From Fashion to SaaS: Humanizing Technical Products

0:00Dimitra Papastathi:Typeform is not just a blank form, it's not just a blank canvas. It's an interactive, engaging experience where someone can apply their brand, their own imagery, and they can customize according to their use case and according to the brand.

0:12Andres Figueira:Do you feel that the image for our Typeform since you arrived has evolved?

0:17Dimitra Papastathi:The brand essence hasn't changed drastically throughout the years, but then in terms of actual visual applications, like yes, the visual identity has evolved.

0:25Andres Figueira:Do you ever find yourself in the position where you need to decide between prioritizing the brand consistency or actually experimenting with the creative work you're doing?

0:34Dimitra Papastathi:We're trying to keep consistent because consistency is building trust over time. We all know that. But at the same time, you need to keep the sparkler alive and you have to also surprise your audience.

0:48Andres Figueira:Hey, everybody. Thank you for tuning in. My name is Andres Figuera and I'm going to be your host for the day. This show is brought to you by the Global Talent Company, helping fast-growing teams hire exceptional remote talent from Argentina, South Africa, and beyond. We connect companies with world-class professionals who bring skill, reliability, and a global perspective to every role. And just for our listeners, we're offering an exclusive 10 % discount on your first hire. All you need to do is visit GlobalTalent.co, click Start Hiring, and mention the podcast listener discount when we get in touch.

1:20Andres Figueira:And today, with me here, I'm speaking with Dimitra Papastathy, Head of Creative and Design at Typeform, a company that's helping over 150 ,000 businesses collect the data they need with forms, surveys, and quizzes that people enjoy. And with that said, Dimitra, welcome to the podcast. How are you doing today?

1:40Dimitra Papastathi:Hi, everyone. I'm really glad to be here. Thank you for the invitation, Andres.

1:44Andres Figueira:No worries at all. We're very happy as well to have you hop on with us. And just to get people a bit more in context, Dimitra, would you be able to tell us in your own words a bit of your background, your experience, how you got to Typeform and in the end, what Typeform is?

1:58Dimitra Papastathi:So like you just mentioned, I am the head of creative design at Typeform right now. I help shape the creative vision of the brand and I'm leading a team of four there. I have a very strong background in brand design. everything started years ago in London where I gained my experiences in well-known branding agencies and studios and my background is really rooted in fashion and culture I've always loved shaping brands creating brand systems and then at some point I was very attracted by the tech by the new products and particularly the tech in Barcelona. So I joined Typeform, which is a really, really interesting product.

2:53Dimitra Papastathi:It has been really reshaping how people experiencing forms, forms such as feedback forms, surveys, quizzes. so TypeRom has done it in a very different and engaging way comparing to other companies the product keeps evolving since I believe 2013 if I am not wrong I think this is when TypeRom was founded and for the last few years I'm helping the product with creative narratives to showcase all the capabilities to the world.

3:37Andres Figueira:Do you feel that your background in culture and fashion has kind of like changed the way you approach design in the tech industry? Because I feel people could be in tech for a long time and then they just have this mindset of how it should be. But coming from a different area, maybe that has really shaped how you decide to take things on.

3:56Dimitra Papastathi:I believe so. I I believe it has added a specific flavor to it. Traditionally, startups, you know, if you remember the first startups, they were all following similar visual language. Blue was the color to be in all the CTAs and, you know, illustrations. And then everything was looking pretty dry, I have to say. The human element was missing from the scene. So I would say coming from a different background really helps create engaging visuals that people can relate to. And they can really, our audience can really imagine the product in their real life.

4:42Andres Figueira:In your background from culture and fashion, do you feel that there's any design principle that tech brands should be using but they aren't? like in any way that you feel, hey, this is something I learned that works really well in fashion, but in tech, it's being completely ignored.

