Today, I'm testing out Digital Erik on COPYWRITING. (Digital Erik is the custom chatbot I've trained on 70k+ words of my design content 🤖) It has access to ALL Landing Page Academy transcripts + worksheets So it can BRAINSTORM ideas, say WHY they work, and WHERE to learn more

One thing I'm really stoked about with Digital Erik is that he cites his sources. I have this hunch that "almost 70 hours of video across 3 courses" sometimes sounds more like a chore than an asset. But if an intelligent agent can point you to *EXACTLY* where your question is answered... nice! 😎

Right now, Digital Erik does not have a logo. As much as I love UI, coming up with logos has never been my thing. Branding is truly its own craft. Any advice? (The current version is "Digital Erik" written in Freight Text, which Digital Erik guesses is my fav font. Not bad! 😎)

I get so stoked when Digital Erik gives good advice. Granted... it's a design chatbot trained solely on my own content. It *BETTER* give good advice 🙈 But there's part of me that yells "PREACH!" when it nails an answer.

So I've been working on a new project... Digital Erik! It's a chatbot trained on 45 hours of my design course transcripts & resources + dozens of blog posts and YouTube videos (~70k words of content!).

I've got a LOT of design content out there… 🎥 70 hours of video across 3 courses 👨‍💻 Dozens of blog posts 📫 100+ email newsletters 📣 Content here, & other social sites... If I uploaded ALL of this to a Digital Erik design chatbot 🤖… What would you MOST want to ask/do?

"How do I make this design look more interesting?" "How do I make my portfolio stand out?" "How should I use AI in my design workflow?" I've got the same answer for each of these 😎

I just launched a blog. (Those are still cool in 2026, right?) It's currently on the front page of Hacker News (!) First post, "Why is the sky blue?" I wanted (a) an excuse to practice explaining complex things simply, and (b) to try out some new design techniques. Success!

🔥 Design tip: when trying out a new font, explore ALL the properties to try and find gold. There’s a lot more than normal and bold. Sometimes extrabold italic is 👌 Make sure to search: 🏋️ Very light or heavy weights ✨ Italics 🔠 Uppercase ⭐ Special characters -–—!?&*·←→«»

OK, it's crazy how 4 different AI site generators come up with such SIMILAR results. Prompt includes NOTHING on specific copy, colors, images, or layouts. What does this tell you?

So suppose I have ~70 hours of video lessons of me teaching design. Where do I upload them so my students can chat with an LLM-powered version of my advice? Maybe even structure it to do design reviews?

Have you made a "meh" landing page with AI (Lovable, v0, etc) and want feedback? Comment with the link or DM me. I'll shoot over some* feedback to everyone who responds 🤙 *Exact amount depends on response volume. Offer not valid in the state of Tennessee.

Evernote is now using Figtree as a brand font, and they're doing a great job with it. Some typography tips: ✅ Negative letter-spacing in the header gives a crisper, tighter feel ✅ Use of non-standard weights to give a little extra emphasis (top nav uses medium weight text)

Is AI "stealing with one step added"? It doesn't seem like that to me 🤷‍♂️ But there's something undeniably nice about using human-produced assets for design work. Here are some of my fav links for (free-to-use) paintings, illustrations, and renders...

Most underrated design trend of 2025… mesh gradients (OK, technically this started earlier, but it felt like it really picked up last year) You can adapt them for SO many brands and use-cases. It's shocking to me we don't see these lil' guys EVERYWHERE.

🏆 Most ridiculous design trend of 2025... 🥁 XL FOOTERS It's true. We've gone all these years without any real love given to footers. But just including your logo at size one-billion? 🧐🧐🧐 There's no *there* there. My prediction is this will fade just as quickly as it rose.

One of the most interesting design trends of 2025 (though ongoing) is OIL PAINTINGS AS A BACKGROUND. I can't deny it. It looks 🔥🔥 But if we understand *why* it looks great, we can riff and figure out something more original.

Enrollment for my design courses closes at midnight tonight. Lots of folks saying it's the best career investment they've ever made. AMA 🫡

Georgia is a default web font, it's on a billion pages... but here it looks FRESH 🔥 Why? 2 reasons...

Showing a bunch of intermediate deliverables in your portfolio writeups? Plz don't 🙈 Instead, focus on RESULTS. If you can achieve the results, it's *understood* you know how to do the process. If you CAN'T achieve the results, it DOESN'T MATTER if you can do "the process".

