#founder-interviews

What is Macaw and what does it do?

Macaw is a new breed of web design tool, which allows you to work on a canvas much like Photoshop. However, that canvas is actually a web browser.

As you design, Macaw is automatically generating the HTML and CSS necessary for your design. It’s not your typical WYSIWYG, though. Macaw has a custom coding engine – called Alchemy – which follows the same logic a developer would use to write semantic HTML and succinct CSS.

What was the moment you decided to start working on Macaw? Who was there, where were you physically at? When was that?

It all started when my daughter was born and I was home on paternity leave. Between swaddles, I found time to tinker with a few ideas. One of them was Macaw. It was just meant to be a small side project, but I realized how many problems a tool like this could solve and I quickly became obsessed with it.

How long did it take you to build your first prototype? What was the length of time between idea to getting something in customers' hands?

I spent about four months working nights and weekends before I showed it to anyone. My partner, Adam Christ, was the first to see it and he decided to help out. We thought we’d finish it with another three to five months of work, which was pretty naïve on our part. It took well over a year to finish and launch.

My wife was ready to kill me.

What's your favorite tool you use to build Macaw?

My first instinct is to say Sublime Text. It's far and away the best text editor I've ever used. However, Macaw wouldn't exist if it weren't for Chromium.

We played around with numerous platforms before finding our groove with Chromium Embedded Framework (CEF). It's crazy to think how powerful browsers are becoming. I think we're going to see more and more of our favorite apps rebuilt on an HTML-based stack.

What is the most challenging thing about developing tools for the design community? How have you overcome those challenges?

Designing a tool for designers to design with is equally awesome and difficult. Our community is very tech savvy and most of them have built apps themselves, so they're always happy to point out things we could be doing better.

It's incredibly helpful that our audience is preprogrammed to help make our product better. We're building something really complex and we need their help to get everything right. That being said, we’re also building an app that many people have thought about building themselves. So, they're quite opinionated about how it should work. Many voices can make it difficult to identify features that are crucial for the overall vision.

What do you think are the biggest challenges designers face today?

Dealing with a medium that is constantly evolving, which is why we're building Macaw.

Designing for the web has never been more complex. For the first two decades of web design, things stayed pretty much the same. We did mostly fixed-width layouts, which could be easily mocked in Photoshop. Then, it came down to mastering layout properties and learning the ins-and-outs of each browser.

The past few years have brought us tremendous growth in browser capabilities and even more in design thinking. Responsive design brought an enlightenment of our medium. People are finally treating the web in a different way than the way we treated print, and browser manufacturers are constantly improving the underlying technology so we can do more and more.

As a designer, keeping up with these changes can be overwhelming.

What do you believe are some of your biggest failures?

I don’t know if I’d call it a failure, but jumping in head first with Macaw was a tough thing to do. It felt like a failure for a long time. The product took a long time to develop and we didn’t take investment. Watching our family’s savings wither away month after month was really discouraging and there were many times that I wanted to quit.

I wouldn’t change a thing about the journey, though. I learned more in that one year than I did in the entirety of my career – not just about design and development, but about business, life, and family.

What advice would you have to anyone looking to develop applications or services for designers?

Do it! The design community is an incredible group of people. I feel honored to be building things for them. It’s a unique situation to find yourself in, because your audience is also inherently capable of identifying problem areas with the product and they’re usually willing to help you resolve things.

This is a blessing and a curse, because you’ll be held liable for every design mistake made. That’s a good thing; it’s humbling and you can learn a lot from your audience. The community guides most of the product direction for Macaw. So, I guess my advice is to engage the community because they’ll make the product much better than you can alone.

Has there been a watershed moment in the product? What was it?

There have been many. Kickstarter was the most meaningful moment for the company and for me personally, but the largest moment for the product is taking place right now. We're in the midst of some major product initiatives.

It's still a little early for us to say too much about what we’re developing, but I can say that we've cracked numerous things that we didn't even think would be possible. We can't wait to share them with the community!

Who is your favorite person to follow on Twitter?

