从阿根廷到 Vercel：一位设计师的旅程

Vercel 不是那种地方，你懂的，不会找来一位极有天赋的动态设计师，然后告诉他们：“嘿，不，我们就是这么做的。”我们让他们自由发挥。我们总是让他们做自己的事，把他们的魔法带到桌面上来。欢迎收听 Dive Club，我是 Rid，这里是设计师永不停歇学习的地方。本周这期很特别，因为我们请到了 Evil Rabbit，Vercel 的创始设计师，也是整个设计圈最具标志性的人物之一。我们会聊聊他建立 Vercel 品牌识别的工作，深入探讨他们的新创意工作室团队如何运作，还会聊到他这些年与 CEO GMO 紧密合作学到的一切。但在我们深入 Vercel 的细节之前，这个设计故事始于阿根廷一个 12 岁的孩子。

Vercel is not a place that, you know, is going to look for an incredibly talented motion designer and then we're going to tell them, 'Hey, no, this is the way we do it.' We let them cook. We always let them do their thing and bring their magic to the table. Welcome to Dive Club. My name is Rid and this is where designers never stop learning. This week's episode is a special one because we get to hear from Evil Rabbit, the founding designer of Vercel and one of the most iconic people in the entire design community. We're going to talk about his work establishing the Vercel brand identity, get into the weeds about how their new creative studio team operates, and talk about everything that he's learned working closely with GMO, the CEO, for all of these years. But before we get into all of the Vercel details, this design story starts with a 12-year-old kid in Argentina.

我从小就开始设计，大概 9 岁。多亏了一位计算机老师，他带来了一些设计书，大卫·卡森、史蒂夫·麦凯拉等等，他带来了很多不同的设计师的作品，我爱上了排版，还有图形、插画、不同字体的组合。我记得回到家跟我妈说：“嘿，我不确定我想不想像我爸那样当会计。我觉得我想当设计师。”她当时说：“等等，你在说什么？什么是设计师？你是做什么的？”然后我就给她看不同的视频，还有电视上的东西，对吧？因为那时候还没有互联网。她说：“我不确定，但好吧，你看着办。”而我爸看到了我眼中的火花，他觉得这就是我想做的事。

I started designing when I was a little kid, when I was 9 years old. Thanks to a computer teacher, he brought, you know, some design books. David Carson, Steve McKela, you know, he brought a lot of different designers and I fell in love with typography and, you know, combining graphics, illustrations, different fonts. I remember going back to my house and telling my mom, 'Hey, I'm not sure if I want to be an accountant like my father. I think that I want to be a designer.' And she was like, 'Wait, what are you talking about? What's a designer? What do you do?' And I was, you know, showing them different videos and stuff on TV, right? Because back in the day, you know, the internet was not a thing yet. And she was like, 'I'm not sure, but well, you'll see.' And my father saw, you know, the spark in my eyes. He's like, I think this is what he wants to do.

几年后，大概 12 岁，我得到了第一份工作。我为赛车手设计网站。在阿根廷有一种叫 Turismo Carretera 的赛事，就像汽车比赛。我是这些著名车手最早的网页设计师之一。这太疯狂了，因为我有机会见到他们，了解他们的故事，拍照，把所有东西整理成演示文稿，然后放到他们的网站上。那时候用的是 Flash，Flash 1、Flash 2，还有很多 Dreamweaver、Fireworks，对我来说简直太棒了。我当时想，天哪，这就是我这辈子想做的事。

After a couple of years, I think I was around 12, I got my very first job. I was designing websites for drivers. We had in Argentina something that is called Turismo Carretera, which is like car races. And I was one of the first web designers for these famous drivers. It was crazy because I had the chance, you know, to meet them, to learn their stories, to take photos, to compile everything into a presentation and then into their website. Back in the day, it was, you know, Flash, Flash 1, Flash 2, a lot of Dreamweaver, Fireworks, you know, and for me it was crazy. I was like, man, this is what I want to do for the rest of my life.

而且你知道，我很快就建立了一个人脉圈。他们会说：“哦，我认识这个人，他会设计网站，他真的很棒。”然后我会说：“嗯，但他很年轻。”

And you know, I quickly developed this circle of people. You know, they were like, 'Oh, you know, I know this guy. He knows how to design websites. He's really good.' And I was like, 'Well, but he's very young.'

我认识这小子。他们就是这么说的。

I know this kid. That's what they were saying.

我认识这小子。是的，我认识这小子。我回到家说：“妈，我找到工作了，给一个小孩干活。”收入不错。我爱上了电影和艺术，尤其是艺术指导和摄影。你知道，在阿根廷，通常如果你想学平面设计，你会去布宜诺斯艾利斯大学，但入学超级难。超级难。你要上一个课程，大概三个月的课程，然后有一些测试。如果你没通过那些测试，基本上就出局了，你不能继续。但第一年之后，你才真正开始你的职业生涯。

I know this kid. Yeah, I know this kid. I went back home and I said, 'Mom, I got a job, you know, for a kid.' It was good money. I fell in love with movies and art, and especially art direction and photography. You know, in Argentina, usually if you want to learn graphic design, you go to the Buenos Aires University, but it's super hard to get in. Super hard. You go through a course. It's like a three-month course. Then you have some tests. If you don't pass those tests, you're out basically. You cannot continue. But after the first year, you actually start the career, your career.

我没有兄弟姐妹。所以，我父亲中风了。对我来说，这就像，天哪，生活正在改变，变得非常非常艰难。我想我要停止上大学了。我想我要专注于家庭，专注于工作。我已经工作了很多年。兄弟，我学到了太多东西，尤其是关于生活的，因为那是一段艰难的时期，我想说设计是我的逃避。我在设计中找到了一个可以逃避的地方，创造美好的东西，美好的环境，美好的 3D 东西，甚至像名片这样的小项目。我太爱这些东西了。而且因为我告诉过你，我爱上了排版，对我来说，能够用非常奇怪的字体的风格创作这些构图，我不知道，感觉很独特。所以我有点用设计来逃避某些事情。它现在仍然是我逃避生活中某些时刻的方式。

I don't have brothers or sisters. So, my father had a stroke. And for me it was like, oh man, you know, life is changing. It's getting super super hard. And I think I'm going to stop going to the university. I think I'm going to focus on my family. I'm going to focus on my work. I was already working, you know, for so many years. And dude, I learned so many things, you know. I learned about life especially, you know, because it was a tough time and I would say that it was my escape. I found in design a place where I could escape, create beautiful things, beautiful environments, beautiful 3D things, even tiny projects like business cards. I was so in love with those things. And because I told you, I fell in love with typography, and to me, to be able to create these compositions using very weird font styles, I don't know, it felt unique. So I kind of used design in a way to escape certain things. It's still a way to escape certain moments in life.

我余生都在专注于学习设计，结识了不起的人。我今天能在这里，是因为我遇到了所有这些优秀的人。不仅是因为我自己学到的东西，还因为这些人的帮助。我记得遇到一个年轻人，他是个年轻的工程师。他 15 岁时就自己写了一个代码编辑器。他说：“哥们，我在 MTV 工作，我们在找疯狂的设计师，我觉得你会很适合我们团队。”我说：“好吧，试试看。”我把我的网站发给他，他分享给了他们的小团队，他们说：“不，兄弟，我们得雇这个人。”所以他们当天就给我打了电话。他们回电给我，接下来一周我就在为维亚康姆设计，为 MTV、尼克国际儿童频道工作，太疯狂了。

I spend the rest of my days literally focused on learning design, meeting incredible people. The reason I'm here is because I met all these amazing people. Not only because of all the things that I learned by myself, but also because of these people. You know, I remember meeting this young guy. He was a young engineer. He built his own code editor back in the day when he was 15. He said, 'Dude, I'm working at MTV. You know, we're looking for crazy designers. I think you should be a great fit for the team.' And I was like, 'Well, let's give it a try.' I sent him my website. He shared it with the small team that they had and they were like, 'No, man. We need to hire this guy.' So they called me literally the same day. They called me back and the following week I was just, you know, designing for Viacom, you know, for MTV, Nickelodeon, it was crazy.

你当时多大？

How old were you at this point?

我 21 岁，非常年轻。

I was 21. I was super young.

