Show notes and transcript: https://designbetterpodcast.com/p/bonus-episode-matt-d-smith#details
We’ve got a special bonus episode for you today. Matt D. Smith, better known as MDS, is the founder of Shift Nudge, and he has a mission to lead a new generation of interface designers to build the digital products of the future.
Matt’s courses on Shift Nudge have helped thousands of students at top companies like Apple, Figma, Lyft, Slack, and more, learn the visual skills of interface design, even when they didn’t start with a design background. 
In today’s episode, we talk about the elements of a great UI, typography, color theory, and where people often go wrong in UI design.
One more thing before we get to the show. Design Better listeners can get access to 3 free lessons from shift nudge for a limited time. Just go to shiftnudge.com/designbetter to get free access.
Bio
Matt D Smith earned his BFA in Graphic Design from UGA in 2005 and has specialized in interface design ever since. He’s led projects around the world, served as an adjunct design professor, guest lectured at Harvard, and taught workshops at conferences all over the US.
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Bonus Episode: Matt D Smith from Shift Nudge on the elements of a great user interface

Design Better co-hosts Eli Woolery and Aarron Walter explore the intersection of design, technology, and the creative process through conversations with inspiring guests across many creative fields. Whether you’re design curious or a design pro, Design Better is guaranteed to inspire and inform. Episodes are released semi-weekly. Vanity Fair calls Design Better, “sharp, to the point, and full of incredibly valuable information for anyone looking to better understand how to build a more innovative world.”

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We’ve admired Jonathan Adler’s work for a long time. Though he started his career as a potter, today he designs sumptuous furnishings and interiors that inject energy and joy into everyday life. His work is decadent but not frumpy and always delivered with a winking sense of humor. If anyone truly knows how to bring creativity into all aspects of life, it’s Jonathan Adler.
We speak with Jonathan about why every creative person needs a naysayer to rebel against, how he surrounds himself with things that make him happy, and how he balances the tension between creating objects that have a lot of color and contrast, while making sure everything works together.
By the way, Eli’s wife Courtney has listened to many (though not all!) of our episodes, and this one happens to be her favorite so far—so you’re in for a treat. 
Brace yourself for some adult language. 

Jonathan Adler: Famed potter and designer on bringing creativity into all aspects of life

Tldr; We’re transitioning to weekly episode releases, publishing an enhanced newsletter, and simplifying our premium subscription which will now be on Substack. Read the details below …
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For years, we’ve been on a semi-weekly cadence for new episodes, but this schedule is proving too limiting for the amount of interviews we’re producing. Starting today, we’re shifting to a weekly release schedule for our premium subscribers who will receive a new episode every Tuesday morning. 
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Find the transcript, full show notes, and more on our Substack: https://designbetterpodcast.com/p/brian-tyler
Our conversation today takes us further into the creative process across different mediums.
If you’re a fan of Yellowstone, Crazy Rich Asians, Iron Man 3, or the recent Mario Brothers movie, then chances are good that one of the soundtrack clips in the trailer below is familiar to you. And today on Design Better we speak with the person behind them all: Emmy-award nominated composer Brian Tyler.
We talk to Brian about his childhood influences, growing up in an artistic family, and how he finds the starting threads of a score.
Bio
Brian Tyler is a multiple BAFTA and Emmy Award nominee, platinum-selling recording artist, and has been a composer and conductor on over 100 feature films. Tyler’s scoring credits include Joss Whedon's Avengers: Age of Ultron, James Wan’s Furious 7 and F. Gary Gray’s Fate of the Furious as well as others in the Fast and the Furious franchise, Shane Black’s Iron Man 3, Alan Taylor’s Thor: The Dark World, Jon Chu’s Crazy Rich Asians, for which he was voted to the 2019 Oscar shortlist for Best Original Score.
Brian also tours as a successful electronic artist and producer, playing major festivals such as EDC and Hardfest, and he recently launched "Are We Dreaming", a completely immersive audio-visual experience created by Tyler himself, which debuted in October 2021 on the 400-foot Main Stage at Lost Lands Music Festival; an epic two-hour midnight performance for a crowd of 30,000 people. 
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Brian Tyler, composer for Yellowstone, Crazy Rich Asians, Mario Brothers, and more, on his creative process

Find the transcript, show notes, and more on our Substack: https://designbetterpodcast.com/p/eric-snowden
Adobe has been the big wrench in our creative toolbox for decades. But there’s a new tool shaking up our workflow —Generative AI. Eric Snowden, leader of Adobe’s design team, sees a big opportunity for designers to extend and enhance the creative process by folding generative AI into each of our tools and we wanted to get his take on what’s around the corner. 
We spoke with Eric about his journey from Atlantic records during a period of upheaval in the music industry and what he learned there, to his time on the Behance product team and working his way up through leadership roles at Adobe.
Eric leads a team of over 600 people, so we also talk about finding the right size for teams (and Amazon’s “Two Pizza Team” framework), as well as how R&D works at Adobe.
Bio
Eric Snowden is the Vice President of Design at Adobe overseeing a multidisciplinary team of designers responsible for the Creative Cloud & Document Cloud suite of product and services. His team is responsible for the Digital Video & Audio, Digital Imaging, Design & Web, Documents, Mobile, Portfolio, and Services across web, desktop, and mobile surfaces.
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Bonus: Eric Snowden, Head of Adobe Design, on AI + Design

Visit our Substack for transcript, show notes, and more: https://designbetterpodcast.com/p/kate-aronowitz﻿
Few designers have an instinct for business fundamentals. Those that do are able to position design as a competitive advantage for a business and pave the way for design teams to collaborate more effectively. Kate Aronowitz is one of those rare birds.
Kate has held high level design roles at LinkedIn, WealthFront, Facebook, eBay, and today she’s at GV (formerly known as Google Ventures), where she helps early stage companies find their footing.
We speak to Kate about the arc of her career, about entrepreneurship as a designer (and why there aren’t more designer-founders), as well as some of the stories from the early days of Facebook like how she was one of the first designers to teach Mark Zuckerberg (or as Eli’s 8 year old son calls him, Zerk Merkerbergen) about human centered design.
Bio
Kate Aronowitz is a design executive who has built her career empowering teams at some of Silicon Valley’s most iconic companies. In addition to her role leading GV’s operations team, Kate coaches GV portfolio companies on cross-functional design processes, scale, product development, and management strategy.
Kate has built world-class design teams at eBay, LinkedIn, Facebook (now Meta), and Wealthfront. She joined the first user experience team at eBay before taking her experience to LinkedIn, where she started the user research team. As Facebook’s first design executive, Kate grew the organization from 20 to 200, establishing multidisciplinary design teams in front-end engineering, user research, content strategy, and communication design.
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Bonus Episode: Matt D Smith from Shift Nudge on the elements of a great user interface

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