes, AI generated this thing, but ultimately I controlled the direction and, like, what ultimately came out of midjourney into Photoshop, into, like, all these other tools just to make that final output. And I think that's, like, the most liberating thing as a creative person that we don't have to rely on, you know, four or five different people to make these decisions, versus, like, hey, I have a vision for this. And then being able to share that with our team, just like our internal team is like, hey, what do you guys think of this? And then get feedback from them. Because we've just built this brain trust of people to then say, like, all right, we feel good about this. Like, this should go out into the world, because we. We feel strongly that this will evoke that emotion that we're trying to go after.
- [14:19]
B
I want to use this as kind of a launching point into your own creative process, and maybe you could continue to talk about spaces or really any other project that you're particularly proud of once you have that opportunity presented to you and, you know, maybe you have, like, that seed of an idea. What are some of those first steps that you're taking in order to even visualize what this could potentially become?
- [14:44]
A
Yeah, I think a lot of the time it's just mostly like, words, like, thinking about, okay, if we're going to launch a feature, what is that? What is the essence of that feature that we're trying to launch? And really, like, dig a little bit deeper than what that feature actually is, right? Like, extract that, figure out what the benefit is, and then just go down a rabbit hole of just different types of metaphors or analogies that would help represent that. There's this one poster that I made where I heard someone from the business team say a lot to the customer, saying, like, oh, we help you find the needle in the haystack. And I've heard that over and over and over again. And of course, it's on the brand team to really, like, do something with that, because that's a signal that. Where people are finally, like, understanding, like, oh, okay. Perplexity is just not a chatbot anymore. It's a tool for you to find to help you get the answer that you were actually looking for. I just went into mid journey and just started playing around with, like, all right, hand holding needle with, like, a shimmering point, right? And of course it's going to give me a bunch of, like, different aesthetics, but ultimately I just wanted to see what midjourney came up with so that it gives me more fuel to sort of understand, all right, how am I going to basically lay out the type? The type on this, right? Like, how much room. How much room do I need to express the type in a way that feels powerful but also, like, elegant all at the same time. That's sort of like the crux of where I begin is. Is really like, what am I trying to say with this piece? And then just sort of build a world around that as much as possible.
- [16:24]
B
Okay. So then you get that initial prompt out there, you get that initial set of images. You see the shimmering point. It's obviously not even close to perfect in the first time. I think a lot of people listening are curious about some of these generative tools, but maybe haven't really dove all the way in yet. So what have you learned or how have you refined your process of going from that initial set of images to ultimately that final output that you're really proud of?
- [16:54]
A
I'm just going to use Midjourney as a, you know, it is a tool that I use. There's a bunch of other tools like Visual Electric, which is great. I've started using Midjourney. Oh my gosh, back in maybe June of 2021 or 2022. Again, it was not great at the time, but it did unlock so many opportunities as someone who loves visuals and like making visuals all the time, that this was just a, just a cool way to extend that muscle a little bit or like just really stretch that muscle of like now I have nothing sort of blocking me from like executing on the vision that I have. And so midjourney was that for me. And so spending a lot of time in discord with a Discord bot when Midjourney was in there and it was just awful. I absolutely hated it. Maybe after a few months just like playing with it and not, not even using it for any professional output at all, it was just more like, how can I just like make something cool today? Because as that progressed, I just got more comfortable just using the tool because, you know, I was just like following people on Twitter who were just spinning all day in this tool. Like, I, I maybe had like maybe a couple hours a day when, when I was just like, hey, app, a free moment to just like generate something. Because I heard this phrase where I saw this artwork on Pinterest where I was just like doing mood boards that I just like, I want to make something like that too. Just get as close to the thing that I was visualizing my head on the screen. That's sort of my first like, aha moment with Midjourney where when I finally had the concept tied to something meaningful and something intentional. Going from like an artist to like, now there's like a problem to solve with this visual, right? And I think that's where you go from like artistry to design, where now you're using this asset as something to evoke not just an emotion. Of course, that's the art, the, the, the artistic part of it, but the design part of it is what, what is this actually accomplishing? It's accomplishing the brand strategy. And so that was really cool to be given the space to just use this tool as the tool of choice to help execute on our visual aesthetic. Right? Because as a startup designer, you're sort of just like boxed into maybe a few tools like unsplash, a lot of