Why Trump just hired Airbnb’s cofounder, Figma’s big moment, and the Cracker Barrel logo that everyone hates

18:36The flight meets back on the menu, boys. Our last news item this week is perhaps the biggest design news of the summer, and that is the Figma IPO.

18:47Mark Wilson:Yes, Figma. You know, it's funny. Every designer listening to this podcast knows exactly what Figma is. And any non-designer who's stumbled upon us or has heard about this IPO is probably just like, what the hell is going on? But, you know, 95 % of Fortune 500 companies use Figma software to collaborate on digital products. as they develop, you know, apps, websites, and pretty much anything else you can imagine. You know, its customers include 13 million designers, developers, and staff in between. And that was enough to win over Wall Street in a really successful IPO. So we're going to talk some nerdy numbers first.

19:21So on July 31st, the company had a big debut on the New York Stock Exchange. The IPO was set to start at$33 a share, but that price immediately shot up as the stock started to trade. At its peak the day after IPO-ing, it reached nearly$143 a share, making Figma worth something like$60 billion for a moment. And then two weeks after the IPO, Figma was trading at just under$78 a share. So it's under its peak, but it's still more than double that$33 a share initial price. And I think it was just a massive win for the company.

19:56Mark Wilson:Yeah, I mean, obviously, the stock prices always chill out a little bit after IPO, but, you know, it values the company at about$38 billion. And that's about twice what Figma was offered by Adobe when it had tried to acquire Figma, you know, just a few years ago. Yeah, so this is not a stock price show, right? We are a design show. So really what we're trying to do here is understand where Figma is going after this initial public fervor has been so hot. This is a company that, to your point, Mark, a lot of designers know. A lot of people outside of design and development probably do not know. But if Figma has its way, it wants to be a company for anybody in the creative process who is touching digital work.

20:43Dylan Field, the CEO of Figma, said that design is everyone's business. That was the IPO tagline. And I think that's really what they're trying to prove right now.

20:52Mark Wilson:I think truly with Figma, what's interesting is they have become a sort of Kleenex level brand of design, right? Like professional designers across industries are using Figma to collaborate in different ways. And now I think, you know, Wall Street wanted a piece of that. And the question is, like, how much can they expand and grow revenue from this foothold? And I don't think that the answer is completely obvious, honestly. Figma sort of disrupted the industry just a few years ago to get here. And now we have this new wave of AI tools. And all of a sudden, you have Figma saying, we can own the future of design and development by infusing AI into our product.

21:32Mark Wilson:And you have every other big company kind of saying the same thing in this space, along with a bunch of hungry startups from around the world that all have access to top of the line LLMs and other sort of AI systems. So I get why it was a really big launch. I think in five to 10 years, really, it's anyone's game. And that's why this IPO has actually been interesting to watch. Fortunately, we don't have to discuss all of this alone because joining us today is Yuki Yamashita. He's the chief product officer at Big Mo, where he oversees the product and design teams.

22:11We'll be right back for our interview after the break.

22:24We are here with Yuki Yamashita. He is the Chief Product Officer at Figma, where he oversees the product and design teams. Yuki, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. So it's been a really big month for Figma. The company went public. It was one of the biggest and most anticipated IPOs of the year. You all had a major celebration at the New York Stock Exchange, which looked really fun. But what I want to know is, how did the Figma team celebrate that night? Where did you go? What was the atmosphere like? Had it shifted at all? Had the vibe shifted at all? It was definitely a big moment for us.

23:00We actually had a bit of a block party spilling right out of the New York Stock Exchange where we took over. We brought people in our community, our employees together. We had music. We had people trying out our products. We brought a lot of swag. There are a lot of Figma t-shirts and umbrellas all over the city right now. And so that was kind of the way we wanted to celebrate. And I think it was a great way to get everyone together.

23:26Mark Wilson:Was it weird going back to work afterward? Because, I mean, this IPO has been obviously hyped for the better part of a year. Right. Well, if I'm being honest, you know, we were, half of our minds are still on work throughout the day because we actually decided to launch a bunch of new features that very day. And so we had an event that we called Release Notes, where we launched a bunch of new features for new products. So yeah, making sure that that was going well was something that was on top of our minds already. So you're like watching the stock ticker. What was the thinking there to do a bunch of releases on the day that you're IPOing?