How to do Apple's Liquid Glass in Figma (a property-by-property visual breakdown) Time to get nerdy about liquid glass 🤓 👇👇

🥃 Refraction through glass effects ⛅ Soft shadow techniques 🌈 Mesh gradients All in Apple's new visual style, announced yesterday. All topics covered on Design Hacks (or events I've done, announced on Design Hacks). Interested in staying on the future of visual design? 👇

All 3 of my courses close enrollment tonight at midnight pacific. All courses contain: 📽 Dozens of video-based lessons 📝 Figma/downloadable resources 🌎 A student community for learning & feedback 💯 Lifetime access to all course materials, including additions and improvements ♥️ 30-day refund policy

If there's one time in my life the muse was with me, it was in the house with the Mexican talavera toilet...

We don't talk enough about the UI of SAAS apps. Flashy landing pages are one thing, but how do you make data-heavy apps look GREAT? I'll be posting some tips this month 👇

this is what i'd put in a time capsule from 2025.

Proud font dad moment: seeing Figtree in Figma's new feature announcements at Config today 😎

WHAT'S YOUR HARD-TO-DO-IN-FIGMA? The things that are easy to do in Figma – rectangles, text, images – are the things that feel overused and common place in digital design. "ooh i stack boxes for a living 🙄" The antidote? Easy.

I think I'm going to get to use a tool I launched earlier this year in a client project 😀

🔥 UX POP QUIZ 🔥 How do you ask a question without biasing the answer? (I can think of 3 tips. Surely I'm missing some. Listed below 👇)

🔥 UX POP QUIZ 🔥 Why shouldn't you listen to your users? (Respond below, but do it before looking at my answer... 😏)

Here are 7 ways of ensuring text is legible on top of images – even if the text or image or placement can change. This is a core UI design skill. Bookmark this 📍

🔥 UX/UI POP QUIZ 🔥 Q: How do you balance usability and aesthetics? (Answer below 👇)

Fun fact: color is 3-D 🤯 That's why color systems are 3 letters... RGB, CMY, HSL, etc. (It's actually b/c we have 3 types of cone cells in our eyes. Some ppl have 4, and can see color in 4-D. One such woman painted this 👇) Color seems "subjective", but it's just 3 numbers, so we can find PATTERNS

🔥 UX pop quiz 🔥 Can you name four reasons why a user's search query doesn't turn up results? (Answers below)

Here's my FAVORITE data visualization of ALL TIME. It's a plaque affixed to the Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft – which are currently hurtling through interstellar space – to tell any extraterrestrials a bit about who created said hunk of junk. It's got...

Here's a UX riddle: When you search Gmail, your search term is BOLDED in the autocomplete. However, when you search Google, everything EXCEPT your search term is bolded. Why? Because Gmail is predicting DESTINATIONS (specific emails); Google is predicting PATHS TO GET THERE (queries).

Even more important than being able to make a nice design on a blank canvas is MAKING IMPROVEMENTS to something that already exists. Why? Because you'll spend SO much more time doing the latter Here's an ex from Learn UI Design. First draft: MS Paint-style hilarity Final draft: *much* better

Designing the certificates for Learn UI Design was a ton of fun. Lots of easter eggs – e.g. the four corners are the four "pillars" of UI design: 1. color 2. typography 3. imagery 4. layout Etc 😉

Woke up to this email. Not gonna lie, I have the perfect job for a "words of affirmation" love language. Make a solid course, wait for others to benefit, feel good 💪

OK, I'm doing a personal design challenge 😎 I'm going through the old @relume_io Design League challenges and designing some landing pages in 30 minutes. Here's my first one 😅

Mesh gradients are a bit trendy, but they're still an underrated UI technique, IMO. Here are 5 reasons why they're *particularly* useful in designs 🧵

I'm not an amazing salesman, but here are 4 people saying my courses are the best investments of their entire career.

Every designer should know the 80/20 rule: 80% of the output/results often comes from 20% of the input/effort. Here are 3 ways it applies to UI design (👇)

On Monday, I'm hosting a new LIVE event: a Craft Workshop 😎 We'll dive into: 🌓 Lighting & shadows 🔮 Materials 🪙 Texture – and more

All 3 of my courses are OPEN FOR ENROLLMENT for 7 days 🎉 🔥 Learn UI Design: Master visual design. Confidently design gorgeous sites and apps. 🎉 Learn UX Design: Design simple, intuitive apps. Master interaction design patterns. ✨ Landing Page Academy: Create gorgeous, high-converting sites.

🙌

JUST LAUNCHED! 🎉 My all-new MESH GRADIENT GENERATOR, featuring: 🎨 Unlimited color stops 📊 Grainy noise effect (3 blend modes) 😵‍💫 Adjustable blur 💅 A gallery for inspiration and editing 📁 One-click SVG export & paste into Figma I built it to be the most powerful, quick mesh generator on the web 😎

First coffee shop sighting of Figtree 🙌 At one of my fav cafes, no less – the excellent Boon Boona 😍

gorgeous free font of the day: fonts.google.com/specimen/New... (h/t @erikdkennedy.bsky.social)