I follow the typical list of designers and developers, but one of my favorite people on Twitter is neither: @brainpicker. Brain Pickings is easily one of my top sites as it covers a ton of awesome, nerdy stuff: creativity, life and science.

If you would like to learn more about Macaw, you can do so easily on their site.

If you liked this interview, you will also like the other interviews we've done with creators of design-centric software.

What is Stand In and what does it do?

Stand In is a way to help designers iterate quickly through the design of mobile apps. We bring prototyping into the design process so when you iterate on your design, your prototype updates in real time.

What was the moment you decided to start working on Stand In? Who was there, where were you physically at? When was that?

For years, my co-founder and I both worked at agencies and startups, working on mobile apps. During this time we were frustrated with the disconnect between the design phase and prototyping phase. We wanted a solution that integrated into our existing workflow rather than adding more steps to it. After kicking the idea around for a while, we decided to quit our jobs and build it. We started at the beginning of 2013 in Portland, Oregon.

How long did it take you to build your first prototype? What was the length of time between idea to getting something in customers' hands?

The first prototype of our prototyper (so meta) was built in about 3 months but soon after we decided to rewrite it using a new plugin technology that Photoshop was working on. We were just two folks at the time so it took us a little under a year to ship the first version.

What's your favorite tool you use to build Stand In?

We use Node.js really heavily and I love it.

What is the most challenging thing about developing tools for the design community? How have you overcome those challenges?

I'd say it's how quickly the world is changing. The number of new devices coming out and even new forms of interaction (e.g. Force Touch) that makes us really think hard about how we approach building design tools. The old way of building for the web doesn't work today.

Designs aren't siloed the way they used to be. Now we're thinking about designing experiences across devices.

What do you believe are some of your biggest failures?

I wish we had shipped sooner. I'm too much of a perfectionist at times and don't get things out the door soon enough. I've been trying hard to ship early, ship often.

What advice would you have to anyone looking to develop applications or services for designers?

Talk to as many designers as possible about their process, and pain points. It's too easy to build a product for yourself, but you really need to learn how others work and if your product solves problems for them. It's much less painful to learn that before writing a lot of code.

Has there been a watershed moment in the product? What was it?

We're currently going through Techstars and it's been an amazing program.

Who is your favorite person to follow on Twitter?

Marc Edwards (@marcedwards)

What has your favorite Designer News story been of all time?

I thought it was really cool how Simon Jaspers made a tool to generate DN avatars.

If you would like to learn more about Stand In, you can do so easily on their site.

If you liked this interview, chances are you'll like our past interviews we've done with creators of design-centric software.

What was the moment you decided to start working on Marvel? Who was there, where were you physically at? When was that?

The idea for Marvel came about whilst I was freelancing at a big global agency. Like most of the designers there, a large part of my time was spent on pitch work.

There was one pitch in particular that sparked the idea. It was a iPhone app for a big brand worth 6 figures, so everyone had their heads down all week working hard on putting something impressive together.

All of my time was spent doing the interface and UX for the app, 20-ish screens in total. I sweated details, I did it all in Retina, I displayed interactions and gestures, it was full on.

What happened next is pretty typical in most agencies I’ve worked in. You hand over the finished mockups to the account director, who then crams them into a Powerpoint, throws in the agency logo, paragraphs of text and maybe even some clipart.

In an ideal world I would have handed my designs over to one of the devs and they would have coded it up so that we could have presented a prototype that the client could have played with. The reality is that in most agencies, all the developers are stacked on existing projects and don’t have time to anything else.

For the next pitch I decided to put all my mockups on the photoroll of the device and give it to the client myself.

The result was incredible, even though the only thing you could do was swipe through the screens, the client loved it and actually thought it was a real app. I had to explain that it was static mockups but she was impressed and we won the pitch.

Getting my designs into the client's hands was powerful, not only did it make the agency money by winning the pitch but it also saved development resources. But I knew that making the mockups interactive would have a even bigger impact.

That's when the idea for Marvel started to form, a super simple platform for making my designs interactive without needing to code.