所以

So

是的，是的，那太疯狂了。我以设计师的身份加入，但很快就成了设计负责人。总监来找我，他说：“兄弟，我觉得你应该管理设计团队。大家都看着你，他们喜欢你正在做的事，你正在构建的东西，以及你带来的所有知识和专长。”记住，我当时是个年轻设计师。我之前的经验是自己单干，作为自由职业者拥有客户。这真的很疯狂。我非常年轻，我在组建团队，在招人，也在帮助其他团队。但很有趣，我们超级有创意，兄弟。我真的很喜欢。我们需要，比如，一个倒计时，好吧，我们用 Flash 做，看看效果如何，我们把所有这些技术结合起来。或者，比如，为 MTV 音乐录影带大奖做的投票工具，也是类似的情况。回到家跟家人分享这些，我觉得我父母从未真正理解设计对我的实际意义，但他们能看到我的脸。你知道，我总是面带微笑。事情不顺利的时候我也会哭，因为我对此充满热情。

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That was crazy. And I joined as a designer, but I quickly became the design leader. The director came to me. He's like, 'Man, I think you should run the design team. Like, people look at you. They love what you're doing, the things that you're building, all the knowledge and the know-how that you brought in here.' And remember, I was a young designer. My previous experience was running my own thing, you know, having my customers as a freelancer. It was literally crazy. I was super young. I was building a team. I was recruiting people. I was also helping other teams. But it was funny. We were super creative, man. I really love that. We needed, I don't know, a countdown. Well, let's do it in Flash. Let's see how it works, you know, and we were combining all these technologies. Or, for example, for the voting tool for the MTV Video Music Awards, similar thing. You know, going back home and sharing this with my family, I don't think that my parents ever understood the actual impact of what design means to me, but they could see my face. You know, I was always smiling. I was also crying when things didn't go well, you know, it's like I was so passionate about it.

快速插播一条消息，然后我们继续。

Real quick message and then we can jump back into it.

所以，Figma 在他们的技术栈里加入了动效，但说实话，我很难离开像 Jitter 这样的工具。它太简单了，因为它只把一件事做得特别好，但跟 Figma 比，它又超级强大。比如，你可以从单个素材生成数百个符合品牌风格的变体，或者生成一整份 CSV 那么多的视频，甚至还能设计你自己的自定义文字效果。它功能这么多，却是我整个技术栈里最直观的产品之一，毫无疑问。所以，如果你还没用过 Jitter，我怎么推荐都不为过。只要去 dive.club/jitter 就能开始。另外，我提前看到了 DES 新的私有测试版。我跟你说，他们把无限画布提升到了一个全新的水平。那不只是随机的模型或一次性的原型。你可以直接在画布上运行真实的产品页面。想想这对并行探索意味着什么。你可以随意分支，让智能体并排探索多个想法，这对团队对齐非常完美，因为你有一个空间来审查原型、留下评论，甚至让智能体根据你收到的反馈采取行动。这很了不起。但问题是，Destin 每周只接纳几个团队。但如果你去 dive.club/desen，你可以和他们的联合创始人 Gab 预约聊天，告诉他们是 Ridd 让你来插队的。所以去 dive.club/desen，就是 D E SN。现在进入正题。

So, Figma added motion to their stack, but I'll be honest, I'm having a hard time leaving a tool like Jitter. It's just so simple because it does one thing really well, but it's also super powerful compared to Figma, too. Like you can spin up hundreds of on-brand variants from a single asset or generate a whole CSV's worth of videos or maybe even design your own custom text effects. There's so much to it and yet it's one of the most intuitive products in my entire stack. Hands down. So if you haven't used Jitter yet, I cannot recommend it enough. Just head to dive.club/jitter to get started. So, I got a sneak peek of DES's new private beta release. And let me tell you, they are taking the infinite canvas to a whole other level. It's not just random mock-ups or one-off prototypes. You can run real product pages directly on a canvas. I mean, just think about what that unlocks for parallel exploration. You can branch as much as you want. Get the agent to explore multiple ideas side by side, which is perfect for aligning the team because you have one space to review prototypes, leave comments, and even get the agent to act on the feedback you receive. It's a big deal. But here's the thing. Destin is only onboarding a few teams every week. But if you go to dive.club/desen, you can book a chat with their co-founder Gab and tell them Ridd sent you to jump the queue. So head to dive.club/desen. That's D E SN. Now on to the episode.

我们能聊聊 Popcorn Time 这部分故事吗？你之前提到它，好像那只是个小细节，但 Popcorn Time 在我家可是大事。这是我们全家最喜欢的软件。所以我不能采访你却不让你讲讲这部分。

Can we talk about the popcorn time part of the story? You mentioned that earlier as if it was like a small little detail, but popcorn time was a big deal in my household. Like this was everybody's favorite software. So I want to—I cannot interview you without having you talk about that part too.

当然可以。就在我接任 Viacom 设计主管之后，我开始参加布宜诺斯艾利斯的很多会议和活动。其中一个是 Google 的 BarCamp，很酷。我记得我遇到了一群人，中间是一位非常著名的阿根廷设计师，周围的人都围着他问问题。我当时想，这谁啊？我得跟他聊聊。我一个朋友说，嘿，他是个很棒的产品设计师，我觉得你们应该认识一下，聊聊。结果这个人就是 Popcorn Time 背后的创造者——他构思了这一切。他把三种技术整合在一起：字幕、种子源，他把所有东西结合起来，设计了第一个版本。我记得那是个周五早上，我给他发消息说：“嘿，哥们，今天我从 MTV 回来，我要重新设计你的应用。”他第一句话就是：“哦，哥们，我好害怕。”

Absolutely. Right after I stepped in as head of design at Viacom, I started to go to a lot of different conferences and events in Buenos Aires. And one of these events was a Google BarCamp. It was cool. And I remember I met this group of people. There was a very famous Argentine designer in the middle, and all these people around him were asking him questions. And I was like, who's this guy? I need to chat with him. One of my friends said, hey, he's a very good product designer. I think you should talk and chat and meet each other. And this guy turned out to be the creator—he ideated it, you know, behind Popcorn Time. He brought these three technologies together: the subtitles, the torrent feed, and he combined everything. He put it together and designed the very first version. And I remember it was a Friday morning. I messaged him and said, "Hey man, today when I come back from MTV, I'm going to redesign your app." And the first thing he said was, "Oh man, I'm scared."

然后，我当然做了。我回来后，泡了些马黛茶，阿根廷马黛茶，然后我说：“好，现在轮到我了。我要在这里做点事。”我记得我做的第一件事就是砍掉侧边栏。我做了和现在人们做的相反的事。我砍掉侧边栏，改成横向。我们有那些带筛选器的下拉菜单，但我保留了应用的精髓。不到三次点击，你选一个分类，选一部电影，然后你就在看电影了。砰，就这样。我记得那天晚上，我把那些设计发给了 Let's Talk UI 那期。结果就爆了。兄弟，我去睡觉，醒来时，有 2000 多条消息说：“嘿，我们得这么做。让我们实现这个设计。”但那个人不高兴。他说：“呃，这不是民主。”他真的这么说了。我想，哦不，我觉得他不喜欢。实际上，他们更喜欢我的设计，但一周后他联系我说：“嘿，你能把那些 Photoshop 文件发给我吗？这样我就能实现了。”于是我把设计发了过去。他们稍微调整了一下，但还是我的设计，然后他们实现了。在那之后不久，原团队关闭了这个项目，因为他们已经收到了很多停止侵权函和邮件。很多公司都说，嘿，哥们，这样不好。

And then, of course, I did it. I came back, I prepared some mate, you know, Argentinian mate, and I said, "Okay, now it's my time. I'm going to do something here." And I remember the first thing I did was I killed the sidebar. I did the opposite of what people are doing these days. I killed the sidebar and made it horizontal. We had these dropdowns with the filters, but I kept the essence of the app. In less than three clicks, you pick a category, you select the movie, and you were watching the movie. Boom. That's it. And I remember that night when I sent those designs to the Let's Talk UI issue. It just blew up. Dude, I went to sleep, and when I woke up, I had more than 2,000 messages saying, "Hey, we need to do this. Let's implement this design." But the guy was not happy. He was like, "Uh, this is not a democracy." Literally, he said that. And I thought, oh no, I think he didn't like that. Actually, they preferred my design, but after a week he reached out to me and said, "Hey, can you send me those Photoshop files so I can implement it?" So I sent over my designs. They tweaked it a little bit, but it was still my design, and they implemented it. A very short time after that, the original team shut down the project because they already got a lot of cease and desist letters and emails. A lot of companies were like, hey man, this is not nice.

但我的工作——我当时在走一条很细的线，但我只是提供了设计。我没有连接任何库或其他东西。我提供了设计，其他人拿去分叉了，这个被分叉了无数次，我得说。因为每当他们关闭其中一个分叉，另一个就会出现在世界另一个角落。Popcorn Time 是为那些电影不能准时上映的国家而生的。比如在美国上映一部新电影，要花很长时间，好几个月，才能真正到这些国家。而 Popcorn Time 解决了这个问题。我们获取非常高、超高画质的种子，连接所有字幕，然后向全世界流媒体播放。

But my work—I was working on a very thin line, but I just provided a design. I didn't connect any library or anything. I provided a design, other people took it and forked it, and this got forked infinite times, I would say. Because whenever they were shutting down one of those forks, there was another one appearing in another part of the world. Popcorn Time was meant for countries where the movies were not there on time. Like whenever you release a new movie in the US, it takes a lot of time, a lot of months, to actually get to these other countries. And Popcorn Time was solving that problem. We were getting a very high, super high quality torrent. We were connecting all the subtitles and streaming to the world.

