Founding Principles

The commentary <n>You are not a software engineer</n>.

Seek beauty. Choose beauty. Bring beauty into everything you put out in the world. That's not just our job as designers; that’s our responsibility as human beings.

<n>Silvio Berlusconi</n> at the <n>G7 official dinner</n> in Naples, 1994.

having regular, specific, times in the day to "chill"

is why another year has passed and you're still reading bullshit motivational tweets.

let's assume you scroll TikTok, watch YT, etc. for "fun" for 3 hours per day.

not ripping creatives for your ecom store, nothing like…

Strategy isn't words, its action — Jensen Huang

A guide to product design principles by <n>Steve Jobs</n>, created by <n>Felix Lee</n>.

Product Designer
- Who is not a graphic designer
- Who is not a landing page designer
- Who lives and breathes product design
- Knows how products work
- Knows that typography is not just adding -3% kerning to all the text
- Knows hierarchy exists in design
- Knows how to use…

Beginners automate to save money.
Professionals automate to save effort.
Masters automate to save time.

A quote from graphic designer <n>Milton Glaser</n>, illustrated by <n>Bazen Agency</n>.

Efficiency is not the most important thing. Effectiveness is.


Efficiency is about how quickly you can do something.

Effectiveness is about picking the right thing to do in the first place.



Start with what's effective. Then inject efficiency into the mix.

Many of the best designers I’ve met don’t post their work anywhere—they don’t have X accounts and they’re definitely not keeping their LinkedIn updated 

Separate the idea of marketing yourself from doing good and impactful work

Just a reminder:

Your website visitors don't care about your:

• Mission
• Vision
• Core values

They care about:

• How you'll save them time
• How you'll make them money
• How you'll solve their problems

Don't make it more complicated than that.

<n>Elon Musk: How to Win</n>, an infographic written by <n>Ben Lang</n> for <n>Founders Club</n>.

An essay on the concept of <n>Option Rot</n> from <n>Terrain</n>.

Judge yourself by the speed of light.



Don't judge yourself against what others are doing and how fast it takes them to complete something.



They set arbitratry limlits. We limit ourselves to the bedrock of time - physics.



Remove the eternal rot and move at the speed of light.

Future of design agencies is:

• No lock-ins → flexibility wins
• No office, no HQ → global talent pool
• Fully remote & async → talent > location
• Small, hyper-efficient teams → lean > bloated
• Deep specialization → niche expertise dominates
• Bootstrapped &…

consistency ≠ uniformity:

for those who haven't lived through this era – we used to have beautiful, precision interfaces. now they're replaced by a design language that originated from the Apple Watch, with icons that only fit in squircles. but that's not even the point.

the

Most designers want to stay in their comfort zone:

- This is what I want to do.
- I can only work in figma don’t wanna learn new tools.
- I can’t handle context switching.
- I can only focus on two things for my entire career.

What they fail to realize is that being a polymath…

master your craft so completely that it becomes your language. not the language you speak to impress others, but the language you think in. where the work isn’t separate from you, isn’t something you do, but something you are. where your hands know before your mind does. where

No days off. A portrait of basketball player <n>Kobe Bryant</n>.

Got off a call with a founder, and it was packed with insights.

Here’s what they shared:

> They’ve tried everything: big names, 8-fig design agencies, freelancers, in-house team.
> Agencies were too slow, felt cold and transactional.
> “We need a team that feels like an…

Quote by Italian artist <n>Bruno Munari</n>. Graphic by <n>bazen.</n>

shipping fast vs shipping smart

There's this weird thing happening in my founder friend group lately where everyone's obsessed with shipping velocity.

Like, genuinely obsessed.

I'll be on a call with someone and they'll be like "Yeah we shipped 12 features this month" and

A summary of <n>Alex Hormozi</n>'s framework on mastering entrepreneurship, compiled by <n>Aadit Sheth</n>.

30 micro product design tips I wish I had learned earlier:

1. Start mobile. Always.
2. Never ship on a Friday.
3. Test apps with one hand only.
4. Give users one job per screen.
5. Cut the “cool” stuff nobody uses.
6. If it looks slick but feels off, it's off.
7. Contrast should