How long did it take you to build your first prototype? What was the length of time between idea to getting something in customers' hands?

I think I first mentioned it to Brendan, a developer and one of my co-founders, late 2012. It wasn't until early last year that we got started on it.

We were both freelancing at the time so we worked on Marvel over evenings and weekends, grabbing a few hours here and there. In total it took around 3 months to get the first prototype of Marvel up and running.

It didn’t help that on two occasions when we were a week away from going into public beta, I decided the UI and UX had to be changed.

If there's one lesson I've learned from that experience hat was that you just have to let go.

It turns out that if people like your product and it solves their problems, they’ll forgive spelling mistakes, misaligned text, bugs, and all the other things I was paranoid about. Obsessing that the website didn’t look like my PSDs was a waste of everyone’s time and energy. ​

What's your favorite tool you use to build Marvel?

I'm really impressed with Mixpanel right now.

I recently set-up several retention emails which get sent to users asking why they haven't returned to Marvel for a couple of months.

The response has been immense. It's sparked hundreds of conversations with users (many face-to-face ones too) and helped us prioritise bugs and features.

We're not even close to utilising Mixpanel's full potential either. You can get some real granular detail on how your users are behaving so we're still figuring out how to utilise that data to make a better product.

What is the most challenging thing about developing tools for the design community?

Probably that most of your users are experts in UX and design so if your product isn't up to scratch in both look and feel, it'll get dumped pretty quick.

Reliability is another big challenge. Marvel is used everyday to pitch and present work to bosses, investors and clients. If the prototype bugs out or the service goes down, we make our users look bad. That could lead to them losing a pitch (and the money that goes with it) or getting a bad reputation. The stakes are high.

We found out the hard way that if you mess up at those points, you don't get a second chance.

How have you overcome those challenges?

​Iteration! We beat ourselves up a lot when things go wrong or aren't up to standard but the reality is that takes time to build a great product.

What do you think the biggest challenges facing designers are today?

Keeping up to date with new design patterns, technologies, platforms, API and tools.

It's harder than ever to stay relevant. Just when you think you've finally got to grips with one device, another hits the market or a new OS gets released.

On one hand it's an incredibly exciting time to be a designer with endless possibilities, on the other it can feel like you're being bombarded with stuff without the time to learn.

For example, recently I read that iOS 8 supports animated PNGs - I didn't even know animated PNGs existed! Now I'm thinking, what is this thing? How can I use it? When should I use it? How can it help me?

Even the tools we use everyday are changing. I've spent my career putting thousands of hours in and mastering Photoshop, but now Sketch is looking so good that I'm making the switch and basically starting from scratch. Everything is in flux.

What do you believe are some of your biggest failures?

​I think I waited too long to do what I loved.

For years I knew that I wanted to design and build my own products, but instead I spent so much time and energy trying to convince my bosses at various agencies to let me create internal initiatives and side-projects​ to try and scratch that itch.​

Looking back now at those 3-4 years, I feel gutted that I didn't channel that energy into my own stuff instead.

W​asting your time doing shit you don't believe in - that's something i see as one of my failures.

What advice would you have to anyone looking to develop applications or services for designers?

I think understanding the problems of your end-user is always a good thing. You should either be a designer already or work closely with one.

One of the advantages with Marvel is that a lot of the product decisions we make come from my past experiences. It makes it easier to step back and ask yourself "Would I actually use or want this thing?"

The great part about making stuff for designers is that you have so many amazing, highly active communities to tap into. Whether that's Designer News, Dribbble or /r/design, you can quickly put your idea out there and get immediate feedback from your target audience. And they aren't afraid of being honest!

Has there been a watershed moment in the product? What was it?

That was when the first person paid to upgrade their Marvel plan. Before that point we had absolutely no idea if Marvel could be an actual business.​

Who is your favorite person to follow on Twitter?​

​I love @millsustwo​, his feed is completely random but always honest views on the industry. Sometimes he tweets really interesting articles, and sometimes he tweets about ponies.

You guys have a pretty impressive story when it comes to promoting your product on Designer News. Can you tell us about that?