你也解决了一个中西部孩子没钱看电影的问题，因为我在 Popcorn Time 上看过很多电影，我们总是谈论它的设计有多好。当我发现你是背后的设计者时，我特别兴奋。

You were solving the problem of a Midwest kid who didn't have money for the movies too, because I watched a lot of movies on Popcorn Time, and we always talked about how good the design was. And I was so thrilled to find out that you were behind it.

非常感谢，兄弟。对我来说，那是一次很棒的机会。我不能独占功劳——团队做得非常出色。他们的创始人是个不可思议、超级有创意的人。我为那次重新设计做的所有工作，最后我实际上在 Zite 和 Vercel 都实现了，因为我们原来的仪表盘就有这种横向导航，而且我们用了很多年。我得说 Popcorn Time 存在了 10 年，而 Vercel 我们最近才推出侧边栏，大概一年前或更短。所以它也差不多存在了 10 年。但现在大家都转向侧边栏了。我不太高兴。我觉得有其他方式可以让它工作。但事实就是如此。这就是我们现在有的。

Thank you so much, man. Yeah, for me it was an amazing opportunity. I cannot take the whole credit—the team did an amazing job. Their founder was an incredible, super creative guy. All the work that I did for that redesign, I actually ended up implementing it at Zite at Vercel, because our original dashboard had this horizontal navigation, and we had it for so many years. I would say Popcorn Time was there for 10 years, and Vercel we recently released our sidebar maybe a year ago or less than that. So it's been around for almost 10 years as well. But everybody is now moving to sidebars. Not that happy. I feel that there are other ways that we can make it work. But it is what it is. It's what we have now.

呃，看来你毕竟还是活在民主里了。

Uh, it turns out you're in a democracy after all.

是啊，没错。嗯。

Yeah, that's true. Yeah.

哦，天哪。那我们以此为切入点，聊聊 Vercel 吧。还有 Zite，显然，那是你刚加入的时候。给我们讲讲那个故事吧。那是怎么开始的？

Oh, man. Let's use this as a launching point for Vercel then. And Zite, obviously, it was when you first joined. So tell us that story. How did that start?

兄弟，那很美，也很疯狂。在我们开始 Zite 之前，离开 Viacom 之后，我加入了 Auth0。Auth0 是另一家科技公司，但我得说，那是我第一次能发挥我所有超能力去创造疯狂东西的地方，从关于页面到产品本身，甚至到移动应用。

Man, it was beautiful. It was crazy. Before we started Zite and after I left Viacom, I joined Auth0. Auth0 was another tech company, but I would say the first one where I could use all my superpowers to create crazy stuff, from the about page to the product itself, to even mobile apps.

我在 Auth0 能够设计所有东西，还有机会和 Guillermo 的兄弟一起工作。他实际上是 Auth0 的第一位设计工程师，也是那个团队的负责人。那是个很小的团队，大概 15 个人。这让我得以展示我的作品，也让我能跳出娱乐领域，因为 Popcorn Time 说到底还是流媒体娱乐，是个产品，但属于娱乐。我真的很想做点不一样的。Auth0 是我看到的第一个被广泛采用、很多人使用的产品，那时候大家会在 X 或 Twitter 上分享看法。我爱上了这个过程：我们做出东西，分享给世界，收集反馈，回到白板前调整，然后再分享出去。

I was able to design everything at Auth0, and I had the chance to work with Guillermo's brother. He was actually the first design engineer at Auth0 and the head of that team. It was a tiny team, like 15 people. It allowed me to showcase my work and expand beyond the entertainment scene, because Popcorn Time is still streaming entertainment. It's a product, but it's entertainment. I really wanted something different. Auth0 was the first product where I saw adoption and a lot of people using it, sharing their thoughts on X or Twitter back in the day. I fell in love with the fact that we were producing something, sharing it with the world, gathering feedback, going back to the blackboard, tweaking it, and sharing it again.

幸运的是，Guillermo 是 Auth0 的投资人兼顾问之一。所以我不仅有机会和他兄弟合作，我很喜欢和他兄弟共事，也有机会和他本人合作。他每天都会说：“Rabbit，能帮我做这个视频吗？我要发推。Rabbit，你要不要试试这个或那个？”那时候他就成了我的导师。我当时就想：“我确定我将来一定会做点什么，虽然还不知道是什么，但一定是和这个人一起。”

The good thing is that Guillermo was one of the investors and advisors at Auth0. So I not only had the chance to work with his brother, who I love working with, but also with him. Every single day he was like, 'Rabbit, can you please create this video for me? I'm going to tweet it. Rabbit, what if you do this or that?' He became my mentor back in the day. At that time I was like, 'I know for sure that I'm going to end up doing something. I don't know what yet, but something with this guy.'

后来，在 Auth0 干了两年后，我开始觉得无聊。我已经设计了所有东西，而且看到其他公司在抄袭我们的作品。我想：“我需要点别的。”我记得我给 Guillermo 发了消息，说：“嘿，我打算离开 Auth0，很想和你聊聊，一起做点事。”他说：“兄弟，我们和 Matias 是很好的朋友，你得先和他们谈谈，然后我们再看。”我记得那是个周三下午。我先和 Ricky 谈了，Ricky 把消息告诉了 CTO 和团队其他人。到了那个周末，Garmmo 就飞到了阿根廷。

At some point, after two years at Auth0, I was getting bored. I had already designed everything, and I saw other companies copying our work. I thought, 'I need something else.' I remember I pinged Guillermo and said, 'Hey, I think I'm going to leave Auth0, and I would love to chat with you and do something together.' He said, 'Well, dude, we're very good friends with Matias. You have to talk to them, and then we'll see.' I think that was a Wednesday afternoon. I talked to Ricky first. Ricky shared the news with the CTO and the rest of the team. By that weekend, Garmmo was flying to Argentina.

我们见了面，开始聊项目，我当时就想：“就是它了，这就是我想做的。”他说：“兄弟，我知道你能做什么，但我需要你先做视频。我们要从视频开始。”我说：“等等，但我想设计网站，我想设计产品。”他说：“不，目前产品就是 CLI。我们要一起设计 CLI。但我需要你做的第一件事是理解产品，帮我简化概念，用很短的视频展示出来，让人们明白我们在做什么。”

We met, we started talking about the project, and I was like, 'Okay, this is it. This is what I want to do.' He was like, 'Man, I know what you can do, but I need you to do videos here. We're gonna start with videos first.' I said, 'Wait, but I want to design a website. I want to design the product.' He said, 'No, the product is the CLI for now. We are gonna work together on it. We're going to design the CLI together. But the very first thing I need you to do is understand the product and help me simplify the concepts, show it in a very short video so people can understand what we're doing here.'

我记得我们发布了最初那些视频，人们都疯了，我当时还不明白。我想：“等等，为什么这么好？我们到底改变了什么？”后来我终于意识到，我们正在改变游戏规则。以前我们得用 FileZilla 之类的工具把网站传到互联网上，或者用一些命令，非常麻烦。当我意识到我们在改进工作流程、改善人们的生活，而不只是互联网上的又一个工具时，天哪，我简直不敢相信。我当时就想：“好吧，我要永远待在这里。”

I remember we released those first videos, people went crazy, and I didn't understand. I was like, 'Wait, why is this so good? What are we changing here?' And then when I finally realized that we were changing the game. We used to have FileZilla to upload our websites to the internet, or certain other commands, and it was so hard. When I realized that we were improving the workflow, that we were improving people's lives, and it was not just another tool on the internet, dude, I couldn't believe it. I was like, 'Well, I'm staying here forever.'

看起来你是唯一的设计师，而且每天都直接和 Guillermo 一起工作。你能反思一下自己作为设计师的身份，并清楚地看到与 GMO 如此紧密的合作是如何塑造你的实践、你的工作方式、你的思维方式的吗？那是很长的时间。影响是什么样的？

It seems you were the only designer and you were working directly with Guillermo every single day. Are you able to reflect on who you are as a designer and clearly see the ways that working so closely with GMO have shaped your practice, how you operate, how you think? That's a lot of time to spend. What does the impact look like?

兄弟，他真的改变了我的人生，毫不夸张。我学会了如何运作，如何行事，如何发推，如何展示东西，如何说服别人。每个人都想推出自己的东西，对吧？每个人都有绝妙的想法。最难的事情之一，我最近才体会到，就是对这些绝妙的想法、这些绝妙的产品说“不”。所以我从 Guillermo 那里学会了有时要说：“嘿，不，我们很喜欢这个，我们花了太多时间，但不幸的是我们需要转变，需要转向，需要走不同的方向。”这塑造了现在的我，我的行事方式，我的沟通方式。

Dude, he changed my life, literally. I learned how to operate. I learned how to behave. I learned how to tweet. I learned how to present stuff. I learned how to convince people. Everybody wants to ship their thing, right? And everybody has incredible ideas. One of the hardest things, and I saw this recently, is actually to say no to these incredible ideas, to these incredible products. So I learned from Guillermo how to sometimes say, 'Hey, no, we love this, we spent so much time on it, but unfortunately we need to shift, we need to pivot, we need to go in a different direction.' That shaped the way I am, the way I move, the way I communicate my things.