these like royalty free stock sites or just even stocksy where some people like will buy them. And of course, like, you would hire photographers or artists to, like, create these things. But ultimately, at the time, we just didn't have the time or bandwidth or even resources to even manage those relationships versus being able to come up with those concepts and art direction all in house and sort of be fearless about just like, using those tools and putting them out into the world. And of course, executing on aesthetics that you would have never been able to do until now. Right. And so it's, It's. I think it's sort of up to leadership, design leadership in general, to really think about, like, hey, how can we leverage these tools in a way that will only boost our brand even more and even faster? And of course, because there's so many people on some of these teams, each one of those designers would have their own sort of, like, sense of style and taste that they could also add to it as well, versus being very prescriptive about, like, what the aesthetic should be. Always, for us, it's more like, well, does this evoke curiosity and wonder? And if it does, then, like, whether or not it looks like a retro futuristic poster or a retrofuturistic scene versus like an illustration of a curious cat reading a book, it doesn't matter, because those two things are creatively consistent versus, like, being visually consistent across the board. And what I hope that people can experience when they look at all these different visuals, it's all coming from a place of, like, experimentation, exploration. And there's no bound to that, right? Because it's going to be questions that you ask for your own personal life, but then also question that you would ask for your professional life. And so that's. That's where we get to sort of push and pull on whether something feels and looks like, oh, this is like a serious thing. Like, how do we visualize that in that way? Oh, hey, like we're doing something for students. How do we make that feel more fun but also rooted in the perplexity aesthetic? Or the perplexity, like, creative consistency that could help make it feel like, fresh, but also very perplexity.
- [21:15]
B
I love the distinction between creative consistency and visual consistency. As an outsider, it does feel like, you know, there's quite a few different visual vibes that you would maybe see on a Perplexity poster. That kind of makes me then curious, like, is there any line? How wide is that spectrum that you get to explore in? And are there specific things that you've explored or different no go zones where you're just like, yeah, you know what? This is probably outside of the realm of where we Want perplexity to sit.
- [21:46]
A
There is no bounds, I think, as long as leadership is open to it. And I think if you look at a lot of our current chapter right now, or just like our current season of aesthetics is, there's. There's a lot of, like, imperfections in terms of. There's like, some grit, some grain to it, because we ultimately know there's. There's certain things that AI. There's almost like a certain aspect to it that. That is almost too polished. And so we sort of like, take that and just like, remix it to where it just feels like there. There was a lot more human intervention with it. Any AI tool now where, you know, not everyone is going to take the first output of the. Whatever the AI gives us, there's just going to be a constant rabbit holing, following up with questions or saying, hey, like, don't say that. Like, I don't. I didn't want you to say that. I wanted you to. To think about it this way. And then it. There's just this, like, snowball effect of this conversation between you and. And this AI. And so what it boils down to for us as a brand to look at our aesthetic, it gives our team so much, like, creative freedom to explore these different aesthetics because, again, a lot of what goes out will ultimately just, like, just live, like, in an email or live on social. But again, like, that feeling that you get when you see it, like, dang, that looks really cool. There was an intention behind that decision. We just want it to feel like, man, I wish I would have thought of that. Everything that I consume on the Internet, like, oh, I wish I would have thought of that. And then just taking that feeling and then just rerouting that to make something that feels just like what I just saw. Right? So that's. That's. That's what inspires me and ultimately, like, the team to think about, hey, we're doing this. Like, we're doing oil paintings and retrofuturism. Now, what would it look like if it was just, like, all abstract backgrounds, you know, Like, I don't know. I wish I knew what that looked like. But ultimately, that's, like, the most fun. And I think that's why it feels to me like a pretty successful path to take. Not as just like, a creative person who just like, constantly wants to try new things, but also inspiring other people to not look at the same thing over and over again. Because, you know, when a brand releases something, it's. They're going to say, oh, yeah, that's that's just how they do it, you know, and for us, it's like we kind of want to keep people on their toes. Even the executives, like, they, they want to feel that way too. And so as long as there's buy in from the top, I think we're going to, going to keep, keep doing what we're doing.
- [24:12]
B
That tees up a question that I sourced from Twitter. Johnny, who's a brand designer at webflow, specifically wanted to learn a little bit more about what you're doing to get executive buy in for some of these concepts, especially when you are exploring things that are a little bit more outside of the box.