​Yeah! You can actually trace our progress through DN posts.

So around this time last year we were still building Marvel in our bedrooms​ and during that summer we threw up a 'coming soon' page with the obligatory form to add your email address to be notified when we launched.

It got posted to Designer News and within a week we had over 1500 email addresses. It allowed me to start reaching out to people and getting them on the alpha and gather feedback.

Then in October we launched Marvel into public beta and I posted it as a Show DN. It reached the top of the front page and suddenly we had enough traction to go to angel investors and get some funding.

A month or two later we were full-time on Marvel!!

What has your favorite Designer News story been of all time?

​Every Designer News AMA! All of them were great fun to read but I especially liked the insights from Maykel Loomans, Frank Chimero and Justin Edmund.

If you would like to learn more about Marvel, you can do so easily on their site.

If you liked this interview, chances are you'll like our past interviews we've done with creators of design-centric software.

What is Affinity Designer and what does it do?

Affinity Designer is a professional grade graphic design application for the Mac. It creates graphics – for marketing materials, websites, icons, UI work, or just concept art and illustrations.

What was the moment you decided to start working on Affinity Designer? Who was there, where were you physically at? When was that?

About 4 years ago the head of our development team, Tony Brightman, presented this amazing plan to us with his vision for this new professional suite of graphics applications for Mac. We were sold. We needed about six guys on it initially, so it took about six months to be able to properly clear their desks of other work before they could 100% focus on it.

How long did it take you to build your first prototype? What was the length of time between the idea to getting something in customers’ hands?

We had documents rendering in as little as six months. We could see immediately how fast this new technology was going to be. In terms of getting something into customers’ hands that didn’t happen until the beta which was only 4 months ago. So all in it took just over 3.5 years from original idea to anyone outside of the company using it.

3.5 years! That's a long time. In a world of Minimum Viable Products and shipping ASAP, how did you stay the course and stay motivated?

It was a scary prospect working on something for so long without knowing for sure what the reaction to it would be. We have developed graphics software, admittedly for more hobby applications, for about 25 years so we felt confident what we were producing was special and would be received well. After all, we already had a revenue stream from other products so we could afford the investment. I guess we’ve got a bit of a gambling spirit here as well: trust your gut, it’s more exciting.

Staying motivated was indeed a very big challenge for the developers. Little sprints, followed by the win of the problem being solved—like the performance of the tool exceeding what they thought possible—kept the developers going. That said, you can’t avoid having long periods where there is just a huge amount of grunt work typing. It's boring and tough. And you can’t avoid things going wrong. Looking back there were some very dark days, but they seem such a distant memory now.

What is the most challenging thing about developing tools for the design community? How have you overcome those challenges?

It’s all about workflow and speed for designers. Speed wasn’t a problem – workflow more challenging. Everyone works in different ways and are used to different products. We were lucky in that we already had a team of 10 designers working at Serif and so we used them a lot for early feedback on workflow considerations.

How the Affinity range really sets a new precedent in terms of workflow will not be fully realized until the releases of Affinity Photo and Affinity Publisher. We are going to totally remove the file format boundary between these types of apps.

I guess one other thing which is quite unique about apps for the design community is they will always have an opinion on the look of your UI!

What do you think the biggest challenges facing designers are today?

Same as they’ve always been – mostly all the CEOs who think they know more about design than designers.

What do you believe are some of your biggest failures?

Hard question. We’ve had loads of failures, but that’s the nature of research and development. Someone can spend 6 months trying to solve a particular problem, and the method used just doesn’t work. You just have to throw it away and start again.

What advice would you have to anyone looking to develop applications for designers?

Make sure you have a designer on your team, or who can work closely with the development team and listen to them.

Also, and this really applies to any app, never compromise on your code. Be perfectionists, follow best practices, build in regression. Never throw good code after bad.

Has there been a watershed moment in the product? What was it?

I guess when we decided exactly what products we would make. And yes, believe it or not we were not sure about what they would be when we first started out.