那我们继续讲故事吧。你当时非常早期，基本上只是个 CLI，甚至没有太多界面工作。你做了很多视频相关的事情，我猜是在思考故事定位。故事的下一个阶段是什么样的？跟我聊聊你在纠结什么，有哪些责任，事情是怎么变化的？

Let's continue the story then. You're really early, it's basically just a CLI, there's not even that much interface work. You're doing a lot of video stuff, trying to think about the story positioning, I would imagine. What's that next phase of the story look like? Talk to me a little bit about what things you were wrestling with, what were some of the responsibilities, how did things change?

接下来要做的是继续打造品牌。我经常分享的一件事是，我几乎每天都会发一个带有不同纹理或处理的三角形。那非常神秘。人们会说：“这家伙到底想说什么？”但我是在努力建立品牌知名度和认知度。有趣的是，现在人们常说：“每当我想起 Vercel 或 Zite，你的标志就会出现在旁边。”它们紧密相连。我为此感到非常自豪，因为这意味着我这 10 年所做的所有工作成就了他们的东西，在某种程度上创造了他们的魔力，而且人们记住了这一点。

The next thing was to continue building the brand. One of the things I always share is that I was almost every day tweeting a triangle with a different texture or treatment. It was very mysterious. People were like, 'What the hell is this guy trying to say?' But I was trying to build brand awareness, brand recognition. It's funny because these days people tend to say, 'Whenever I think of Vercel or Zite, your logo comes next to it.' They go together. For me, I feel so proud about that because it means that all the work I've been doing for all these 10 years made their thing, made their magic somehow, and people remember that.

即使只是为了向这一点致敬，你们发布了新网站，上面只有三角形，甚至没有文字标志。那一定感觉很酷，对吧？那就像是所有努力的巅峰。

Even just to pay tribute to that, the fact that you all released a new website and it only had the triangle and it didn't even have the word mark. Like that had to feel cool, right? That's like the culmination of all of the effort.

那是个大胆的举动。我们故意这么做，因为我们想让人们记住三角形就是 Vercel。你不需要读到“Vercel”这个词就能真正感受到 Vercel，就能真正看出那个作品、那个网站、那个落地页、那个广告牌来自 Vercel。

That's a bold move. And we did that on purpose because we wanted people to remember that the triangle is Vercel. You don't need to read Vercel to actually feel Vercel, to actually see that that piece, that website, that landing page, that billboard is from Vercel.

我想稍微深入探讨一下。对于正在收听的人来说，也许他们有抱负要创建一个有辨识度的品牌。显然，其中一部分取决于你的产品必须能用，对吧？所以我们先假设这一点。

I want to go a little bit deeper into this for a second. For people who are listening, maybe they have aspirations of creating a brand that is recognizable. Obviously, some of that comes with your product having to work, right? So let's just assume that for a second.

在你看来，你们做了哪些事情，才让这个三角形、品牌的辨识度，以及我们整个行业对 Vercel 品牌的认同感，都取得了成功？

What are some of the things that you all did that in your mind led to the success of even just like the triangle and the recognizability of the brand and the affinity that we have as an industry even with the Vercel brand?

当我们决定走简约、极简路线时，实际上我们的第一个网站是粗野主义风格的——就像等宽字体，你知道，那种终端风格。它非常优雅，但也非常极简。我想说，那些决定是对的，因为这是我从 Garmmo 那里学到的一点：当你创造一个足够中性的产品时，它就是透明的。它就在那里，帮你从零到一，但你看不见它。它不会扑面而来。这意味着你做得很好。Zite 非常极简、非常优雅。我们用几何形状来代表我们的原始产品。所以我们推出的每一件作品都与原始品牌相连。让我稍微回溯一下。最初的名字是 Zite，在德语里是“时间”的意思。第一个产品叫 Now，是那个三角形，主框架是 Next。所以这三样东西是相连的——从第一天起就是品牌的一部分。

When we made the decision of going simple and minimal, actually our very first website was brutalist—like it was monospace font, you know, the terminal. It was super elegant but super minimal. I would say that those decisions were on point because it was one of the things that I learned from Garmmo: when you create a product that feels neutral enough, it is transparent. It's there. It helps you to go from zero to one, but you don't see it. It's not in your face. It means that you did a great job. Zite was super minimal, super elegant. We used geometrical shapes to represent our original products. So every single piece that we put out there was connected to the original brand. And let me actually go a little bit back. The original name was Zite, which means time in German. The very first product was Now, and it was the delta triangle, and the main framework was Next. So the three things were connected—they were part of the branding from day one.

我完全不知道 Next 还有这层含义。现在完全说得通了。

I didn't even know that about Next. That makes total sense now.

所以对我来说，放弃 Zite 这个名字非常难，因为作为一个名字，它对我来说就是一切。三角形也代表时间。所以一切都是相连的，但我不想让它消亡。这就是为什么我们的主字体保留了部分核心精髓。我觉得把它保留为品牌的一部分，并不断发展成适用于一切的字体家族，向世界开放，也是一个很棒的举措。我去公交车站，看到广告牌在用这个字体——对我来说，那太不可思议了。这家公司在科技社区的影响力是巨大的。

That's why for me it was very hard to let Zite go, because as a name it is everything for me. And the triangle represents time as well. So everything was connected, but I didn't want it to die. That's why our main font preserves part of that core essence. And I feel that it was also a great move to keep that as part of our branding, to keep evolving as the font family for everything, to make it open to the world. I go to a bus stop and I see a billboard using it—for me, that is incredible. The impact that this company had in the tech community is ginormous.

我们做对的事情，就是让推出的每一件东西都保持超级极简、简单、易于理解。广告牌就是一个明显的例子。第一块广告牌是一个安装我们 AI 包的命令行，人们都疯了。我们这么做是因为人们在讨论我们的广告牌——它们完全不同。然后我们看到其他公司开始模仿这些广告牌，同样的极简处理、同样的命令、同样的黑白美学。

The things that we did right were keeping everything super minimal, simple, and easy to digest in every single thing that we put out there. Billboards were a clear example. The very first billboard was a terminal command to install our AI package, and people went mad. We did it because people were talking about our billboards—they were completely different. And then we saw other companies that started to copy these billboards, the same minimal treatment, the same commands, the same black-and-white aesthetic.

让我保持动力的事情之一，也是我为什么在 Vercel 待了这么多年，是因为我一直在学习。我的品牌 Evil Rabbit 和 Vercel 紧密相连，这让我非常自豪。我想你在那些后院设计师身上也看到了。但当你做开源的东西时，人们会变得非常愤怒、非常热情。就像在说：“修好这个。你会完蛋的。”而我喜欢这样。我真的很喜欢，尤其是在我们最初构建 Zite 的时候，我们为社区建了一个 Slack，我每天都和他们聊天。我热爱那种感觉。我会说：“请告诉我一切，你们讨厌的东西。我们先从你们讨厌的开始，然后再继续。”

One of the things that keeps me motivated, and one of the reasons why I'm still here at Vercel for this many years, is because I keep learning. My brand, Evil Rabbit, is tied to Vercel, and it makes me super proud. I guess you saw it with backyard designers. But when you do something that is open source, people get so angry and so passionate about it. It's like, 'Fix this. You're going to die.' And I love that. I really love that, especially because in the beginning when we built Zite, we had this Slack for the community, and I was chatting with them every single day. I loved it. I was like, 'Please tell me everything, the things that you hate. Let's start with the things that you hate, and then we go from there.'

有一个问题我一直忍不住问自己：如果公司反过来主动找你谈，而不是你去找他们，会怎样？这个问题就是全新 Dive Talent Network 的基础。而且它确实有效。现在，我正在帮助许多我认识的最令人兴奋的初创公司，招聘那些收听本节目的设计师和开发者。所以，如果你好奇外面有什么机会，也许你想加入我的名单，或者你正在寻找下一位设计人才，请访问 dive.club/talent 立即加入。

There's one question that I can't stop asking myself: What if companies applied to talk to you rather than the other way around? And that question is the foundation for the all-new Dive Talent Network. And it's working. Right now, I'm helping many of the most exciting startups that I know to hire the designers and builders who listen to this show. So if you're curious what might be out there, and maybe you want to get on my list, or maybe you're even looking for your next design hire, head to dive.club/talent to join today.

我们来聊聊你这些年的角色变化。显然一开始你什么都做，对吧？产品，甚至和社区里的人交流——你好像什么都做。而且从那以后你经历了不少规模扩张。现在你开始专注于一些更专业的品牌项目。你提到了字体。大致描绘一下你过去十年的角色轨迹吧。

Let's talk a little bit about your role over time. Obviously in the beginning you're doing literally everything, right? Product, sounds like even talking to people in the community—like you're doing everything. And you've seen quite a bit of scale since then. Now you're getting to focus on some of these more specialty brand projects. You talked about the font. Paint the picture of what your role arc has been over the last decade basically.

