The last time I sent you an email was November 2025. A lot has happened since then.

I got engaged 💍, I went on a work trip, I travelled to NZ to see my family, I had a burnout resurgence, another work trip, and I led my team through Kit's biggest product launch ever.

AI has also changed a lot over those 8 months.

In the design industry, the release of Claude Design has had the biggest impact. Some of it great (it actually follows a design system!), some of it not-so-great (expectations are so high!), but as someone who has always paid attention to the changing shape of what it means to be a designer this is a tool I'm investing in learning and using.

It's the first AI design tool that I've actually found capable of producing usable assets that I'm proud to have represent our brand. That doesn't mean it always gets it right, it just means it's actually possible to use AI as a design partner for brand design work now. Of course, you still have to know how to prompt and direct it to bring your idea to life.

I've been seeing a lot of content of folks experimenting with AI, but what I really want to learn from is real projects.

Show me how you made an asset that felt cohesive with the rest of the brand. Show me how you're using AI systems in your actual workflows, not just one-off explorations. So, as is often my approach: I decided to make this kind of content myself.

That biggest product launch ever that I mentioned? Alongside my extremely talented Lead Brand Designer, Jacqui, I worked on the slides for the launch keynote at our annual conference, Craft+Commerce. And I used Claude Design to create some key visuals to represent the important concepts and problems at the heart of a brand new feature we launched called Subscriber Signals.

I made a video about the real-life process behind this real-life launch keynote project and the AI motion graphics I created for it.

Watch the video here

Here's a preview of one of the graphics I made:

I got to watch the audience have an 'aha' moment when they saw this visual while our CEO, Nathan Barry, introduced the feature! But you'll need to watch the full YouTube video to get the full context and see more.

​

One of the great things about working for a creator, is that they also make behind-the-scenes content! Nathan recorded a podcast episode with his speaker coach where they discussed the talk and the slides. Watch it here to see what they thought of these graphics.

Til next time (and I'll try not to leave it 8 months this time...),

You're receiving this email because you either signed up on my site, downloaded one of my products, or perhaps because a creator you admire recommended me. If you don't want to get emails like this from me anymore, that's okay! You can click here to update your preferences or feel free to unsubscribe.

600 1st Ave, Ste 330 PMB 92768, Seattle, WA 98104-2246