We were originally considering one all-singing, all-dancing design app, but half way through that wasn’t making sense. When we decided on a suite of three in Designer, Photo and Publisher it all came together a lot better in our minds.

What was your biggest challenge?

With all the crazy mathematical and technological problems which have been solved over the last few years, without a doubt the biggest challenge was coming up with a name! What a nightmare. We had white boards all over the place with hundreds of ideas on. Every time we thought we had a good one, there was some trademark or other issue.

We’re very pleased with the Affinity name though—and also that it’s recently been registered.

You can purchase Affinity Designer today in the Mac App Store.

If you liked this interview, you will also like the other interviews we've done with creators of design-centric software.

What is Pixate and what does it do?

Pixate, Inc. is a two ­year ­old, Y­Combinator and Accel Partners backed company that’s creating a mobile design platform through some really unique services.

What was the moment you decided to start working on Pixate? Who was there, where were you physically at? When was that?

I’m going to answer that with some background first. I’ve founded a couple of startups. First, in San Diego, California, was Live Software where I created JRun, the first commercial Java Servlet and JSP engine. It was self-­funded and was eventually sold to Allaire Corporation. Allaire was bought by Macromedia, which was in turn bought by Adobe.

After that, I started Aptana, which was venture-funded. I had started that in San Diego but then moved to Silicon Valley to secure the funding. Aptana was focused on tooling for web application development. We had millions of downloads of our open-­source IDE and we were eventually acquired by Appcelerator.

After that exit, I was kind of in a ‘neutral zone’. I knew mobile was picking up serious steam, but I just wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. I had heard a lot about Y­Combinator (YC) and thought that maybe I should try something different this time, instead of self-­funding or going right to VC. I knew I wanted to do mobile, but exactly what wasn’t clear yet. YC was trying out a new “no idea” application, so I went for it.

This all took place in Palo Alto, where I had moved to in order to be as close to the white­-hot core of Silicon Valley as I could. It didn’t hurt that Steve Jobs had lived a few blocks away from where I settled. I was accepted into YC after cramming for a week to build a demo app on iPad. It was my first iOS app, and I literally locked myself in a basement and didn’t come out for a week to get it done.

Once in YC, I had to decide what to actually build. And they wanted me to get a co­founder. I went back to one of my lead engineers at Aptana, Kevin Lindsey, and asked for him to join me. He did.

It looks like you come from a development background. How does that influence how you build Pixate? How is building tools for developers different from building tools for designers?

I am an engineer at heart, but like most of us, I know good design when I see it. I’m one of those that likes to be very close to good design, and I just code as close to it as I can. I was offered a job at Pixar back in the day to work on shaders and other coding tasks. I couldn’t take the job, but it felt good nonetheless.

My first two companies were squarely for developers. The first company was all about Java, the second was all about web. Pixate is indeed different in that it’s targeting a group of extremely bright and talented people, with a real gift for design, but most of them don’t want to code.

That’s actually a refreshing challenge for us: how can we take the most complex aspect of programming extremely rich interactions and animations on native mobile devices and make it super easy and intuitive? Designers want to be able to realize their creative ideas in as short a path as possible.

Unlike developers, it’s not about the best algorithm or most efficient code, but rather it’s about the biggest visual impact, the joy and delight they bring their users, all while keeping everything as clean as possible­­. That’s their goal so in turn that’s our goal.

How long did it take you to build your first prototype? What was the length of time between idea to getting something in customers' hands?

Y­Combinator is really good about driving you to get a product out to market in a little time as possible. After all, you only have 90 days in the program, so you better not blow the opportunity. Pixate started with our now open-­sourced Freestyle product, and our prototype took a couple of months. (We had to learn Objective-­C in the process.) We worked tirelessly and went from inception to commercially available 1.0 product in about 6 months.

Our current product, which we’re just calling Pixate, is a mobile interaction design service. It took nearly a year to build and get to market. We learned a lot from Freestyle, but also had a lot more to learn to get a product out that touched web client, server, Android and iOS.

What's your favorite tool you use to build Pixate?