24:04I mean, there had to been a lot of conversation around why you want to do something like that. Yeah, just to create a distraction for us, right? No, just kidding. I think really we wanted to signal to everyone that at the end of the day, you know, what matters is that we're making our products better. And those releases were a reflection of all the feedback that we've been getting, especially around our new products. And we wanted to show that that remains true and that will continue to remain true as a public company.

24:30Mark Wilson:I mean, I think it's so challenging for any company to go public. On one hand, it's a no-brainer. Figma is worth so much more than it was before going public. It's worth more than it would have been if it were acquired by Adobe. Really, this has been the biggest sort of design company launch in a really long time. And I'm really challenged to find great comparisons. On the other, I'm wondering how it feels right now, because it does feel like Wall Street is putting unparalleled pressure onto private companies. And so like, do you feel the same right now, I guess, working on the product as you did just a couple of weeks ago?

25:10Mark Wilson:And I'm curious, like, how are you thinking about it going forward? Because that the quarterly pressure is sort of there now. Well, you know, when we think about things like valuation, share price, you know, those are moments in time, right? And one of what we focus on is our vision and our future. And so, you know, no matter what's happening on that side, our vision has been really consistent. How do we help teams go from idea to product as fast as possible and put design right in the center of that? And of course, it's important to build a healthy business as well as part of that. But, you know, when I think about my day to day, it's really just talking to customers and building the best products possible in service of that goal.

25:52Mark Wilson:Dylan Field, CEO, like really launched some interesting remarks around when you went public, you know, talking about sort of design being everything now, right? From sort of product to brand, just to your perception. And I'm wondering how you're encapsulating that vision and I guess what your North Star is over like the next five years. Yeah. I mean, we're living in this world where it's so easy for people to create something, right? And that's really wonderful. We've lowered the floor. We've brought more people into the process of building products, creating things. But in that world, what's really going to differentiate a good experience from a great experience is craft and design.

26:31how thoughtful you were around the end user experience, you know, how much you pushed it something further. And so for us, it's all about, okay, how do we actually provide the tools necessary to help you do that? And how do we keep elevating the craft, especially in a world where people have access to more? And so, yeah, putting design in the center of that, taking a bigger definition of what design even means is really what we're focused on. Well, what does design even mean in this moment to you and to the larger Figma team? We think that design is actually, when you think about what it is, at the end of the day, is a form of problem solving, right?

27:06And it's really about challenging the status quo. One of the favorite phrases that we like to use internally, especially in the beginning of the process, is what if, right? What if or how might be? And these are provocations that help you think bigger than you might normally, given the constraints that exist. And so I think design is about pushing some of those boundaries, putting people and humans first as part of that, your user first. And then, you know, I think there's a lot of kind of conceptions about what design looks like. But our belief is that design now takes different forms. Of course, it's about drawing things.

27:43And we believe that we have a tool that's really wonderful for that. But also it's about coding. It's about prompting. And those are valid ways of design as well. and we're bringing those mechanisms into platforms so that anyone can use any medium to design to push their ideas forward.

28:00Mark Wilson:I mean, the vibe coding moment we're in right now, I think is like, was a little bit unexpected in some ways, but also feels in many ways like this end game of AI where you can tell a machine what you want and it just like magically creates it. And obviously that's something Figma's adopted a bit, right? With like Figma Make, it's something a lot of your competitors have adopted at the same time. And I'm curious how you're thinking about it internally right now, because you can obviously spin something up for prompts and you can do that better and better. But how much of your focus, I guess, is on those like those discrete controls to really get that sort of fine tuning and I guess originality that you alluded to earlier?

28:39Yeah, it's very much our focus, actually. You know, the idea that you can one shot your way to a final product, I think, is fairly unrealistic. or if that's what your final product is, you know, that's fine, but it's not going to be the best product out there, right?

