You might know Pablo Stanley as an artist, from his Youtube channel SketchTogether or one of his many design tool startups. I’ve come across Pablo’s work first in 2017 with «The Design Team», a cartoon series about the life of designers. I am still baffled by how versatile and all over the place he is.
I met Pablo in the lobby of the Linkedin office in Downtown, San Francisco. It is the morning of day 2 of Config, Figma had just announced a whole load of features and products the day before. During the conference, Pablo was part of multiple podcast recordings, gave a talk himself and did a portfolio review session until late at night in the frog design HQ. Now he is sitting here, on a huge Apple Store-like wooden table finishing a video, showing no signs of fatigue. I’d love to have this level of energy.
Jo: Pablo, you’re a YouTuber, podcaster, illustrator, designer, entrepreneur – how do you call yourself?
Pablo: Haha – I am a modern renaissance man. I want to do it all. You do hear from a lot of people: “You have to focus” – “Find that one thing” – “Dive deep into that skill”. I always like to try something different, which might look chaotic from the outside, but there is a common theme to all of the things I do: curiosity. That is what drives me, and I do have the privilege to explore and try a lot of new things. If you boil it down to one word: Artist. Disguised as a designer. Doing cool shit.
Jo: Speaking of cool shit: Last night we’ve had the privilege to witness Figma’s new features release live on stage: Figma Slides, AI and many more – with all of these new things, where do you see the industry and the role of the designer headed?
Pablo: Design will become more collaborative. These new features will take designers out of their silos, their island of solitude. It’s not only the designers designing, but the product managers, the engineers, the developers, the copywriters, different roles in the company, making awesome stuff.
Jo: Democratization of design.
Pablo: Yeah! It still won’t be them pushing the pixels or having a final say in how things will look like, but they will become a part of the process. AI will invite them to get started, create mockups and participate in ways that don’t feel scary to them anymore. I like that!
Jo: Don’t you think this will undervalue design, make it too broad and too easy to access?
Pablo: I think the opposite is true. It will make design more relevant, as more and more people understand what you are doing, understanding the value of design. This is what we designers have been fighting for for many decades, explaining why design is important over and over again.
Jo: Getting a seat at the table.
Pablo: Exactly! Having people on the other side understand that design requires time and that it requires thinking, and that doing it makes a difference. It used to be «Us vs. Them» – designers versus non-designers. This doesn’t exist anymore, which is great. Design is not an abstract complex thing that we have to explain anymore, they get to practice it. Managers are still going to manage, but they understand what design is about because they can experience it – that is what we can expect from these new tools: democratization.
Jo: With more people having access to design tools and design craft, what will be the most important skill of a classically trained designer?
Pablo: We designers pride ourselves in being super empathetic. Let’s show that! There will be a bigger appreciation of the human side of what we do. Of course it is craft, it is art – seeing beauty and utility, giving attention to details. But the more important aspect of it is conveying the feeling that there is a human being on the other side, the little imperfections. With so many things being automated and generated, there will be a need for something that feels 100% organic, human.
Jo: Do you endorse AI?
Pablo: I think AI is super exciting. Holy crap, this is amazing! It pushes us forward, it accelerates our work. But also, let’s be the people that remind us that everything we do comes from an appreciation of beauty, of storytelling, of being human. Robots can only do this because we told them to, because they value these things. What can make a design more human, more empathetic?
Jo: With Musho, your own AI startup, you promise that the robots can do 80% of the web design work, giving human designers more time to obsess over the details. Should designers focus more on the details?
Pablo: That is what craft should be about, right? Craft is what makes it special, what makes your design unique. We now have the time to make a design personal and care about these details. Look, we’re sometimes limited on time, limited on imagination, limited on motivation – AI can help us spark an idea really quickly, not only one but 20 ideas for you to choose from – we’re already doing this with moodboards, using other people’s work to steal from. The uniqueness comes from curation. We can take what is already there, use it as a starting point and make it a bit cooler.
Jo: What are the tiny details that you obsess over in your own design work?
Pablo: Typography. I see too many designers not caring about that, even though there are very obvious rules that we just have to follow. Type hierarchy, how to use contrast, line height and so on. If you would just focus on typography for your designs, you would be able to make your designs stand out. 80% of the web is about text.
Jo: Isn’t typography something that AI could do for us?
Pablo: I know people who are working on generative typography, which is really exciting. You could generate your own font with a simple prompt – but I do want my typography to feel human, care about the little details, right? I want to remain sceptical – there has to be one thing that robots can’t do. Come on, there has to be one thing left for us! (laughs).
Jo: Could you judge a design by its typography?
Pablo: It is the first thing I am looking for. You’ve got to have a clean, readable design. If you don’t take the time working out your typography – sorry dude, get out of here! Go back and just learn that stuff.
Jo: One thing I realize a lot with designers from non-western backgrounds is that you can tell from their use of typography whether they grew up with the latin alphabet or a different type system.
Pablo: You know, I have noticed that in a couple of portfolios that I reviewed. Why would someone align text to the right? It does look horrible and doesn’t read well. But when you grew up reading and writing in Arabic, of course you would right-align text.
Jo: With Musho, Blush and Carbon Health, you also run your own businesses. Any advice for designers turned entrepreneurs?
Pablo: Don’t do it. Stop now.
Jo: Okay, Haha!
Pablo: I would always advise anyone to just have a side project, and a side project to the side project. What if I take one of them a little bit more seriously? Try to see if I can make them successful, see if I maybe even can earn a bit of money with it? However, treat them as creative outlets, allow them to be silly. If you are trying too hard, they will turn into an obligation and you start hating them.
Jo: If you weren’t a designer, what would you rather do?
Pablo: I’d be an actor. Being on stage is my happy place. I have two bands, performing in front of people is just heaven!
Jo: Thank you Pablo!
Make sure you follow Pablo on Instagram and Youtube. Don’t forget to check his Gumroad either!