Xcode and Sketch. I personally focus most of my development time on the iOS side of the product, so the boring answer is that I couldn’t have done it without Xcode. In terms of non-­programming tooling, I appreciate the simplicity of Sketch and it’s clean user interface, definitely an inspiration for us.

What is the most challenging thing about developing tools for the design community? How have you overcome those challenges?

Simplicity.

Representing complex programming paradigms and concepts in a completely visual way is very difficult. Just look at tools like Quartz Composer, with all its power comes an extremely complex visual representation of that power. Sometimes a visual expression can be easier than code, but the opposite is also very true.

For example, a simple programming concept like "state" becomes tougher to cleanly represent visually. We’re doing our best to overcome these challenges by not rushing to solving them. That is, we want to take a very thoughtful approach to how hard problems might be solved visually, and we don’t want to rush or jump to conclusions.

What do you think the biggest challenges facing designers are today?

Being heard. I’ve heard a lot of stories in the last year talking to every major company that would take our meeting ­­and most did. I saw a lot of pain from product and design.

I want to empower designers to stand their ground. To say that something can be done, that it isn't impossible from an engineering perspective. Pixate wants to shift the balance of power back towards design.

We want designers to be able to iterate infinitely more quickly than a developer can, and present an idea so close to completion, so full­ fidelity, that there’s little doubt left about how should it work.

With Pixate, the designer can answer all of these questions, and more, before engineering ever get to it. The designer can be heard loudly and clearly.

What do you believe are some of your biggest failures?

Cutting my losses. Success comes through failure. The more you fail, the more you succeed. The longer you wait to fail, the fewer successes you’ll have. My biggest failure is not failing fast enough when I knew time was already up. My advice to anyone trying anything, fail, then try again.

What advice would you have to anyone looking to develop applications or services for designers?

Ease of use trumps features.

Has there been a watershed moment in the product? What was it?

Maybe at the risk of fan service, when we announced our first private beta on Designer News this year on the same day that WWDC started, our post was number one, all day, on top of the WWDC news. That was a really big deal and exciting for us. It spotlighted us long enough for people to take notice.

Who is your favorite person to follow on Twitter?

Speaking of fanboy, I can’t get enough of John Gruber (@gruber) and Daring Fireball (@daringfireball). I follow both on Twitter and we’ve advertised with him several times. With his stuff, for me, more is more.

What has your favorite Designer News story been of all time?

I’d have to say that it’s the category of roundups that I enjoy the most. Whether it’s avatars or web site designs or even progress loading indicators, seeing the creativity that the community brings is always the best top to bottom reading I get.

That wraps up our interview with Paul. If you would like to check out Pixate, head on over to the site to sign up.

In case you missed it, check out last week's interview with Nathan Manousos, a founder of Flinto.

What was the moment you decided to start working on Flinto? Who was there, where were you physically at? When was that?

In 2010 I taught the world’s first (maybe) iPhone UI design course at California College of the Arts. I thought it would be such a shame if the students didn’t have an interactive prototype that ran on their iPhone at the end of the course, so I hacked together a tool for them to use. That was the first version of Flinto.

I actually had the idea for Flinto a year earlier, but didn’t have an excuse to build it. I was working as the designer of Echofon, the popular Twitter client created by my now-cofounder Kazuho Okui. As I designed features, I would consider the flows and interactions first. I often thought about the design of an app that would let me bust out tappable prototypes of these flows, and I was frustrated that such a tool didn’t exist.

How long did it take you to build your first prototype? What was the length of time between idea to getting something in customers' hands?

I built the first version of Flinto in a couple of nights. My students used it right after that. It was great having a classroom full of testers! Their feedback was so encouraging that I continued to spend my evenings refining the tool. Before long it had a robust interface and was self-hosted.

After teaching a second session of the course, I decided to turn Flinto into a commercial product. I spent a lot of time on it, but I got caught up with other things and never launched it. I continued to use it on my own projects, as did some former students and friends.

Nearly four years after building the first version for students, I partnered with Kaz and we spent six months rebuilding Flinto before launching it publicly.