嗯，就像我之前说的，最初几年我更专注于管理团队，同时处理不同的事情，但尤其是团队扩张、打基础、为产品建立设计系统，以及许多不同的设计任务。但我想说，直到疫情之后，我们才开始从很多不同的公司招人，其中一大群来自 GitHub。我意识到，嘿，我觉得我们需要提升水平了。我们需要拆分设计团队，那时团队只有几个设计师，我和外部机构合作。我说，我觉得我们需要三大支柱：设计工程支柱、产品支柱，以及创意或创意/品牌支柱。

Well, as I said before, in the first years I was more focused on running the team, doing different things at the same time, but especially growing the team, building the foundations, the design system for the product, and a lot of different design tasks. But I would say that it wasn't until after the pandemic that we started hiring all these people from a lot of different companies, but a big group came from GitHub. And I realized, hey, I think we need to level up the game. We need to split the design team, which at that point was just a couple of designers, and I was working with external agencies. And I said, I think we need three pillars here. We need the design engineering pillar, we need product, and we need creative or creative/brand.

我越来越多地参与会议、演讲、董事会材料、全员大会等等。我想，好吧，我觉得对内对外做好沟通非常重要。所以我开始招人来真正解决这些需求。我做的第一件事就是聘请一位创意总监。我稍微退后了一步。我聘请了创意总监 Jenny，她在那些年帮助我们发展创意团队。我们招了几位品牌设计师。然后 Zara 加入，担任设计工程负责人，大幅扩展了团队——我们现在有大约 15 或 13 位设计工程师。John Famous 过了一段时间后回来了，整个局面都变了。当 John 负责产品的设计工程时，一切都变了。

I was getting more and more involved in conferences, presentations, board decks, all-hands meetings, and stuff like that. And I was like, okay, I think this is super important that we communicate this properly internally and externally. So I started hiring people to actually solve those needs. And the first thing I did was hire a creative director. I stepped back a little bit. I hired a creative director, Jenny, who helped us during those years to grow the creative team. We hired a few brand designers. Then Zara joined as the design engineering leader and scaled up the team a lot—we have like 15 or 13 design engineers now. And John Famous came back after some time, and the whole game changed. When John took the lead of the design engineering for product, the whole thing changed.

如今，在担任创意方向负责人这么多年、与前任创意总监 Jenny 紧密合作之后，再加上 Manuel 最近离开了团队——他曾是我们的设计副总裁——我们认为现在是重新组合和重组团队的好时机，找到那些可以改进营销与设计之间协作的细微之处。我们认为，把创意/品牌团队移到营销部门下是个好主意，但仍然保持产品与创意团队之间的垂直联系。我们保持一致、了解最新动态，这一点非常重要。

In these days, after taking the lead on the creative direction for so many years, working super closely with Jenny, our previous creative director, and after Manuel, who recently left the team—he was our VP of design—we thought it was a good time to regroup and reorganize the team and find those tiny places where we can improve the collaboration between marketing and design. And we thought it was a good idea to actually move the creative/brand team under marketing, but still having this vertical connection between product and the creative team. It's super important that we are on the same page, that we know the latest news and everything.

我仍然向我们的首席产品官 Tommo 汇报，同时我也向我们的首席营销官 Keith 汇报，他领导我们的市场团队。这让我拥有双重视角，我觉得这有点像超能力，因为我既懂一点产品，又懂一点营销，我能把两者结合起来，创造出最好的成果。感觉棒极了。这是在筹备期间发生的，当时 German 联系我，说：“嘿，Evil，你愿意领导这个团队吗？这将是一个新团队。你们要做这个那个，构建创意工具、内部工具、外部工具。你们要打造信息，塑造我们向世界展示 Vercel 的方式。”这比仅仅做一个品牌或创意团队更广泛。我们不再只做会议，我们做的更多。我们在构建工具，让 Vercel 的各个团队能更快行动。未来几个月会有很多重要的发布。有机会不仅拥有指导公司视觉方向的能力，还能影响我们发布的产品、我们与智能体对话的方式——我想你最近看到了——我帮助构建了 Effects，这是我们的小型编码智能体。它纯粹是 CLI 设计和落地页，真的把 Zite 时代带回了 Vercel 时代。我喜欢我们作为创意人现在拥有超能力。我们是构建者。我们不只是创造资产，我们做的更多。如果我雇人，即使是经理或我要汇报的人，我这样做的原因是因为我想不断学习。很多人问我：“Evil，你为什么不是首席设计官？”因为我想让更多人成为我的上级，我可以向他们学习，他们可以指导我们，我可以带领我们。我并非无所不知。我并非对所有事情都有最终决定权。我想一起构建。我觉得这是我在 Vercel 能做的最美好的事。

I still report to Tommo, our chief product officer, and at the same time I report to Keith, our CMO, who leads our marketing team. That gives me both perspectives, and I feel it's kind of like a superpower because I know a little bit of product and a little bit of marketing, and I can combine those things and create the best out of it. It feels great. This happened during the workup when German pinged me, like, 'Hey, Evil, would you like to take the lead on this team? It's going to be a new team. You guys are going to be doing this and that, building creative tools, internal tools, external tools. You're going to be building the message, how we present Vercel to the world.' It's broader than just being a brand or creative team. We don't do just conferences anymore; we do more than that. We're building the tools that enable teams at Vercel to move faster. A lot of important drops are happening in the coming months. Having the opportunity not only to have the power to direct the visual direction of this company but also the products we're shipping, the way we talk to agents—I guess you saw it recently—I helped build Effects, which is our tiny coding agent. It was purely CLI design and the landing page, which literally brought back the Zite days into the Vercel era. I love that we as creative people have superpowers right now. We are builders. We don't just create assets; we do more than that. If I hire someone, even if it's a manager or someone I'm going to report to, the reason I'm doing that is because I want to keep learning. A lot of people ask me, 'Evil, why are you not the chief design officer?' Because I want to have more people above myself that I can learn from, who can guide us, and I can take us. I don't know everything. I don't have the last word for everything. I want to build it together. I feel that's the most beautiful thing I can do here at Vercel.

你能更深入地谈谈从静态资产到工具的转变，以及这具体是什么样的，还有你今天在投资哪些以前 Vercel 时代可能没有投资的东西吗？

Can you go a little bit deeper into the shift from more static assets to tools and what that looks like and the types of things that you're investing in today that maybe you weren't in previous eras of Vercel?

是的，当然。最初，我们在构建和别人一样的东西，对吧？比如用于公告的 OG 卡片，用于故事或推文的小视频。一切都是静态的。那是独立的资产。你交付资产，就这样。如今，团队更专注于为 Vercel 工作的所有不同团队提供解决方案。他们可以自己构建资产，而无需等待设计师帮忙。这意味着他们可以获得自己的开放图谱图像。他们可以利用我们的技能，比如动态设计技能，来完成自己的视频。我有像市场团队的 Estan 这样的人去那里。他有很多技术技能，但对动态设计和视频编辑一无所知，对吧？所以我让 Estan 和 Louis 一起工作了几周，构建这个动态设计技能，现在 Estan 可以去那里，只需和他的智能体对话，就能构建视频，而无需设计师坐在他旁边。名片也是如此。广告牌也是如此，伙计。我们为我们的广告牌创建了系统。实际上，我们也为其他所有公司创建了系统，因为我们遵循相同的网格、相同的对齐方式等等。所以我们说，伙计，既然这完成了，系统就位了，我们应该很容易构建一个工具，可以快速将特定广告牌的图形或艺术适应到任何其他位置或规格，对吧？所以我们从非常小的项目开始，小型活动、仪表板，也许屏幕，我们利用这些机会，不是专注于交付资产，而是专注于如何让体验更好。我们最终意识到，最好的做法是构建内部工具。这不仅是因为它更便宜，或者我们不想付钱给其他公司，而是因为更容易根据你的需求进行定制，对吧？也许对 Linear 有效的东西对我们无效。不过我要说，这些应用中的大多数，如果我们开源并分享给世界，人们会开始使用它们，因为我们有，比如，个人资料生成器。假设有人加入 Vercel。如果我们需要他们的头像，我们上传照片到我们的生成器，它会给我们一张具有 Vercel 美学、Vercel 处理、正确对比度、正确灰度平衡等等的图像。所以它们看起来完全一样。所以我们在自动化和标准化流程。我们在制造让人们能自我提升 10 倍、20 倍的东西，行动超快，而几年前创意团队简直是瓶颈，因为你需要设计师从零到一。如今，例如，图表或变更日志图像不需要设计师。它们通过工具完成。这并不意味着人为因素、设计师因素不需要存在，因为我们不断迭代这些应用。我们不断添加更多功能。我们不断调整样式。最好的例子之一是周边商店，因为周边商店有自己的美学，非常简约优雅，但每一次发布，比如梅赛德斯发布或任何 Vercel 发布，都有自己独特的美学、氛围和特色。所以我们构建的系统足够灵活，能够适应他们的需求。再说一次，这就是我们构建这些工具的主要原因，也是为什么我会说创意团队的角色发生了如此大的变化，因为我们不只是创建临时的或独立的资产或解决方案。我们实际上在改善他们的日常流程，他们的工作方式。我喜欢这样。我真的很喜欢。特别是考虑到我的背景，以及我们如何建立这家公司，为什么建立这家公司。这是同样的使命，但在内部。最近，Sharma 说我们正在进入每个人都是软件工厂的时代，对吧？每个人、每个团队都是软件工厂。