- [24:27]
A
Yeah, I remember seeing that too, and I chuckled because there really wasn't a kind of executive like, hey, let's just rally the troops together and say, hey, we're just going to use Midjourney to create these assets. It was more like, whatever you guys decide to do, we trust you. And I think the first poster that we even posted on our account was like, holy crap, we're about to do this. We're just going to lean into it and see what happens. I think that went viral. And then Arvind himself started tweeting more images from the brand team, and it was just so cool to see that support from him because he ultimately just wants people to remember our name or just like, if they see this poster for the first time, they just like, are curious about what it is and why is this beam coming out from this book and why does it look this way, you know, And I think a lot of people just like, started resonating with that. And so we just, we took that as a signal to say, let's just continue to double down on marketing our brand this way. It doesn't need to be overthought. We don't have to show screenshots of the product, which, if you actually look back at our timeline, there's a lot of screenshots. And like, you know, I was trying to make our, this, the product look even, like, even better because, you know, it was just like, that's just where we were because we. There wasn't a, a direction for visual. Right. And that wasn't until again, like, working with Smith and Dixon to help us think about, like, our aesthetic, right? There was no, like, we had asked them to come up with some, like, illustration styles, but ultimately I think it was just like this intuition of, like, you know what, let's try to keep this as open as possible because the Internet has no specific aesthetic, right? Like, if you're looking across all the things that you're interested in. It might look different for someone who's just, like, a finance person, who is just, like, interested in sports. And so, like, there's. There's, like, a specific aesthetic that they're looking at. What we're trying to do, or at least like, what. What I'm trying to at least sell to the executive team, is we're sort of building this, like, Disney World of, like, different theme parks for different people, because there are. There are different use cases for how people use perplexity. So that gives us, again, more opportunities to extract the essence of what that means. Like, each use case looking different. We don't know how that's gonna scale, but as more and more people join the team, well, we will figure that out. But I think for now, like, we're just going to just build out this universe that we've already established by accident, really. And using social as, like, the benchmark of man. There was a lot of engagement with this. Why is that? Oh, and then now we're starting to see more and more people tweet about our posters. Like, at the time, it was just, like. It just seemed so silly, right? Not even silly, but, like, it didn't feel like it was really moving the needle anywhere. It was just like, hey, I had some time today. We'll come up with this, this piece. Let's just post it and see. See what happens. Now we have signal, because now people are resonating with it and not necessarily like, hey, here's our hypothesis that this will work. It was more like, let's just put it out there and see if it works. And I think it's opened up more. More pass for us.
- [27:33]
B
I think, in many ways, you're creating a blueprint that a lot of companies are going to follow. This idea of, like, really intentionally treating Twitter as this testing ground for brand imagery and not being so concerned with maintaining this consistent visual identity and language. And it's really like, you know what? We're just going to keep experimenting, keep putting things out there and see what resonates. It's inspiring. And I really do believe that a lot of companies are going to try to replicate that process.
- [28:05]
A
I hope so. Right. Because, you know, as chronically online people, we're just always looking for, like, different. Right. And I think that's just, like, again, human nature to, like, sift through all the noise and find that thing that really made you stop. I'm not trying to say that our work does that, but as a person who wants that. I want to just really inject that into our culture's DNA as much as possible. And again, like, I think you're. You're going to start seeing a lot more of that over time as we add more people. And it's going to go beyond, like, what I've been doing, because I've. I've just been here the longest. But I'm so excited for a lot of people on our team to just, like, continue to add their own flavors to our aesthetic or, like, our season. Right.
- [28:53]
B
I love even the idea of seasons of visual design. You don't know what it'll be next, but you know that it's going to change significantly in the future. Even that is such a novel concept to hear from someone who's owning, like, the brand of a company.
- [29:07]
A
I mean, look at Nike. When somebody says, like, I want my brand to be like Nike or Apple, like, I don't think people understand what that means. And what I'm trying to say is, like, they've invested so heavily into their brand, their brand just in general, that if you go into a Dick's Sporting Goods, you're not going to the Nike section, and you're going to see there's a clean section where it's just the logo on the sweater. But then you're going to look into, like, maybe the kids section where there's a lot more visuals on the shirts, like graphic tees, and they're just like, it's huge. And there's, like, sayings on there. And that's how I sort of see, like, just our marketing, that type of brand that, like, can fit into people's lives. And that's where I think, tying back. Tying it all back to our merch. Our first drop is just very simple. But we have plans to, like, work with more artists to express how they think curiosity should be and feel, like, when somebody wears our garments, you know, or going beyond garments, right? Like, I don't know, custom coffee mugs or whatever. Like, whatever that looks like. We sort of just want to build a universe around it. And we're not a fashion brand, but anytime you see somebody wearing a NASA shirt, like, mess. Not they're not a fashion company, but when you see somebody wear that, they're like, wait, do you work there? Or like, oh, you must be really into space, right? And we want people to feel that when they wear Perplexity Gears, it's like, oh, man. Like, you just, like, want to know everything. You know, you're just, like, a curious person. And how do we continue to evoke that? I could just get really passionate about it because I just love seeing how we can just interpret these feelings into visuals and have people like interact with it and whether or not it like it hits or not, it's ultimately our sandbox to experiment with that. And I just want to keep chasing that dopamine and it's sort of dangerous, but I'm just going to keep, keep riding that until, until I can anymore.