I spent two of those months living in Tokyo, because, why not? It’s an inspiring place to be, and we reached a significant milestone by the end of my stay there when we replaced the existing Flinto app with our rebuilt version and started private beta testing with the existing users.

What's your favorite tool you use to build Flinto?

Sketch.

My dad first showed me Photoshop when I was seven years old. I’ve used Photoshop nearly every day of my adult life. So it was a big deal for me in early 2013 when I came across Sketch in the Mac App Store and gave it a spin. After a week I had converted entirely to using Sketch for Flinto’s UI. It’s been tough putting up with all the bugs and glitches, but thankfully Pieter has his priorities straight and is focused on making the app stable before going crazy with new features.

What is the most challenging thing about developing tools for the design community? How have you overcome those challenges?

Challenges? It’s been a joy! It’s probably one of the best communities to build tools for because designers tend to be up on the latest technologies (we barely think about IE) and they are all over Twitter which makes getting the word out about cool new products much easier! Designers are very comfortable with web based tools and subscription software.

The biggest challenge for me has been all the standard things that come along with starting a business. Having Kaz as a partner has been really helpful, he keeps going when I freak out, and he has a great deal of experience starting businesses. He always knows what to do if I don’t.

What do you think the biggest challenges facing designers are today?

I thought Apple gave everyone permission to take design seriously, but it hasn’t happened to the extent that I expected. The example set by Apple from the iMac onward has been hugely influential to me, but I think most companies (even those that claim to be design-driven) don’t quite get it.

Too many companies see design as veneer. They don’t truly take design seriously. When they try to take it seriously, it’s usually something like “Ok, we’ve got our product, but now we need design”. That’s the wrong approach. For something to be well designed, the foundational decisions need to be treated as design decisions.

Shortly after the iMac was released, Steve Jobs famously said in an interview, “In most people’s vocabularies, design means veneer. It’s interior decorating. It’s the fabric of the curtains and the sofa. But to me, nothing could be further from the meaning of design. Design is the fundamental soul of a man-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service.”

This brings a tear to my eye. I hear things like this and think “Ok, this guy who—is making some of the best products the world has ever seen, and who’s business is one of the most successful in history—is explaining his philosophy, I’ll try to follow it”. Yet after the iMac caught on, stores were filled with iMac-esque translucent plastic products. Companies learned the wrong lesson.

Designers suffer from this shortsightedness, and companies encourage it. I’m still trying to figure out why. I guess most people are afraid to bet big on real design.

What advice would you have to anyone looking to develop applications or services for designers?

My thoughts on this topic apply across the board, not just to services for designers. My advice is to make things that are truly great. Don’t make things that are great at earning money, winning users, pleasing investors, or satisfying your ego. Make things that are great at doing the task they are intended to do.

This is where creating products becomes art. If you are making the product good just for the sake of it being good, then it’s art. The great thing is, it usually ends up satisfying the other business-related goals even better than if you had optimized for them specifically. I consider this mentality a life decision, not a business decision.

I hope that explanation is somewhat meaningful. I actually feel like I don’t have the words to describe the nuance of what I really mean. I spent the summer of 2012 having philosophical conversations with my good friend Kyle nearly every day over tea. That’s when I really deeply digested this philosophy. It took countless of hours of conversation and contemplation before It sunk in. I still don’t know how to express it properly.

Has there been a watershed moment in the product? What was it?

No, there hasn’t been, and I don’t expect there to be.

People assume Flinto is a “startup” because we are in the tech industry and we are in San Francisco. We’re only a startup in that we have started our business recently. Flinto is not VC funded. We’re not going after hyper-hockey-stick-power-law-inflection-point growth. We’re just trying to make a living and make a product we’re proud of.

Who is your favorite person to follow on Twitter?

@dcurtis posts consistently interesting, thought-provoking things. I know next to nothing about him, but I like his tweets.

What has your favorite Designer News story been of all time?

If there was a feature for viewing upvoted posts, maybe I could answer this ;)

That concludes our interview with Nathan. Be on the lookout for more of these interviews in the coming weeks.