Yeah, absolutely. Originally, we were building the same things that everybody was building, right? Like OG cards for announcements, tiny videos for maybe a story or a tweet. Everything was static. It was a standalone asset. You deliver the asset, that's it. These days, the team is more focused on actually providing solutions for all these different teams that work at Vercel. They can actually build their own assets without waiting for a designer to help. That means they can get their own open graph images. They can get their own videos done using our skills like motion design skills. I have people like Estan from the marketing team going there. He has a lot of technical skills but he doesn't know anything about motion design and video editing, right? So I put Estan and Louis working together for a few weeks building this motion design skill, and now Estan can go there, just talk to his agent, and build videos without having a designer sitting next to him. And the same thing with business cards. Same thing with billboards, dude. We created the system for our billboards. Actually, we created the system for all these other companies too because we follow the same grid, the same alignment, everything. So we said, dude, now that this is done, the system is in place, it should be super easy for us to build a tool that can quickly adapt one graphic or one art for a specific billboard to any other location or specs, right? So literally we started with very tiny projects, tiny events, meter boards, maybe screens, and we took those opportunities to actually, instead of just focusing on delivering the assets, focus on how we can make that experience better. We ended up realizing that the best thing to do is to actually build internal tools. And it's not just because it's cheaper or we don't want to pay any other company, because it's easier to actually customize it to your needs, right? And maybe what's working for Linear doesn't work for us. I would say though that most of these apps, if we open source them and share them with the world, people are going to start using them because we have, like, the profile generator. Let's say a person joins Vercel. If we need their profile picture, we upload a photo to our generator, and it gives us an image that has the Vercel aesthetic, the Vercel treatment, the right contrast, the right grayscale balance, and everything. So they all look exactly the same. So we are automating and standardizing processes. We're making things that allow people to upscale themselves 10, 20 times, moving super quick versus a few years ago where the creative team was literally a bottleneck because you needed a designer to go from zero to one. These days, for example, diagrams or changelog images don't need a designer. They go through the tools. That doesn't mean the human factor, the designer factor, doesn't need to be there because we keep iterating on these apps. We keep adding more features. We keep tweaking the styling. One of the best examples is the swag store because the swag store has its own aesthetic, which is super minimal and elegant, but every drop, let's say the Mercedes drop or whatever Vercel drop is coming, has its own aesthetic, its own vibe, its own thing. So the systems we are building are flexible enough so they can actually adapt to their needs. And again, that is the main reason why we're building these tools, and why I would say the creative team's role changed and shifted this much, because we're not just creating ad hoc or standalone assets or solutions. We're actually improving their daily workflow, the way they work. And I love that. I really love that. Especially coming from my background and how we built this company and why we built this company. It's the same mission but internally. Recently, Sharma said that we're entering this era where every person is a software factory, right? Every person, every team is a software factory.

他这么说是因为它就在眼前。我们拥有了超能力去做这件事。你知道吗，这就像，你不觉得这和当年 Flash 发布时很像吗？那时候我也有同样的感觉。我心想：“妈，爸，我有超能力了，我能亲手做这个。”你看，现在人们可以争论说，哦，是智能体干的。哦，是你干的。你一边喝着可乐，一边让你的智能体在构建东西。是啊，老兄。但指挥智能体的是我，测试输出的是我，真正回去说“嘿，我们迭代一下，调整一下”的也是我。所以智能体本身，如果没有人的因素参与，它什么也做不了——至少现在是这样。也许将来，当 AI 和机器人变得更复杂时，但现阶段我们是导演。我们是创意总监，老兄。

And he's saying that because it's right there. We have the superpowers to do it. You know, it's like, don't you feel that it's similar to when Flash was released? Back in the day, I had the same feeling. I was like, 'Mom, dad, I have superpowers. I can do this with my own hands.' Look, right now, people can argue that, oh, it's the agent. Oh, it's you. You're having a Coca-Cola while your agent is building this. Yeah, dude. But it was me who directed the agent. It was me who tested the output. It was me who actually went back and said, 'Hey, let's iterate on this, let's tweak this.' So the agent by itself, if it doesn't have the human factor involved, it will not do anything—at least not at this point. Maybe in the future, when AI and robots get more sophisticated, but at this point we are directors. We are creative directors, dude.

产品的设计工程也在改变和转型。记得我发推文说“我只是个设计师”吗？人们都疯了。他们说：“只是个设计师？你什么意思，只是个设计师？好像这没什么了不起的，对吧？”其实不是。做设计师很棒。我们不再只是设计师了。我们是构建者。我们可以创造任何我们想要的、任何我们想象的东西。我觉得这对我们来说是个绝佳的机会。就像，真的，就像某种意义上的重生。

Design engineering for product is also changing and shifting. Remember when I tweeted this and I said, 'I'm just a designer'? And people went mad. They were like, 'Just a designer? What do you mean just a designer? Like if it's nothing, right?' Well, no. Being a designer is amazing. We are not just a designer anymore. We are builders. We can create whatever we want, whatever we envision. And I feel that it's an incredible opportunity for us. Like literally, it's like to be reborn somehow.

是啊。其实几天前的晚上，我走着走着，看着我的妻子，我说，我感觉就像有人第一次发明了火，然后把它交给了我。这一定就是那种感觉。

Yeah. I walked down a few nights ago, actually, and I just looked at my wife and I was like, I feel like somebody just invented fire for the first time and handed it to me. Like this must be what that feels like.

嗯。

Yeah.

你现在什么都能做了。

You can do anything now.

是的。

Yes.

你曾经有过的或现在有的最疯狂的想法，你知道，你都能把它们造出来。有时候限制是——当然，限制是 token 和钱——但有时候限制是我们自己，对吧？因为一切都在飞速发展。每当我看到有人有了疯狂的想法、不同的想法，我就会想，我本来也能做到，但他们先做了，对吧？这是因为我们每天醒来都在寻找新东西。我们怎么改进这个？我们怎么改进？这是我们的思维方式。我们就是这样的人，你知道吗，我喜欢这样。

The craziest ideas that you had or you have, you know, you can build them. And sometimes the limit is—well, of course, the limit is the tokens and the money—but sometimes the limit is ourselves, right? Because everything is moving so quick, so fast. Whenever I see someone that had a crazy idea, a different idea, I'm like, I could have done that, but they did it first, right? And it's because every single day when we wake up, we're looking for that new thing. How can we improve this? How can we? It's our mindset. It's how we are built, you know, and I love it.

这就是为什么，老兄，再说一次，这就是我在这里的原因。这就是为什么我喜欢和 Kishmo 一起工作，因为我来到办公室，每天都有新东西。有新的疯狂想法，有新功能，有我没听说过的新鲜小事。而且这是改变游戏规则的东西，你知道吗。如果你不在这里，就像——你知道，有人说如果你不在 Twitter 上，你就错过了。我觉得如果我不在办公室，如果我不是每天和团队聊天，和他们待在同一个房间里，即使是视频通话，我也会觉得错过了什么。

That's why, dude, again, that's why I'm here. That's why I love working with Kishmo, because I come to the office and every single day there is a new thing. There is a new crazy idea. There is a new feature. There is a new tiny thing that I haven't heard about it. And it's a game changer, you know. And if you're not here, it's like—you know, some people say that if you were not on Twitter, you missed it. I feel that if I'm not here in the office, if I'm not every day chatting with the team, being in the same room with them, even if it's a video call, I feel that I'm missing something.

在过去的 10 年里，你见过这么多才华横溢的设计师，他们有着不同的技能组合。你提到了很多名字，我相信很多听众可能都在 Twitter 上关注他们，对吧？比如我们能一口气说出 Vercel 团队的很多人。我的问题是，这些年来，当你看到所有这些设计师在这个岗位上，你认为有哪些主要特质塑造了这种文化，同时也让个人在像 Vercel 这样的地方茁壮成长？

Over the course of like 10 years, you've seen so many incredibly talented designers come through, different skill sets. You talk about a lot of names that I'm sure a lot of people listening to this, they probably follow them on Twitter, right? Like we can rattle off a lot of the Vercel team. And I guess my question is, over the years, when you've seen all these designers in this role, what are some of the dominant traits that you think shape the culture but also allow for that individual to thrive at a place like Vercel?

