New look. New writer. Things are changing.

Since acquiring TWID a few months ago, we’ve worked with our friend Ryan Gilbert (yes, the Workspaces guy) to keep this newsletter moving. Today marks the first edition written and published by me. 👋🏻

We’re in the early stages of a journey to build a new kind of publication for the creative community. We’ll be doing it in public—hopefully with your feedback—each step of the way.

We plan to hire incredible writers, publish essays on the state of design, share the news that matters, explore AI and its impact on our industry, learn from leading designers, and provide a platform to showcase up-and-coming designers. Of course, this won’t happen overnight, but today’s edition of TWID marks the start.

So, why now? Well, because we feel it’s needed—so does the community—and because we can. Luckily, we have the resources and are delusional enough to believe a design-focused media business can thrive today. I hope you’ll join us on the journey.

Drop an email and let me know your thoughts.

-Hunter

Top Stories in Design

7,298 prompts in Cursor later and an AI video editor is born.

Meng To showed us how powerful a designer can be when armed with an idea and AI. DreamCut is the most ambitious tool shipped to market in this new, emerging category of AI-developed software. And damn, is it well designed.

ChatGPT, Claude, Cursor, and the like aren’t quite able to take you from idea to production without any previous development experience, but they’re closing the gap fast.

This begs the question:

I do know that Meng has inadvertently settled the debate on whether designers should code: who cares, AI will do it for them.

Humane finds their voice, and lets us know with a new site.

We were ready to write them off as one of the most spectacular hardware crash-and-burn stories ever, but they’re back and better. At least their new site is better than ever; the hardware is still painfully slow. 🫣

Humane has always had a bright vision for the future, but their ability to get the rest of us bought in was lacking. Watching paint dry is more exciting than watching their original product announcement. They’ve learned from their mistakes.

What’s happening with Humane is a case study of how great design and story can improve a company’s trajectory.

Anthropic is here to help make the logo bigger—no designer needed.

Imagine a world where Claude opens Figma and tackles annoying client requests while you sleep. Computer Use is in its infancy, but the implications are enormous.

How this impacts design is still theoretical. Many have argued that human-to-machine interfaces will all become voice-based. While that’s certainly probable, how do we think about designing interfaces when the computer uses them on our behalf?

Or, you ignore this existential dilemma and build an AI agent to tackle your client requests, output that to a Computer Use prompt, sit back, and watch Claude design in Figma for you.

The future is coming, and it’s coming fast.

Inspiration From the Week

Poster Generator: An experimental design project

Up-and-Coming Designers

Favorite project you’ve worked on?

The project I am most proud of is the Retool rebrand. It was a long process (1.5 years), but after working on so many brand sprints and early-stage startups, it was extremely refreshing to have more time, more space, and an incredibly talented team to build with.

Where do you find inspiration?

People like Smith & Diction, Porto Roche, Order, Studio Mast, etc., are just really thoughtful people doing work that feels like it has a soul.

How do you get into flow?

I built a new office in my backyard, and it definitely gets me into a flow state. I've been opening the windows, feeling the crispness of fall, turning up some music, and just making.

What else should we know about you?

I'm just a guy from Oklahoma trying my best to raise a family, do good work, and add something positive to the world. I switch daily between not taking design too seriously and building my entire identity around it.

Be careful. He’s verbose.

Favorite project you’ve worked on?

Bmrks. The logomark is catchy, even after looking at it a lot.

Where do you find inspiration?

Everywhere. I find myself constantly analyzing things both online and offline.

How do you get into flow?

Coffee and music.

What else should we know about you?

I studied engineering but chose to pursue design instead.

Until next week…

Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed this edition and would consider forwarding it to a friend.

If you hated it, reply and let us know what we could do differently.

Same time next week ✌️