The First 80% Is the Easy Part
In art school, we had a saying: the last 20% is the last 80%. That final stretch is where good design becomes exceptional.
Thought Merchants
People. Process. Product. Design for the agentic era.
Latest posts
Addiction Economics
Remember when Uber rides were cheap? VC subsidized your rides for a decade. Taxis died! The plan was never to stay cheap.
Artisanal, Free-Range, Organic Data
AI provenance is here. We’ve never had easier access to something that convincingly looks like information.
MAD 2.0: Mutually Assured Disruption
When anything can be faked, trust becomes the most valuable infrastructure we have.
AI Is Not Fixing Bad Management
Fable is nothing short of sensational. On max mode, what it pulls off is genuinely wild.
Stealing is stealing — unless you're really good at it.
An interesting thought.
AI Is My Superpower
It's not really a tool like any we've used before. A screwdriver screws. A drill drills. AI does millions.
Draw Like a Kid
Amazon will now let you design merch by talking to Alexa and have it printed direct-to-garment, shipped Prime.
Joy Was the Point
Everyone's optimizing for the robot now. Here's what gets squeezed out: improvisation, delight, the wrong turn that becomes the whole point.
The Golden Age of AI Is Ending
Every frontier closes the same way. First maps, then fences, then toll booths.
The Design Studio as Embassy
For years I called it my design shrine. I'd built a temple to my own taste and locked the door. I call it the studio now.
AI Is an Elaborate Pencil
Everyone has a pencil. Probably a few. But how many people can draw the Mona Lisa? Last I checked, just one.
Replacing replacement-level thinkers at scale.
Companies spent twenty years hiring replacement-level thinkers. Now a centralized one you can turn up and down with a credit card is about to IPO.
Cultivate your productivity.
I stand at my desk and I prompt. Then I walk away. The agent is working. That's the job now.
AI Is a UFO
Meta laid off 8,000 people because they saw a UFO. AI doesn't fit any existing category — stop pretending you know the shape.
There's No Sommelier of Knowing What You Want
The interface is a conversation now. You type what you want, and increasingly you get it.
The Idea is the Product
You see a talking head on TV explaining how AI will replace all your jobs. It's always executives and investors. Never makers.
The Homer Car Everyone Is Building
There's a Simpsons episode where Homer gets to design his own car. AI is now delivering tens of thousands of Homer cars a day.
The Future of Inference Is Italic
Conventions don't spread until they have a name.
Do You Say Please to the Robot?
I do. Not all the time, but enough of the time.
Theory of the Agentic Firm
Uncouple coordination cost from organizational reach.
Nobody's Asking About Maintenance
Building got democratized. The gap now is in who can sustain.
Go fast then go slow.
Speed is a gift, but be sure it doesn't make you lazy.
Venetian Tree Fractal
A 3D-printed hexagonal frame designed to scaffold a young tree until it can stand on its own.
Robot Etiquette
Own the thinking. Own the outcome.
If you can't tell, does it matter?
We've been fine with fake origin stories for generations.
OpenAI is Walmart
I don't shop at Walmart because I have style. Your brand shouldn't either.
Discipline of Attention
AI doesn't fix a lack of direction. It multiplies it.
Is it good?
The question nobody's asking about AI.
Robot Street Smarts vs Book Smarts
Every benchmark, every leaderboard — book smarts. At some point you need to ask: what about everyone else?
Lamp Rubbers
Practice the uncomfortable act of sitting with an open-ended tool and no instructions.
The Lindsey Vonn Find Out Era.
Norms are optional. Knees are not.
Open Claw = Pasta Maker
The incredible potential of the pasta-making lion.
The interface is collapsing into a conversation.
What’s funny is that with AI, that old joke is becoming true.
Berry’s Law
“The simplest version that still works — wins.”
The golden age of AI.
This moment feels familiar.
Pigeon Robots
Camouflaged contextual sensing.
Context is queen and she runs the house.
Design has always been the original context discipline.
Security Theater
The impression of protection, you know, the TSA.
Tokyo is visually complicated.
There is a certain familiar visual hierarchy that does not exist in Japanese.
A book with only one page. Designing brands for new companies.
My job isn't to fill those pages for you.
Robots are watching baseball.
Here we go again...
Fucking Magic is overvalued.
Do you know how it works?
There is a lot of money to be made in confusion.
Keep your eyes open.
I’ve never seen a fistfight in a plant store.
A breath of fresh air.
Old Money, New Scams.
Same as it ever was.
Hype is the product.
I’ve never seen anything quite like this.
You’re a Champion. Pass It On.
He might be the best coach I’ve seen in recent memory.
So much mediocrity.
Much of the business world is built on mediocrity.
There’s nothing to fix, because there’s no interface to fix.
It’s not bad. It’s just different.