28:54Mark Wilson:I mean, it seems like an illusion right now, right? Like that promise a bit. Yes, and, you know, I'm sure that even that act will get better over time. But in that world, how do you actually build a product that stands out more? And that's this obsessive iteration and saying, hey, how could this part be better? How could this user journey be more special? And that's what, you know, I think is going to help companies stand out. That's the kind of tooling that we want to provide to make the iteration easier, no matter what medium you want to use. I'm also just thinking about how two-thirds of your customers are not designers, at least not by self-definition or trade or discipline.

29:34And so when you're talking about the vibe coding thing, that's just one aspect of creating a product, right? It sounds like Figma is trying to touch basically every aspect of the product creation journey from ideation to marketing to coding to the actual design process. And I guess the question there is, how does that influence or change the way that you are thinking about what you're going to focus on next when you have that big of a net to cast? What we're realizing is that all these different stages of the product development processes are beginning to collapse. And the importance of us covering these different aspects is actually because more and more we're getting to a state where you can go from an idea to a shipped product or a viable product really, really quickly.

30:27And part of it is how do we actually support all those different activities and help you go between all these different stages in the smoothest way possible. So let me explain, like, for example, this year we've shipped a product which we call Figma Sites, and it allows you to take a design and actually publish it and put it all the way into production. So when you get to that point where the person doesn't have to leave Figma, is that realistic? Is that something that, is that your North Star eventually that someone could sign up for a Figma account, their organization or individual? And from there, they basically never have to leave Figma to do their job.

31:04Is that the future you're looking at? Well, I think our North Star is that that journey feels as seamless as possible. And, you know, we know that people use a bunch of different tools and it's not necessarily, you know, our goal to say, hey, like you shouldn't use other tools. In fact, we've had a platform that, you know, has been about these integrations and bringing a lot of context from other tools into Figma or taking some context from Figma out to other tools. And that remains important. but all this is in service of removing some of the boundaries or the artificial boundaries that exist right a lot of times you know when you think about going from an idea to product the hardest part is that ideas get lost in translation you had a few words and you wanted to put it down as a drawing something got lost in translation you know as you hop between tools as you hand off these ideas between humans or a person in an ai for example and similarly you know a lot of what happens today is people draw a lot of mocks and it looks beautiful in the designs, but then when it ends up in users' hands, there's a consideration and production that they hadn't considered, right?

32:09Oh, I didn't design for Android or, oh, I didn't design for the screen size or whatever that might be. And, you know, it doesn't end up being the product that they hoped it would be. And so removing these translations errors, right, is important. And as part of that, it's removing some of these kind of hurdles or jumps between products. And that's what we want to solve for.

32:30Mark Wilson:I do feel like, though, we are in this moment of, for whatever the reason and sort of motivation, right, that we're seeing a mass consolidation of these creative products where Figma is increasingly doing more like soup to nuts, like work across design development. Canva's increasingly doing more sort of soup to nuts work across all development. And it's my belief that user expectations are just higher now too, right? Like once one company can sort of do it all, I feel like everybody has to kind of do it all to create that cohesive experience you're talking about, where you don't feel like, oh, three quarters into my workflow, all of a sudden I have to like jump out of this other app, use this other interface, get another login for half of the company and sort of do all that other stuff.

33:13Yeah, I mean, you know, certainly we learned that from even products like Figma Slides, right? One of the reasons we put design mode on it is we didn't want people to have to go back to a tool to go edit the mock that they put in the slide. We wanted to let you be able to edit it right there and there. So yeah, I think it is true that the expectation people have around the seamlessness or the ability to just edit everything in place has gotten higher. That's probably true. Has that expectation changed with the introduction of more AI features into Figma products as well? I just sort of imagine, I don't know how many years in the future this might be, but there's going to be an element of like AI handling certain tasks for you and making decisions on your behalf and sort of contextualizing, like creating these moments of like interaction between these various apps.