- [30:59]
B
Hey, it's Rid. I'm constantly asked about my favorite product, so I'm going to take just one minute and give you a quick rundown of my stack. Descent is how I ship design changes without having to code. Framer is how I build my websites. Genway is how I do research. Jitter is how I animate my designs and Play is how I design and prototype mobile apps. Visual Electric is how I generate all of my imagery and Raycast is my shortcut every step of the way. Now I've hand selected these companies to partner with me so that I can do these episodes full time. So the best way by far to support the show is to check them out. You can find the full list at Dive Club slash Partners. Okay, now on to the rest of the episode. It reminds me of something Henry said about you. He said you're creatively fearless. It comes from that passion and wanting to chase the dopamine and even something that Mike said. I was talking to Mike from Smith Addiction. We have an episode coming up and he said that fe's dedication to experimentation is something that should be studied. So before I let you go, I want to talk about that piece just a little bit. What are some of the experiments or even new techniques that you've been playing with Recently?
- [32:16]
A
I've been leaning into my four year old conversations. Like every night we do story time and that has really helped me take a step back from everything that I'm just so jaded about. You just like being an adult working full time at a company and there's certain, I mean of course like my job is fun, but there's. There's just certain aspects of like being an adult that sort of takes you away from like that childlike curiosity and wonder and just having conversations with him, asking him how his day was and helping me understand like how he processed things really inspires me to think about like just even my own work because there's just so many things that we're just so biased about. But with a kid, when you're asking the question, they're just so like brutally honest about it. When I do take that energy and I apply it to my work, I will ultimately ask him what he thinks about it because objectively, like when he's looking at it, he's just going to, he's going to start like picking out all the things that he's seeing. He can't read yet, so I have to like read the text for him. And so there's this, like this back and forth almost just between us two and then having having a four year old critique my, my designs is. It's just so much fun because it just boils down to how can I get it out of my own head. Of course we're sharing our work with our own peers just to like validate ourselves. But then when you're sharing it with like an innocent human being, like a young human being who just like has no life experience at all. At all. I think that's what really drives a lot of my experimentations. And I know of course, like, not everyone will have, have like a four year old at their disposal at all times, but just to think about what would your like 16 year old self think about this or something, whatever, like whatever the age is, like your younger self think about what you're doing. Like would they be super excited about what you're doing? You know, like just, just to be like introspective and thinking about all those things. That's where I found myself back at working at Perplexity now, like being able to reach back and think about like the old work that I've produced and say like, what inspired that? And then how can I take that thing that I was proud of and then like use that as, again as fuel to continue to experiment and like remix things that I've made in the past or old concepts that have sort of died or concepts I've never shared before because I was just too afraid to share it and being worried about what the rest of the world might think. And ultimately you get to drive what you share with the world and I'm just going to go deep. But it's, it's one of those things where like, if I don't share it, I know that like when, when I die, like those things will just come with me and I would rather just either like inspire someone else who might have seen that thing, even though I might find it insignificant, it could like inspire them to make the next thing. And I think that's what drives me to like constantly experiment and chase that dopamine of like learning and enjoying that Messy middle, which I know a lot of us have heard before. But, like, that is seriously where, like, you should just start capturing the feelings you get when you either made something that, like, really sparked something, or, like, maybe there's like a. I don't know, like, a phrase or a word that you might not necessarily use on that final output of that thing that you're making now. But what if that's something that you can revisit when the opportunity presents itself again? Right? It's like, oh, you know, like, for spaces. We could have just, like, took screenshots of the app because we just had, like, a week to come up with this, could have called it a day. But ultimately, I just wanted to continue to push that a little bit further. And, like, how do we tell that story? That is like, my. Like, how my brain operates is like being just being open. Very, very open to new ideas and just beyond consuming the content that I'm seeing is like, understanding why that thing made me stop scrolling. Oh, it made me stop scrolling because the composition was just so good. The type was just so good. How can I do that?
