Anthony

Design leader working across web, brand, and product. Always experimenting. Always building.

[Anthony @amfonte]

LAUNCH DAY🚀

I've been wanting to carve out a little corner of the internet to share design experiments.

Welcome to the Sandbox. A space (and creative outlet) to explore design, learn new tools and techniques, and push myself to make great work.

Dev by @emielvbb
Link in bio.

[Anthony @amfonte]

@saintdsgn Crazy that this is all done through prompt. Proves once again that designers that know how to communicate and articulate design decisions well don’t produce slop.

[Anthony @amfonte]

@mrbenjaminhoppe Haha very fitting.

[Anthony @amfonte]

@almmaasoglu Haha is this guy's post ironic? That's so awful.

[xavier (jack) @KMkota0]

this app does not exist

[Anthony @amfonte]

@xcyynical She's a beaut.

[Karri Saarinen @karrisaarinen]

The fallacy of this is that more creates more. More hours, more hiring, more something.

And it is true in a sense. If you put in more work, more work will happen. But I think for most startups, the leverage is really in how differently you approach the problem, how well you cultivate your team, and the strategy.

Any large company can outspend you on hours. They have thousands or tens of thousands more people, spending more hours. If hours worked were the metric, every large company and government organization would always win and do the best work. More hours, better output.

This thinking is often representative of younger founders, where the startup becomes their identity and life. They have a hard time doing anything else, and cannot understand that your work is not the person that is you. But activities outside of work can grow you as a person too and make you do better work.

I’ve never worked this way. As a designer, I always saw the need to take a step back, to take a break. At times, I might work 12 hours or 16 hours, or whatever amount was needed, but it wasn’t the norm. You just can't grind design, you need inspiration. But taking that step away from the work, would give me more perspective, inspiration and I could approach the problem differently or I could just see the solution.

Grinding is never good for any creative problem, and startups or creating new products are often mostly about creative problem solving. Grinding works ok for email jobs, or where you just executing on very clear playbook.

With Linear, we’ve never worked this way. We work reasonable hours, 5 days a week. All of us founders have families. Many of our employees have families. I personally stop every evening, spend time with the family, cook dinner for the family, eat dinner together, and focus on things outside of work. Sometimes I work in the late evenings or weekends, but to me the pride is that I don’t need to. Company should be succesful without it.

My goal is to build a company that is sustainable in the long term, and doesn’t require heroics or personal sacrifices every single day.

There are times when our team is heroic. Launches, incidents, some other work that just needs to be done. They will work late into the night because they know it is the right thing. But we don’t require that every day or every week, and the more this happens, the more I think it is a failure of our company and leadership. The team and the leaders should always keep a reserve to use when something is needed.

Our thinking was also that quality, which we value, doesn’t emerge from working more or stressing people more. It emerges when you create the conditions for it to emerge. Often it is the appreciation, space, time, and how the person feels. A person who is rested will do better work.

I wouldn’t attribute much of our success to working a lot. The success came from having clear thinking, ideas, and focus to do the right things.

I sometimes wish we could move the culture more toward a Zen master.

Real mastery is not exerting the most effort. It is achieving the outcome with the least necessary effort.

[Anthony @amfonte]

@haaarshsingh @ryry__mimi @column Re-read your previous post. Words matter. Good luck bud.

[Anthony @amfonte]

@haaarshsingh @ryry__mimi @column Racist bots sent by me? That’s a first. Dude, the double down is not a good look. Take the L, do better next time. ✌️

[Anthony @amfonte]

@haaarshsingh @ryry__mimi @column If you can’t see the error in your ways and how this could hurt your reputation, ok, I guess.

Just stop crying foul. The fact the OG creator found this proves what I said about the industry being small. Don’t be known as the person that rips off others, regardless of gain.

[Anthony @amfonte]

@haaarshsingh @ryry__mimi @column I’m not being rude, this is a learning opportunity. You don’t post someone else’s work for your own benefit and not attribute them. It’s fine to copy work in order to learn, just do it the right way.

This industry is very small and things like this will follow you.

[Anthony @amfonte]

@haaarshsingh @ryry__mimi @column Try coming up with your own idea next time. You’ll grow as a designer way more that way.

[Anthony @amfonte]

@navaneethvenu Good callout, I’ll make sure of that, too.

[Anthony @amfonte]

This bug has been in Figma for years and it drives me up the wall.

Changing the size of the nested icon in the main component resizes it as expected. But if I expose the size property of the nested icon, it doesn't resize the instance. Anyone know a workaround?

[Anthony @amfonte]

@navaneethvenu I need to confirm when I’m back at my laptop, but I’m 98% positive this is how my component is structured (auto layout, hug hug on the icon)

[Anthony @amfonte]

@emblemo Yup. https://t.co/y2ZkJa14hF

[Anthony @amfonte]

@designcoursecom Agreed. I’ve had multiple trad product designers (less visual focused) say to me “there’s no way I could have thought of that/made that.”

I put in the 10,000 hours to earn that praise.

[Anthony @amfonte]

@whitesox God forbid we give him the nod over Acuña. Bringing him up to pinch hit is a horrible entry into the bigs.

[Anthony @amfonte]

@mikekus @webexpo It’s great to see someone still taking the time to create digital illustrations by hand. You don’t see that much anymore.

[Anthony @amfonte]

👋 Hello to all the new followers because of this post!

For anyone looking to work with a designer that's AI-native and cares about making your product stand out, hit me up!

Available for full-time or contract.

DMs are open ✉️

[Anthony @amfonte]

@designcoursecom Agreed. I’ve had multiple trad product designers (less visual focused) say to me “there’s no way I could have thought of that/made that.”

I put in the 10,000 hours to earn that praise.