34:06And I just wonder how futuristic, how far looking are you thinking when you're coming up with new products and how much is that top of mind for you right now? Yeah. I mean, certainly we're thinking a lot about AI and the role of AI and how it can help both with the design process, with the handoff process, translating design into code. There's so many exciting applications for it. And really, we think of it as kind of an accelerant to the process and in some cases, a collaborator, right? When I think about a product like Figma Make, it's almost like you're in there with a teammate and you're chatting with them and seeing how you can get to a product that's better.

34:47And you're inviting other teammates into that conversation. And I hope to be a platform where designers and product managers and engineers and agents are all talking and collaborating with each other.

34:58Mark Wilson:I'm curious how you think about those AI modalities, right? Because Dylan Field mentioned how right now, I think he said AI is in its MS-DOS era, which is a really nice way of sort of packaging the prompts and sort of the prompting we've been doing. You just alluded to some agentic AI things, right, where you could converse with an AI and maybe it takes a few actions on your behalf and your collaborator. But how much are you looking at sort of modalities outside of that? I mean, you talked about sort of tools and sort of pushing like what tool sets are. Are you looking at sort of, I guess, inventing things we haven't really seen yet outside of creative AI as we know it?

35:34I think we think a lot about the future of interfaces, the future of software. We also want to acknowledge our role as a platform that allows other teams to think about the future of software. And so we're excited to think about it in both directions, I would say. Right now, as Dylan said, you see the proliferation of chat AI everywhere. And chat has this really nice property where it's very easy to just put on top of any product right now. And also, it has some of these nice properties where the latency that exists today feels natural.

36:09Mark Wilson:Oh, you're talking about versus the GUI type AI design tools where you might draw a freehand sketch and then all of a sudden it makes it an anime character or something really high resolution. But you're saying that there's a little bit delay there that we forget about. Right. So in a chat tool, I think there is a tolerance for a delay because it's almost natural. It's almost like you're talking to a human and they have to think a little bit. And so the chat as a metaphor actually works really well based on today's latency characteristics. If you have to wait a minute, if you have to wait a few seconds, that's totally normal.

36:43But, you know, as the technology evolves and maybe some of that latency is solved, I do expect that people are going to innovate on interfaces even more, which is really exciting.

36:54Mark Wilson:How far can you roadmap right now? Like, realistically, I'm curious how far your planned roadmap is, then how far your more theoretical roadmap is and how much you believe in that theory right now because AI is just moving so fast. Yeah. I mean, pretty recently, Dylan was talking internally about, hey, we need to not do annual planning, you know, or kind of think in these one year cycles because we need to be responsive to everything that's happening. and even internally, there's more of a culture of prototyping and trying out new things. And this week, actually, we're in the middle of Maker Week, which is kind of like our hack week that we have each year where people kind of explore completely new ideas and play with technologies that are out there.

37:38So from that perspective, I think we are in a world where we can't be overly fixated on a particular roadmap that we set in the long term. But that being said, I think it's really important to set a North Star of where you want to head and so that the problems you're trying to solve, those remain consistent throughout.

37:56Mark Wilson:That North Star seems more theoretical in a way than something really literal that you're aiming for, though. I think a little mix of both. We want to recognize that most of our users are trying to build software, right? And so insofar as that's true, it's our jobs to make it as easy as possible. Now there may be a bunch of different ways to get there and some of that we want to be flexible around. When we're talking about roadmaps and not being able to plan so far in the future, how has this changed the way you and your team works? Because I saw a video recently with the head of Shopify's design.

38:32And maybe you saw this, Yugi, I don't know. I was going around the internet where he was like, I don't want to see a deck anymore. I want you to show me the thing, make the thing. We now have tools that allow us to simply make the thing that you want to tell me about as opposed to describing the thing that you want to do. And to what extent is that part of Figma's culture as well? I mean, I think we've always been a show not tell type of culture, but it's always felt a little aspirational. But now creating a prototype is so much easier or creating something real is so much easier. So I tend to agree that the way you build products has to change.

39:08And in particular, I would say that there's a few different changes. The first is you can actually now create something pretty high fidelity pretty quickly that's really believable, right? And in a previous world, you might have put forth these wireframes and kind of slowly increase fidelity over time. And that's because creating high fidelity things took a lot of time. But now you can put something that feels like the final product in front of your CEO, your users, and get feedback immediately. And if that idea doesn't work, you cast it out and try something completely new. And so I think that changes things dramatically.