- [36:16]
B
Before I let you go, I want to talk about an experiment that inspired someone pretty specific, because the founder of Midjourney, David, was in your comments, kind of just being like, how the heck did you do this? So can you just share a little bit about, like, some of the technical things that you were doing to bring that composition to life?
- [36:38]
A
I tweeted out a mockup of a phone in, like, a really surreal scene, and there was, like, two versions of it, and there was, like, pretty vastly different, but it was just, like, of our mobile app. And so when you're looking at it, it literally looks like someone generated in, like, a 3D environment, which is, I guess, like, the beauty of Midjourney is, like, you can get to that level of fidelity and polish pretty quickly. When the Retexture feature came out in midjourney, and what that means with the Retexture features is really, you can take an existing image and you can basically prompt it to look like something else, but it will. It will keep the integrity of the composition of that image. So in this case, it was just a phone sort of sitting on a plane, and then there's, like, a background, and then there's a foreground. And so I just mocked that up in Figma. So I just, like, drew some gray boxes, and I just used one of the Figma plugins to, like, drop in a device because I just. I knew what the composition, like, I wanted or at least just wanted to experiment with. And I just threw it into midjourney, the edit feature, and then selected Retexture. I just threw in an existing image that I had already made as a reference and it gave me this, like, really, really rich, really high contrast image. And again, like, it looked like pretty surreal. So I just grabbed one of the screenshots from our mobile designer and I was like, hey, I'm like playing around with this aesthetic, like, can you give me the screenshots for this or just give me the Figma file? And so I just went in this Figma file, grabbed it, I went into Photoshop, I took that image, and then I put this masking and played with blending modes where I can just like see how the image itself would just sit on the light with the lighting. And so I just kept playing with it until it felt like, all right, this screen looks like it was in the actual scene itself. There's just layers to my madness or the experimentation aspect of it. And it's really validating to see the creator of this tool sort of questioning whether or not his own tool is able to produce this. The tool that he created just gave people like me the opportunity to just experiment, but also execute on these types of images faster than ever before.
- [38:59]
B
Can we add one more layer to the creative madness just so people have the full picture? Because a lot of these experiments that you've been posting recently have a video animation component to it. Can you talk about that tool stack, how that fits into your process?
- [39:14]
A
When Runway came out with their tool, it was an eye opening moment where we can take these surreal scenes. Like, for me, it feels like it's coming from a movie. When they released the image to video feature, it just gave me so much more room to think about, like, now this changes everything. Right now we can tell stories beyond the static images. Now we can. Now we can like tell full narratives about anything, right? Just anything that we wanted to. No one really asked me to basically post any videos about anything. We're using these images. It was like, hey, I want to show that we can do this now. So everything that we did for the campus strategist program, which is where we had students apply to be ambassadors for perplexity on their campus, that was just an opportunity to use Runway fully to take these images that we've made for just like our emails or social posts, and then taking that aesthetic and then like, now how do we, like, number one, just create a brand video that I think sort of resonated or to us, like this Felt really fresh and new, and so we didn't have to go that hard on it. But it was. I don't know, again, it was just like our opportunity or our ball game to lose if we didn't at least just, like, try to put something out there that just felt new with some, like, some new techniques and old techniques, sort of just like blending. Blending those two worlds together. So, yeah, there's Runway, and then there's Luma Labs AI, also another great tool. It's a lot less advanced than Runaway, like, being able to control the camera movements and things like that. There's so many new features now that I now have to, like, take a, you know, a day to just, like, learn. Learn all these things. But ultimately, Luma is just like, another great tool where you can just drag in an image and then just have it. It's sort of like a slot machine with a lot of these tools where you're just like, I don't know how it's going to interpret this, but I'm just going to keep, again, experimenting it until I find that thing that I saw in my head. But maybe it produced it, like, a lot better on screen. And so, again, this is with any of these tools, whether it's midjourney, Runway, Luma Crate K R E AI. It's another tool that I use when the other two can't do the thing that Craig can do. So I was just, like, really trying to figure out, like, out of these three, which one can give me the output that I ultimately want to see. But with all these tools, right, like, you. You sort of just have to keep. Keep wrestling with it, like, molding it, like, just, like, making ceramics. Like, it's depends on the day. Like, if it's, you know, if it's, like, too humid outside, it's just going to fall apart. And so there's. That's how I feel about a lot of these tools, too. But you just kind of have to keep sticking with it. And I think that's where my madness sort of comes in, because I will keep pushing it until I can't. And I will probably spend way more money, my own money, on some of these experiments until, like, I feel, like, really good about it. That's how I work those tools into my process. Does this make sense to pull in a video? And if it is, then let's storyboard it. Let's bring it into figjam and think about, like, what we want to say, and then ultimately use that and just even use those stills that we generate. To then go back and then start exporting them and then throwing them into these tools to then generate video clips.