5:01Dimitra Papastathi:It's been quite a while now that the many startups they have, they're trying to create a distinct brand image for themselves. So many of them, they are detaching from these original emerging patterns, these blue buttons and illustrations and dry visuals. they want to inject more of the human element in their brand story so this is a common practice that we see more and more obviously it depends the sector, it depends the industry, it depends the audience not all of the tech products can adopt the same brand image but I would say that I have been seeing more and more an editorial feel in the tech industry that we weren't really observing in the past.

5:55At the same time, because everything needs to be systematized

5:59Dimitra Papastathi:and everything needs to be designed for scale, it's hard to balance creative expression with functionality, but I believe that brands, they tend to have this more human aspect in their brand assets and particularly in assets creating, connecting as it's called connected to content and campaigns.

6:21Andres Figueira:I understand that. No, and also I believe in type form, which is a product, even though it's tech, it's not the most enticing thing. Like, hey, go do a form, go do a survey, go just do a quiz. And proper branding and creative design behind that should make it a bit more fun and actually just something that is better to look at. Because if you're going to be just staring at a blank form with blank spaces to fill out, you could make it a bit more entertaining to the user and that way just make them enjoy your brand even more. That's how I would also think about the creative design behind a brand like Typeform, just because I do believe it needs a bit more flair, if that's anything I could actually interject with.

7:07Andres Figueira:But also, Dimitra, would you also be able to tell us a bit more about Typeform? And to you guys, this is a company, a tech company that works with countries all around the world. Users anywhere can use your website to just create forms and send them inside their companies and everything like that, right?

7:26Dimitra Papastathi:Yes, that's right. Yeah, yeah. You can access Typeform from anywhere in the world. 100%. This is an international company, an offering. and anyone can share with their audience this engaging product. Because like you just said, Typeform is not just a blank form. It's not just a blank canvas. It's an interactive, engaging experience where someone can apply their brand, their own imagery, and they can customize according to their use case and according to the brand.

7:57Andres Figueira:And then if Typeform is that international, how big is the team that is managing Typeform? Like how big is the company?

8:05Dimitra Papastathi:The company, so we're about 300 people right now.

8:08Andres Figueira:Okay, that's a bunch. That's a bunch. And how many people do you have in your team helping you with the creative design?

8:14Dimitra Papastathi:So I have four people in my team. And then we're also collaborating with a small creative agency that is helping us. It's our extended creative team, if you want, that is really helping us to produce as much as we can and tell all these creative stories to the world. and we're really lucky to be collaborating with them. So it's a bit of a hybrid moment.

8:37Andres Figueira:Okay, and does what you do with creative design, does that permeate into the marketing of Typeform and how they take their campaigns and how they talk to the audience? Is this something that is connected between both of those departments?

8:51Dimitra Papastathi:So yeah, absolutely. Our team is called Creative Studio and we're part of the marketing division. and our responsibilities, they are separated into two categories. So on one side, we help shape the foundation, we help shape the brand, you know, the colors, typography, everything that the people really need to use in order to produce all those marketing assets. And on the other side, we are supporting the marketing team with the request that come our way, whether this is a product campaign, a content campaign, paid assets, anything that really needs to communicate the great functionality of our product.

9:36Andres Figueira:Okay. And do you have any example of a campaign that you helped out with that was very successful or that you did something that really caused a spike in more users or in more acceptance from the audience? Is there any story behind that that you could tell us?

9:52Dimitra Papastathi:We have very recently announced a new campaign, which is called Get Real. And we launched a survey and questioned more than 1 ,000, I believe, something between 1 ,000 to 2 ,000 marketers and creative to take their perspective on the use of AI, on the use of generative AI. So we would like to know what people think about AI. Do they use it in their day-to-day work? Do they use it to produce content? Do they disclose that they use AI? Are they positive about the future? So we're going to share a very complete report about the use of AI and what AI can bring to marketing very, very soon. Creative has helped this campaign by producing proper identity for the assets, very particular graphics, and the whole report, which has, I believe, three sections in total.

11:03Dimitra Papastathi:Creative has been really behind this big effort led by the content in the team, the content social in the team.