39:44And similarly, you know, today, there's no excuse really for you not to make instead of giving feedback like, what if it could be this way? Or have you tried something like this? You could actually go and try that out yourself. And I think that's pretty liberating in some ways. I do have a question around just, I guess, the future of what apps might look like. I mean, I feel like Figma really gets a peek behind the curtain of what is coming, what is interesting, and just sort of looking forward out towards the future. What are you excited about? Like, how is the way that we are going to be interacting with technology, interacting with apps, interacting with the web more broadly?

40:23How is that going to change in your opinion? Well, you know, I can speak specifically more to software interfaces. And I'm really excited about a world where, you know, these software is more dynamic, like much more dynamic, right? Like you can imagine interfaces that are being created on the fly, that are personalized and relevant to you. Traditionally, it's been you have to go learn the software, and now the software can learn to adapt to you. And that kind of reversal of power dynamic is really interesting to me. It's also interesting as a tool builder to think about how we can help teams build for that kind of world as well.

41:00I'm going to need a concrete example here to better understand what you mean.

41:04Mark Wilson:Yeah, just tell us whatever you developed and that you haven't shown yet. You just described that. No, I just mean that, you know, one of the classic debates that you often have on a product team would be what goes where? And, you know, we talk about IA or information architecture. And we say, OK, well, this thing has to be buried here because, you know, that's the taxonomy people are going to expect as they navigate through things. But, you know, that's all under the assumption that we don't know what you want. or we have only a few permutations of products or interfaces that are possible. But in a world where you can have infinite permutations of interfaces, the product that we show you, Liz and Mark, could look completely different, right?

41:51Because you're different human beings that have different needs, presumably. And so I think that is a kind of interesting world to think about. And designing for a world like that is interesting from our perspective as people building the tools.

42:06Mark Wilson:Yeah, interfaces to design adaptive interfaces. So I do think that's super interesting to know that even Figma's putting a small stake in the ground that interfaces will be adaptive and different because there's a lot of debate in the AI community about that right now. How much are you thinking about individualism and point of view of the designer right now and sort of articulating that, especially within the sea of AI tools that are very much trained on known entities and known ideas? This has been a debate that actually has existed even before AI because a big part of using Figma has been about design systems.

42:40And design systems is kind of this, essentially these building blocks that companies invest in to ensure that what designers create, what the product teams create, feel consistent and consistent with the brand. And I'll kind of break it down to a few things. One is, you know, when you're building products for a brand with a bunch of different people, it is actually quite important to be reasonably consistent.

43:03Mark Wilson:Yeah, this ain't art school is what you're saying. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, there's definitely always kind of these cases where you're kind of like, are you just doing it differently just because? And a company has put a lot of thought into, well, we're doing it this way because we want a familiar pattern or we're doing it this way because we've intentionally made it accessible in this way. and define their brand. And so from the perspective of kind of inside a given company, I actually think there's power to making sure that there's a level of consistency. But between companies, I think there should be differentiation, right?

43:37And we want to give every tool possible to let people express their brand in fun ways. And so, for example, one of the reasons we've been exploring tools like Figma Draw, for example, is just like, oh, let's bring more humanity and organic design into our platform so that, you know, people can express themselves not just with, you know, rectangles and things that look generic, but with more texture, things that kind of allow people to differentiate the look and feel. So I'm hopeful that we can encourage more of that, but want to balance between kind of like individualism for the sake of individualism with kind of giving people the ability to express their brand in richer and richer ways.

44:18Mark Wilson:I do think it's interesting though, you framed this up as one company to another company, not one creative versus another creative. And so it does really feel like Figma's focus is on sort of, I guess, serving that corporate function first, like the sort of the corporate designer who is representing a brand that's worth a lot of money and sort of out of their hands versus that individual creative that I think the Adobe suite, for instance, was probably built upon. Yeah. Well, you know, I mean, I think we have different kinds of users for sure, right? And there are definitely people who are individuals who want to express themselves and don't need to use design systems and all of that goodness.