这是个好问题。我想说，首先，我们总是让他们做自己的事，把他们的魔力带到 Vercel。Vercel 不是那种会找一个非常有才华的动态设计师，然后告诉他们“嘿，不，我们就是这么做的”的地方。我们让他们自由发挥。我们让他们带来他们的知识。我特别提到这个动态设计师，因为我们最近雇佣了他，路易斯，他来自 Pentagram。你知道，你可以想象他们是怎么工作的，怎么运作的，对吧？一切都非常结构化，因为它是一台机器。他们有团队，有指标。他们很清楚如何交接文件，项目如何组织。然后他来到了这个混乱的、创业模式的地方。他说的第一句话是：“Evil，我们需要整理一下。我们需要一个品牌。我们需要品牌指南。我们需要这个那个。”我当时想，天哪，这太完美了。因为在过去的 10 年里，我们一直在赶着发布东西，由于速度，由于事物的变化和转变，我们实际上从来没有时间整理一本品牌手册。我们所说的品牌手册，对吧？有正确的指南、正确的规格等等。我说：“兄弟，别觉得不好。实际上，这是你的机会，把你所有的知识、技能或魔力都带进来，拥有这个项目。”

That's a great question. And I would say, first of all, we always let them do their thing and bring their magic to Vercel. Vercel is not a place that is going to look for an incredibly talented motion designer and then we're going to tell them, 'Hey, no, this is the way we do it.' We let them cook. We let them bring their knowledge. I'm talking about this motion designer specifically because we recently hired him, and Louis, he comes from Pentagram. You know, you can imagine how they work, how they operate, right? Everything is so structured because it's a machine. They have their teams, they have their metrics. They know exactly how to hand off the files, how the projects are organized. And he came to this chaos, this startup mode thing. And the first thing he said is, 'Evil, we need to organize this. We need a brand. We need brand guidelines. We need this and that.' And I was like, man, this is perfect. Because over this 10 years, we had to ship stuff, and because of the speed, because of how things were changing and shifting, we never had actually time to put together a brand book. What we know as a brand book, right? With the right guidelines, the right specs and everything. And I said, 'Man, don't feel bad. Actually, this is your opportunity to bring all your knowledge or your skills or your magic and own this project.'

我相信同样的事情也发生在 RO 身上，比如。他带来了所有这些动画和交互知识，他有机会把它应用到仪表盘上，应用到我们的博客上，应用到我们做的某些视频公告上。我觉得我们在 Vercel 这里做对的事情，就是让人们施展他们的魔力。带来他们的东西，然后去做。在阿根廷，我们曾经——马拉多纳，我们著名的足球运动员，曾经说过，有人抓住了他的腿，阻止了他的职业生涯。我们在 Vercel 不会那样做。我们让他们飞翔。我们让他们自由发挥。而且总有时间说：“嘿，我觉得这太疯狂了。也许不适合这次发布。我们可以分阶段来做。”总有办法真正实现它或达到目标。但我认为，剪断他们的翅膀，或者不让他们飞得足够高，这不是好事。Vercel 是一个非常多元、非常多样化的团队，我想向他们所有人学习。

And I believe that it's the same thing that happens to RO, for example. He brings all this animations and interaction knowledge, and he had the chance to apply it to the dashboard, apply it to our blog, apply it to certain video announcements that we did. I feel that what we do properly here at Vercel is letting people do their magic. Bring their thing and do it. In Argentina, we used to—Maradona, our famous soccer player, used to say that someone caught his legs when they stopped his career somehow. We don't do that at Vercel. We let them fly. We let them cook. And there's always time to say, 'Hey, I think it's too crazy. Maybe not for this release. We can do it in different phases.' There's always a way to actually achieve it or get there. But I don't think that cutting their wings or not letting them fly enough or high enough is a good thing. Vercel is a very versatile and very diverse team, and I wanted to learn from all of them.

这实际上是主要原因。你知道，当 Daniel 加入时，他是一个非常有创意的人——他就是一个非常有创意的人，而且他用 AI 来赋能自己。他给我们头脑风暴会议带来了很多图片，他不是等着会议开始才构思想法——他带着很多新想法来开会。而且这不仅仅是去 Pinterest 上找一些图片，把它们放在 Figma 的情绪板页面里，就这样。不，他实际上是在创造他的情绪板。

That's actually the main reason. You know, when Daniel joined, he was such a creative—he is such a creative person, and he's using AI to empower himself. And he brings a lot of images to our brainstorming session that he—instead of waiting for the session to actually start building ideas—he comes to the sessions with a lot of new ideas. And this is not just going to Pinterest and pulling some images from there, putting it in a mood board page in Figma, that's it. No, he actually creates his mood board.

他用 AI 构建，他用 AI 构建他的图像、他的视频，你知道，每当他需要传达一个信息或一个概念时，他就用他的超能力去做。而我们允许人们这样做，你知道。我认为这是我们能做的最好的事情。尤其是如果你在招聘这类人的话，你知道。昨天我们在聊这个。我不太喜欢做的事情之一就是招聘明星，很难给他们反馈。很难把他们加进来，让他们成为更大机器的一部分。我们的另一个价值观是“同一个团队”，你知道。所以这是其中之一。“迭代至卓越”是另一个，“同一个团队”也是。这意义重大，兄弟。成为同一个团队的一部分，能够互相学习一切，从动画到人们彼此交谈的方式，这非常宝贵，非常重要，以至于即使你招了一个明星，对我来说，看着他们也很美好。我不会去说，嘿，你应该这样表现；而是让我们看看他们做什么，能做什么，能给团队带来什么。然后总有时间跟人聊，说，嘿，这有点过了。这很难，兄弟。这很难。而且我们看到越来越多的明星，对吧？所以真的很难保持低调，确保这又是一个团队工作，不是单打独斗，因为要做单打独斗的工作，你就自己做。你建立自己的东西，自己的网站。我们有很多人在这样做。他们有他们的副业，他们建立自己的东西。但说到我们在 Vercel 做的工作，我们非常强调作为一个团队一起做，并建立这种文化。过去，只有工程师和设计师在享受乐趣，公司其他人都在做普通工作。现在每个人都在构建，带来一个兔子，如果我们这样做呢？GTM 团队的人，你知道，销售，或者如果我们做这个兔子呢？我们能构建这个吗？我就说，是的，让我们试试，让我们试一试。

He built with AI, he builds with AI his images, his videos, you know, whenever he needs to convey a message or a concept, he uses his superpowers to do it. And we allow people to do that, you know. I think that's the best thing we can do. Especially if you're hiring this type of people somehow, you know. And yesterday we were having this conversation. One of the things that I don't love doing is hiring stars; it's hard to give them feedback. It's hard to add them and make them part of a bigger machine. One of the other values that we have is same team, you know. So it is one of them. Iterate to greatness. Same team is another one. That means a lot, dude. To be part of the same team, to be able to learn from each other everything from animations to the way that people talk to each other, it is so valuable, so important that even when you hire a star, for me it's beautiful to see them. I don't tend to go and say, hey, this is how you should behave; it's just let's see what they do, what they can do, and what they can bring to the team. And then there is always time to chat with people and say, hey, this was too much. It's hard, man. It's hard. And we're seeing more and more stars, right? So it's really hard to keep it low profile, to make sure that again this is a team job, that this is not a solo, because to do solo work, you just do it by yourself. You build your own thing, your own website. And we have a lot of people that are doing that. They have their side projects, they build their own things. But when it comes to the work that we're doing at Vercel, we made a lot of emphasis on doing it together as a team and building this culture. Back in the day, only the engineers and designers were having fun, and the rest of the company were just doing normal work. And now everybody is like building, bringing a rabbit, what if we do this? People from the GTM team, you know, sales, or what if we do this rabbit? Can we build this? And I'm like, yes, let's try, let's give it a try.

我不知道，你关于内部工具的所有观点都在我脑子里回响，因为其中很多都可以转化为工具，对吧？比如，创意想法长期以来都是面向用户的产品功能；那是我们推崇的东西。老实说，所有内部工具都像是，即使你几年前在某人简历上看到什么，就像，是的，我过去四年都在做内部工具。但现在，天哪，对内部工具的投资水平正在飙升，这很有道理。这就像你如何在 NORC 内部扩展每个人的专业知识。

I don't know, all your points on internal tools are rattling around in my brain because so much of that can translate into a tool, right? Like the creative ideas for so long were user-facing product features; that was the stuff we put on the pedestal. And honestly, everything internal tools was like, even if you saw something on somebody's resume a couple years ago, it's like, yeah, I spent the last four years working on internal tools. But now, my gosh, the level of investment in internal tools is skyrocketing, and it makes sense. It's like how you scale everybody's expertise inside of NORC.