- [42:50]
B
I want to end by giving you the opportunity to speak to a very specific listener that maybe is trying to get a little bit more confident and excited to put themselves out there on social Twitter specifically. And, you know, I think you have a lot of momentum behind you right now, and I've seen all the growth. You're always on my timeline, and what you're doing is really resonating with people. But it wasn't always like that. And before we hit record, you even said how Henry kind of pulled you out of your shell a little bit. So can you talk a bit about your journey, growing that muscle? As someone who is regularly putting yourself out there on the Internet and what those kind of ups and downs have been like?
- [43:33]
A
I think my journey with social media in general has always been like, I. I'm a lurker. Like, I just, like, consume whatever the big designers are putting out there. And I've always felt like I couldn't get there or like, if I did, like, it would be a close second because I'm just, like, my worst critic. And I think a lot of us are, especially just the creative people are just, like, constantly thinking about, like, how is this going to resonate with this person? How would Rit think about this? Or how would Dan Petty think about this? You know, and, like, these people are like, the people at the top sort of already figured that out, right? Just, like just doing reps, right? When you work out enough, it just becomes easy to, like, do that thing, like, just again, just to execute on top of it. And I think for me, there was just a point where I'm seeing all this work and it all just started feeling like. Started to feel the same. When I started at Perplexity, it was just one of those moments where, because I've been given the green light to just do what I feel is right, that I just wanted. I just wanted to share more of that. And I think working with someone like Henry or just if you're thinking about. If you're listening and you're thinking about who's leading you, if you're working somewhere, but ultimately, if you're a freelancer, you have that ability to just shape how you want the world or just even yourself, what type of work do you want to be putting out in the world so that more people want more of that from you, so that you can just. Can, like, continue to. To grow and get signal from. From. From other Folks. And I think it was just at the time when I first started, I was just so focused on, like, man, like, I don't think this is going to go viral, you know, and looking back at that and like, just even that mentality, it's just like, it just doesn't matter, right? I think what matters for me is holding myself accountable, to just put it. Just to put it out there. And if you put it out there and. And it resonates, then that's awesome. That means, like, you just took a risk, like, putting your neck out there, and then someone appreciated that you just did that. That's where I found success in my own journey now is just like, all right, when you're thinking about posting that thing and you don't want to because you're just afraid of how, if it'll flop, then maybe take a breath or really think about that for a second and say, like, well, what happens if I do post it and it does go out there and it does resonate, then I don't know, you just, like, shorted yourself from the ability to just share your work with someone because who. Who knows who you're going to inspire, you know? And I feel that way all the time when I'm consuming or, like, seeing what other people are sticking their necks out posting. That's where, like, the DMs come in. I'm like, dude, I can't believe, like, how good this is. Like, this is so amazing. And I've always been that person to DM people and to, like, be on the other side of that where people are DMing me, and I'm like, I don't know how to handle this compliment. Like, thanks so much. And then. And like, that's sort of it. But at the same time is like, oh, my gosh, like, if you just continue to just be consistent and how creative you're being, and if you feel proud of this thing, whether or not somebody else is proud of it or not, like, you know, just take that risk and, like, and just jump because, like, who knows where you'll land? And I sort of feel that way about my, like, my whole career, just in general is the people you get to meet because of the work that you risk. Check your own ego for now resonates like, you would be surprised how far you'll get.
- [46:51]
B
Well, I think I could speak for the entire design industry and say thank you for you taking the leap and putting yourself out there, because your work really is inspiring and it's something that I look forward to seeing on a regular basis. Really, really appreciate you coming on today and just taking the time to share a little bit about your journey, how you operate, pulling back the curtain a little bit. Big fan of everything that you're doing at Perplexity, and I'm excited to see future seasons come to life.
- [47:18]
A
Oh, man. Thanks for having me. This has been great.
- [47:21]
B
Hey, it's Rid. Don't forget if you want to go even deeper. Each week I send an email out to over 10,000 designers with bonus resources and key takeaways from these conversations. So head to Dive Club email to sign up. Okay, I'll see you next week.