44:53And I guess what I would say is I have always considered our user to be the team. It's a group of people who come together to build something. And it's not just designers, it's product managers, engineers, and more. And so within that archetype, within that user, a team, I think it's important to give them the tools to stay on the same page and aligned and consistent. And that's something that we've focused on.

45:17Mark Wilson:I also think it's interesting how you mentioned bringing in draw tools and sort of offering that, I guess, more finite creative set. And it just reminds me back to earlier in this conversation where we were talking about needing to do sort of more under one roof. And it really does feel like you're building that out in every direction. I mean, you know, to some extent, do you feel like you need to sort of build an Adobe Suite-esque thing internally? We're seeing other companies do it, right? Like Canva obviously made a major acquisition of Affinity, and we know where that's going over the next two to three years, right?

45:50Mark Wilson:where we're just going to see more and more of that baked in. Do you feel like you have to provide that? I'm not asking this in a competitive way. I'm asking this in a way of just what the user expects and sort of demands of your platform. Well, you know, I think a company like Adobe, we respect them a lot, but they're also a very different company. We are a company that focuses on entire product teams. And, you know, a third of our users are actually engineers. And so it's important to keep giving designers and others the ability to express themselves. but just as important for us is to really think about, well, in a digital product context, like how does that actually translate into code and how do we actually make it easier for engineers to...

46:28Dev mode. Exactly, dev mode and everything, you know? And so I think we have to keep all those types of users in mind. And when you look at some of the recent investments that we've been making, be it dev mode, be it our MCB server, all these things, they're actually in service of helping people make production-ready designs or, you know, designs that actually can be turned into the final product.

46:49Mark Wilson:We talked a lot about AI today. I'm sure you see a lot of early work and early models that the rest of the public doesn't see. And I'm curious, what do you feel like we know right now? Like what are the knowns of AI? And then to you, you know, over the next one to two, three years, what are the sort of the unknowns? What are the sort of, you know, the sort of gray spaces to you? Yeah, it's a good question. I think what we know about AI is that every day, every week, it's getting better. I mean, GTP5 has some criticism, I will say. I think we might have seen a tiny dip there, but I get your point.

47:23Mark Wilson:Fair, fair. But, you know, I think we're really excited because every single time there's a new update, it's an opportunity to make things faster, help, you know, translate designs into products faster, you know. So that's definitely felt like a constant. There's certainly unknowns as to how far it could go. There's certainly unknowns as to what are the creative bounds of it, you know. Do you feel like we're plateauing a little bit? I mean, there's a lot of people suggesting that and it does feel a bit like maybe we are. You know, it's hard to say, right? Like, basically, the way I think about AI right now is it's kind of the average of averages in a way, right?

48:02Like, it's consumed a lot of information. And it's trying to give you a design code that, you know, contemplates all the information that it's digested. And, you know, if there's not more to learn, maybe it does, you know, it does slow down a little bit. But at the same time, I think human beings are improving the average every single day by pushing, right? And we're pushing the models to do more interesting things. We're pushing the designs to be better. And that gets fed in. So I think there's a little bit of a loop that happens through that as well. And so we need to kind of take an active role in making sure the average keeps increasing and improving.

48:40Mark Wilson:The humans using AI need to push the boundaries, not just the AI model builders, you're saying. Yeah. And that will be the loop. It's still a loop, right? Still a loop. I think everything is a loop. The loop, the loop, the loop, the loop. Yuki, thank you. Thank you for chatting through this. Thank you, Yuki. We really appreciate you taking the time. Thank you so much.

49:13All right.

49:14Mark Wilson:Well, you know what time it is. podcasting's most creatively named segments, Best and Worst. Where we make the case to our producer, Cody, for the best and worst designs of the past month. And I decide the winner. And I want to say, I don't look up any of this stuff beforehand. I don't look at this part of the document before we record. I have no idea what they're talking about. I will not look it up after they talk about it. Sometimes that may be true. This is a live debate, everybody. The power of the argument wins. As it should be. All right, Mark. All right. Best of the month for me comes from Teenage Engineering, everyone's favorite Swedish electronics company.