11:14Andres Figueira:Okay, I love that. So now then you're trying to just get to understand how people can use generative AI in the marketing and then showing those results to the audience just so that it creates more education within your users?

11:27Dimitra Papastathi:Yeah, we're trying to show to people how AI can actually be a lever and not just something that we need to fight. It turns out that the results are more positive than negative. And this is what people would like to read, to understand why the audience thinks AI can be a powerful tool for their work.

11:50Andres Figueira:And Dimitra, do you have any other ways that you yourself are using AI in your daily processes, in your workflow?

11:58Dimitra Papastathi:This is a really interesting question and something that I have been questioning myself as well. Like, where can AI help me? When can AI bring real value without putting me in dilemmas? Because, you know, there are all these ethical dilemmas. There are also dilemmas about should I use AI in such way or in such way? And would people be offended or would people think, oh, this is not real, should I use it or not? I believe there is a moment for using AI depending, like you say, on the intention behind it. We definitely use AI in order to support creative brainstorming. So AI can shape some rough ideas that we later on can take and polish.

12:49Dimitra Papastathi:So it can be our creative assistant. This is one case where we can use AI. We can use AI to replace stock photography. So I believe that using AI in a much more illustrative way doesn't offend anyone. I would say, you know, when you're trying to tell a story and it's very evident, very obvious that you're not trying to cheat or to fool anyone, you can use AI. Everyone knew that stock photography is not real people, right? Everyone knew that stock photography is used just to carry a message across. And everyone was okay with that. Like no one ever said, oh, you know, this is not a real person working the computer.

13:32Dimitra Papastathi:Everyone knew that that was just an actor pretending they were going to computer just to associate with the audience. So I think there is nothing wrong in using AI to generate similar imagery there. It could be maybe wrong if I was trying to use AI to create my avatar and fool people with a capability that I don't have. I would say like completely replacing a human and trying to fool the audience doesn't sound right, but using AI in a much more illustrative way, just to tell the story, just to be creative. I believe there is nothing wrong there. And adding to that, I think when we use AI and AI, a creative asset that has AI has a bit of a wismical feel to it.

14:26Dimitra Papastathi:It's even more evident that we're not trying to pull anywhere. We're using it in a way to create engaging visuals, not to fool. So this is another way I believe AI can be useful and another way we would like to explore as well.

14:43Andres Figueira:And now talking about AI, have you felt that the team with Typeform has been able to get faster, leaner, and a lot better with the help of these LLMs that are around now? Or do you feel that you, if Typeform keeps expanding, that you will need more people to help you out? Or is AI taking that slot?

15:04Dimitra Papastathi:I would say that AI gives us more power to go deeper into creative ideas. We haven't reached yet that moment where we will say, AI really helped us produce X amount more assets, or AI has really helped us create these linear processes. We haven't really reached this point because there has been such a fast evolution in the AI tools throughout last year that we were not able to commit to one solution and come up with a long-term plan. So if you think of the same moment, you think of today, one year ago, there was just one or two AI tools to generate images, right? And the question was, who's going to be the leader?

16:01Dimitra Papastathi:Okay, let's have an exploration and decide if we're going to get a subscription with the first tool or with the second tool. Since that moment, there have been maybe 10 different solutions. So we have been constantly trying to catch up with the features and the capabilities of every new tool that popped up in the market. So as you understand, it has been very challenging for us. in order to define a clear methodology and to say, okay, now we use AI in such a way and it has really helped us scale productivity. We have made some progress, but I can't say with certainty that this is the way to go.

16:49Dimitra Papastathi:Of course. Yeah. And just to add to that, we created a ritual last year, which is called AI Kitchen. Okay. There was an opportunity to consolidate all the tools that we found and do some live testing together as a team and understand really the capabilities of all the tools instead of having individual efforts and, you know, individual exploration that would create all this fragmented information. We came all together and we tried to make this collective discovery in order to maybe come up with a decision and, you know, decide on a tool that will help us on what you just said.