过去我在 Viacom 的时候，我们有自己的内部工具来处理用户，用户如何登录系统。几年后，我加入了 Auth0。想象一下，如果当时我有 Auth0，你知道，我们的生活就会轻松得多。而现在，正如你所说，我们回到构建内部工具，我们有了超能力。一个智能体就像一个工程师和设计师团队，对吧？所以情况有点不同，我认为我们解锁人们的方式和速度，与那些日子无法相比。我觉得过去公司做内部工具是为了避免招聘或购买已经存在的产品。如今，我觉得原因不同了。不是钱的问题，因为实际上有些人花更多的钱去构建错误的工具，而不是购买现成的产品。我觉得是目的、意图、那个工具的目标。事实是，我们很容易看到它，有想法并看到它在那里工作，非常快，基本上没有等待时间，除了智能体在构建它的时候。我们会看到很多疯狂的工具，人们会开始开源它们，并与世界分享，因为如果你为你的团队解决了一个问题，那可能意味着你将为其他人解决同样的问题或其他问题。这就是我一直告诉 Paps 的，尤其是 Pablo Stanley：我们为营销团队构建的工具，以及为了赋能和解锁这些团队，最终我们会发布它们，我们可以以创意团队或创意实验室团队的名义发布，诸如此类。尤其是当它来自硅谷公司如 Vercel、Linear、Work OS 时，人们倾向于欣赏这种努力并去尝试。但这并不意味着我们作为个人不允许实际构建内部工具并发布它们。这让我想到了，它不是工具，但让我想到了 Lifeline，这是我最近发布的东西。我这样做是为了，我只是想构建一些东西，用在我的网站上，以突出或展示我工作的影响。然后我意识到，我不仅可以展示我多年来所做的工作，还可以展示生活事件，比如我的孩子出生时，我遇到我妻子时，我遇到所有这些名人或导师时。我意识到，伙计，我想我可以做一些可以开源的东西，人们可以实际重用。这就是我构建 Lifeline 的地方。我花了两天时间与我的智能体合作，与我们的一些工程师反复沟通，问他们开源或公开的最佳方式是什么。我记得和 Shadien 聊天，他说，伙计，如果你给这个添加媒体，它会爆发的，因为我可以把它用于变更日志，我可以把它用于博客文章，我可以用它来表示任何东西。然后有人问我，嘿，我实际上可以展示我公司的历史。嘿，我可以展示我如何遇到我的妻子。他们把它用于许多不同的网站和应用等等。我就说，我喜欢这个，这就是我喜欢的。这就是原因，兄弟。我喜欢构建一些东西，把它放到那里，看看人们能用它做什么。我觉得那是我们这份工作中最美好的感觉之一。

Back in the day when I was at Viacom, we used to have our own internal tool to handle users, how users got login into the systems. And a few years after that, I joined Auth0. Imagine if I would have had Auth0 back in the day, you know, our life would be so much easier. And the fact that now we went back, as you said, to build internal tools, we have superpowers. One agent is like a team of engineers and designers, right? So it is a little bit different, and I think that the way and the speed that we're unblocking people, it just cannot be compared to those days. I feel that companies in the past made internal tools to avoid hiring or licensing products that already exist or existed. These days, I feel the reason is different. It's not money; money is not the problem because they actually, some people are paying more money to build the wrong tools rather than hiring an existing product. I feel it's the purpose, the intention, the goal of that tool. The fact that it's so easy for us to see it, to have the idea and see it there working, it's so quick, there's no waiting time basically more than just the agent while it's building it. We're going to see a lot of crazy tools, and people are going to start open sourcing them and sharing them with the world, because if you solve a problem for your team, that probably means that you're going to solve the same problem or other problems for other people. And this is what I keep telling Paps, especially Pablo Stanley: the tools that we're building for the marketing team and to enable and unblock these teams, eventually we're going to release them, and we can release them under the creative team or the creative labs team, something like that. And especially when it comes from Silicon Valley companies like Vercel, Linear, Work OS, people tend to appreciate the effort and go give it a try. But that doesn't mean that we as individuals are not allowed to actually build internal tools and release them. And that takes me to, it's not a tool, but it takes me to Lifeline, which is something that I released recently. And I did it for the sake of, I just want to build something that I'm going to use on my website to highlight or showcase the impact of my work. And then I realized, well, I can not only showcase the work I've done over the years, but also life events, like when my kids were born, when I met my wife, when I met all these famous people or mentors. And I realized, man, I think I can do something that could be open source and people can actually reuse it. And that's where I built Lifeline. It took me a couple of days to work with my agent, go back and forth with some of our engineers to ask them what's the best way to open source this or make it public. And I remember chatting with Shadien; he's like, man, if you add media to this, this is going to blow up because I can use it for change logs, I can use it for blog posts, I can use it to represent anything. And then someone asked me, hey, I can actually showcase the history of my company. Hey, I can showcase how I met my wife. And they're using it for so many different websites and apps and stuff. And I'm like, I love this, this is what I love. This is the reason, dude. I love building something, putting it out there, and seeing what people can do with it. I feel that that is one of the most beautiful feelings from this job that we do.

你的旅程在很多方面都令人鼓舞，而且至少对我来说，它植根于那个 12 岁就养家糊口的孩子。和你聊过之后，我知道这对现在的你和你的孩子们来说有多重要。也许在我结束之前，我想给你一个机会，稍微回顾一下大局和这段旅程。我想知道，有没有什么我们还没谈到的东西，当你回顾你在 Vercel 的影响时，你会特别自豪，或者某一部分 DNA，或者某个你能看到自己印记的领域，让你觉得：‘是的，归根结底，这是 Vercel，但在某种程度上，这仍然是我的心血结晶。’

Your journey is so inspiring in so many ways, and the fact that, at least for me, it's rooted in this 12-year-old kid who's providing for his family. And in having talked with you, I know how big a part that is now, with your kids. Maybe before I go, I want to give you the opportunity to reflect on the big picture and the journey a little bit. I'm wondering if there's something we haven't touched on that, when you look at your impact at Vercel, you're particularly proud of, or a piece of the DNA, or an area where you can see your fingerprint, where you're just like, 'Yeah, at the end of the day, this is Vercel, but this is still my baby in some shape or form.'

有很多微小的时刻，让我为在 Vercel 的时光以及我们一起打造的一切感到无比自豪。但当你身处一个房间，看到其他人捍卫或说：‘嘿，我不会在这里用那么多颜色。嘿，我会让这更简约。’而这么多年后，说这话的不是我。我可以说，我培养了很多品牌守护者。

There are a lot of tiny moments where I felt incredibly proud of my time at Vercel and all the things that we built together. But to be in a room seeing other people defending or saying, 'Hey, I wouldn't use that much color here. Hey, I would make this more minimal.' And it's not me saying it after all these years. I can say that I built so many brand keepers.

哦，我喜欢这个说法。

Oh, I love that.

这太不可思议了，而那是我们工作的成果。但看到他们有时把我当成那个‘坏人’，说：‘嘿，这个不能发出去。这不是 Vercel 的风格。嘿，这不够单色。’有机会看到这些人，不仅是设计师、销售，还有其他领域的人，说：‘嘿，这感觉不像 Vercel。不够暗。’或者说：‘嘿，颜色太多了。’对我来说，这太棒了。所以我认为我就在这家公司的 DNA 里。我不是为了这个才这么做的。这是自然而然的，但感觉很好，我为此感到非常自豪。很多人可以说：‘嘿，你帮助建立了这个。’但我觉得这是一个整体。不是那些具体的项目或时刻，而是整体，伙计。去参加一个活动，看到人们，不仅是 Vercel 的员工，还有客户和与会者，都穿黑色来参加这些活动。这意义重大。顺便说一下，有件事我没提过：当我加入这家公司时，我们中没有人，只有我一个人穿黑色。Guillermo 是个卷发家伙，穿着不像普通硅谷风格。不是黑色，完全不是。我不知道我是怎么做到的，但我慢慢改变了他们的想法，他们开始穿得像我。所以这是我的风格，我的标志。它伴随着我。

It's just insane, and that was the result of our work, but them seeing me being that bad guy sometimes and saying, 'Hey, this cannot go out. This is not speaking Vercel. Hey, this is not monochrome enough.' Having the chance to see these other people, not only designers, salespeople, people from other areas, saying, 'Hey, this doesn't feel Vercel. It's not dark enough,' or people saying, 'Hey, too much color.' For me, it's incredible. So I think that I am in the DNA of this company. I didn't do it because of that. It was natural and organic, but it feels great, and I feel so proud of it. A lot of people could say, 'Hey, you helped build this,' but I feel that it's a whole thing. It's not those specific projects or moments. It's a whole thing, man. Going to an event and seeing that people, not only Vercelians, but customers and attendees, they dress in black to go to these events. It means a lot. And by the way, something I didn't mention is that when I joined this company, none of us, only me, was dressed in black. Guillermo was this curly-haired guy with no regular or normal Silicon Valley clothing. It was not black. I have no idea how I did it, but I slowly changed their mind, and they started dressing like me. So this is my vibe, my signature. It comes with me.

你谈到了品牌守护者，但我认为可以毫不夸张地说，这远远超出了 Vercel 的范围。你激励了世界各地很多设计师，你的美学已经渗透到设计文化的方方面面。所以我非常感谢你今天来分享一些故事。你的小头像已经成为整个行业文化中标志性的一部分，能和你聊一会儿并问你一些问题，是我的荣幸。所以我很感激。

You talked about brand keepers, but I think it's safe to say that it extends far beyond Vercel, too. You've inspired a lot of designers all around the world, and your aesthetic has permeated so much of design culture. So I really appreciate you coming on today and sharing a little bit about the story. Your little avatar has become such an iconic part of the broader industry culture that it's an honor to get to hang out a little bit and ask you some questions. So I appreciate that.

非常感谢你给我这个机会，希望我们很快再见。

Thank you so much for this opportunity, and hopefully we'll see you soon.