49:58Mark Wilson:They made an all clear computer case. So like it looks just like clear plastic called the Computer 2. They made this to be the world's cheapest computer case. It's one big folded piece of plastic. It looks amazing. you know, semi-transparent. The only thing that annoys me is like they're not selling it. They're like, hey, it's free, but you can't really get it. But we'll release it sometime for free again. So I don't exactly know how the marketing strategy plays out. But yeah, that's it for me. I call it the jellyfish computer. And I think it's really cute. And it's kind of unfair that you throw a teenage engineering product in because they do make really great stuff.

50:37Mark Wilson:Stacked for myself. So what you got? What do you got? So My Best is actually a film. It's a new documentary from A24 called Architecton, and it's all about rocks. So the film is more or less about what it takes to make concrete. It's not a thrilling watch, I will admit that, and it's kind of pretentious, but it is gorgeous, and it is informative, and it's kind of sobering. There are these epic shots of a quarry wall crumbling from a blast before the rocks are shipped out to be made into concrete. It's really interesting to watch at this moment, I think, because I feel like there's been a bit of a resurgence or interest in building with actual stone.

51:18Concrete is terrible for the environment. Raw stone is an interesting alternative. This film really makes the case for that.

51:24Mark Wilson:Yeah, the built environment, I think, is the single biggest cause of, like, CO2 emissions in our world. And it's because of concrete, largely. Right. And what's interesting is that it just doesn't last as long, right? The lifespan of a concrete building is something like 100 years, and we still have stone buildings that reach back thousands of years. I mean, my concrete driveway has cracked, so I'm here as a Midwesterner. I do not trust the stuff. Yes, I'm with you. That's my pick. All right, so what about all the bad stuff from the month? Well, my worst goes to we're back in the White House with Tim Cook gifting Donald Trump this wild gold trophy.

52:12Mark Wilson:That's fair. This is a scene straight out of North Korea, right, with Tim Cook just desperately presenting this object to Trump. I mean, I don't know who designed it. I hope an internal designer at Apple, some poor chained intern to a desk, didn't have to do this. You know, but it's basically like a little glass circle on top. I don't remember what it says. Probably like Trump's the best on top of a chunk of kind of like a gold butt. Like, I don't know exactly what to call this shape. It says made in USA very prominently. Made in USA, baby. And it was meant to commemorate Apple bringing production to Kentucky under Trump.

52:57Mark Wilson:Technically, The Verge confirmed that was like already in the works and stuff. But like, you know, it's a big Trump moment, rah, rah. Anyway, really depressing to me. Obviously, I can understand why the CEO of Apple would go and sort of bend the knee to ensure his stockholders would make money and things. But also, it feels like what does wealth matter if you don't have power and you are just bowing to an authoritarian regime? Yeah, no, this one's going straight onto the mantle in the Oval Office. No, straight onto the mantle. I mean, if you can get more depressing than that, the floor is yours, Liz.

53:32So mine is not exactly depressing, and I think it might technically be a bit of a stretch in terms of design, but I want to nominate AOL killing its dial-up service as the worst design of the month. So logically, it makes a lot of sense, right? I read somewhere that in 2022, the Census Bureau found that 0.1 % of American households use dial-up services. And these are mostly people who live in rural areas where broadband isn't available.

54:03Mark Wilson:To be fair, by the way, probably the only people still using AOL. Right. Well, listen, it makes me a little bit sad. As a kid of the 90s, the beep-boop, beep-a-boop-boop, whatever that was. I've been waiting for you to make the sound this whole time. Like the doo-doo, doo-doo, doo-doo. Oh, yeah, yeah. I'm going to skip the... We're going to play the sound so we can see how close or how far off you were. Yeah. Unfortunately, in my brain, when I do it out loud, I think of... Like it's not the actual sound. I think of Mario.

54:47Anyway, but this sound was kind of a soundtrack to at least my life for a little bit.

