Lee Black has been designing for 25 years. He made those Figma pills with goldfish swimming inside. He also ran an app company that nearly broke him.

We talked about chasing money that never made him happy, why his tool stack hasn't really changed in a decade, and what happens when you master your tools so deeply that the rules start to bend.

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CHAPTERS:
00:00 - "It's not about learning everything"
01:59 - Taking apart toys to understand how they work
04:35 - Speed vs. quality
07:19 - Music came first
09:29 - His tool stack (it's simpler than you think)
11:03 - "It hasn't really changed that much"
12:44 - ChatGPT as an ideas buddy
14:40 - How Midlife Engineering was born
16:10 - What "polish" means to him
18:17 - The Matrix scene that started the pills
20:36 - "I want to put a fucking goldfish in there"
21:09 - Designing with restraint
23:27 - Dieter Rams as jazz, not gospel
26:03 - Protecting taste when you scale
31:05 - The app company that broke him
48:16 - Advice for designers struggling right now
51:57 - If nothing mattered, what would you work on?

ABOUT TOMMY GEOCO
I spent 15+ years in tech and design. Former military. Father of five. Now building Internet Enjoyers, a weird little media + product studio rediscovering soul in creative tech.

ABOUT STATE OF PLAY
Host Tommy Geoco discovers what fuels the internet's most interesting designers and builders.

LINKS:
UX Tools Newsletter: https://uxtools.co
Follow Lee Black: https://x.com/mrblackstudio
1042 Studio: https://1042.studio
Midlife Engineering: https://midlife.engineering

FOLLOW ME:
X / Twitter: https://x.com/designertom
Instagram: https://instagram.com/itsdesignertom
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/tommygeoco