54:53Mark Wilson:A hundred percent. It was the sound to socializing for a period of time, right? Exactly. It's really, it's a bummer to see it go for good. It sort of shuts the door to a simpler time on the web. And I don't know. It just, it needed to happen. It still feels bad. Mark, did you have an AOL chat name? I did what was it um I'm a Chicagoan and I was a young young man then so uh you know we had the bears and stuff in Chicago a really proud moment in our media history so I was dumb man all right I was like a you know a 10 year old dumb man and with a long series of apparently there are 3 ,515 other demands before me first, but then I came in.

55:42Demand like 2 ,560?

55:45Mark Wilson:Close enough. Yeah. What about yours? Mine was a somewhat embarrassing blue eyes 519.

55:58Mark Wilson:Blue eyes 519. Can you guess how I got there? Oof. Yeah. No. Got blue eyes, birthday 519. A real creative genius from the start. Cody, what about you? I miss the AOL era. I was an MSN messenger guy, and it was really boring. Cody N underscore three. Are you like a sociopath? That is, I am really reconfiguring who you are as a human after. MSN? Yeah. Like, are you a narc? Like, what is? I grew up in rural Minnesota, and that was like the thing. So, hey, Mark, MSN, MSN had a moment, too. MSN for me was after AOL, right? People moved away from AOL. They went to MSN in middle school. And that's where it all went down.

56:48Mark Wilson:I mean, I feel like there was a time when I was juggling a few different messaging services. So I probably had MSN running like on ADM or something. But I would never say I flat out connected to MSN. I just like I don't like to associate with people who have.

57:06Mark Wilson:I don't even think this is funny. You guys actually feel judged right now. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry to the MSN fans in the audience. I love you all. I'm thinking about just being a socially awkward fourth grader. I thought the three was cool because it was my number in basketball. I loved Allen Iverson. Yeah. Listen, everybody who's listening to this right now, share with us what your screen names are and make us feel better about our own bad choices. Don't let blue eyes down. Yeah, we dragged our judge enough. Cody, what's your take for this month? You're both going to get toasted in this too.

57:42Mark Wilson:So let's start with the best. I'm going to start with a question. Have either of you owned a teenage engineering product? No, I've simply looked at them on the internet. This is a good question. I almost bought the recorder and I did not. And I'm happy I did not after I read a lot of reviews over it. But that was my most tempted teenage engineering product. So you don't like them? I want to love this company so much because it looks awesome. I at one point did splurge and I previously owned their OP1 synthesizer sampler and I kept it for, I swear to God, it was back on eBay in like three months.

58:23Mark Wilson:I thought it was so overpriced. It was like the most expensive toy that like an adult or a musician can purchase. I mean, yes. Yes, yes it is. And that's the thing is it's priced like a professional tool and it acts like a toy. They fully lost me when they put out the field desk, which is a$1 ,600 folding table, essentially. And you can buy an$80 tape holder to put your Scotch tape roll on when you're working at your$1 ,600 table. I mean, we can debate teenage engineering sort of visions to getting into furniture and furnishings of the high-end market another time. I think, Cody, let me just counter and say what was appealing to me about this case was that they were actually doing the exact opposite and trying to make something more democratic than they have in the past.

59:13Mark Wilson:I like it in principle, but I also like when companies offer products that you can buy or like take for free. So I'm going with Architect Dunn. I haven't seen it. I'm really curious about it. A documentary on Brock sounds fascinating. I will take I'll take the W even if it's just like default. It's not even a default. It's like you win in the eyes of giving me a movie recommendation. And that's worth something. All right. Wow, good cheat code for future weeks. Yeah, there you go. And for the worst, I'm going to go with the Tim Cook Trump gift. So you're going to have a W there, Mark. There's nothing that I can add to this discourse other than that I personally think that it sucks too.

59:53Mark Wilson:And it's ugly. Exactly what an MSN user would say. Yeah. Okay, roasted.

1:00:03That's all for today's episode.

1:00:05Mark Wilson:Our show is produced by the highly biased Cody Nelson, mixed and sound designed by Nicholas Torres, and our executive producer is Josh Christensen. Remember again to subscribe, rate, and review wherever you get your podcasts, and we'll see you next month.