Creative Conviction

sparking conversations around creativity, capital, and ai. by @libbiefrost & @thisisrayouf

[Libbie Frost @Libbiefrost]

Jacob Thornton (@fat) is the founder of Pierre Computer Company (@pierrecomputer).

Pierre provides the building blocks of the computers that agents will use to do work. But Pierre is as much a brand and culture project as an infrastructure one. Jacob believes brand is the most important thing you can be doing in 2026, and his references run from MTV and skateboard brands to Godard films and the magazine racks at sf Heath newsstand.

In this interview, we talked about why MVP culture is cringe, how to find and hire obsessives, why the best creative work at Pierre starts in iMessage threads, and the real reason the company is named Pierre… sort of.

Read the full interview "Virtual computers for agents, chrome blobs, and MTV" linked in the thread.

cc @thisisrayouf

[Rayouf @thisisrayouf]

There is a good chance that your favorite designer’s favorite designer is @adamho. It was a pleasure interviewing Adam for @creativecpress

Adam thinks about design the way he thinks about music. He treats his body of work like a discography, hunting for a signature sound while trying something new with every release. His vocabulary is built from circle and square primitives, and his instincts are shaped by the fine art world and graphic design books. We chatted about his path to design, running his studio and transition to leading @fal design team.

Article in thread

[Rayouf @thisisrayouf]

Most AI is trying to be better than humans. @simile_ai is trying to simulate them (imperfections included.)

We sat down with @mihikapoor, Head of Product at Simile and an all-around design legend (she’s the reason FigJam has music and Figma Slides exists), to answer this and many more questions about building as a designer.

@creativecpress interview in thread :)

[Libbie Frost @Libbiefrost]

Mihika Kapoor (@mihikapoor) has a habit of making her ideas come to life.

Founding a national design conference as a student, incubating FigJam and Figma Slides from internal hackathons, starting her own company... and most recently joining Simile (@simile_ai) as Head of Product.

Simile simulates human behavior so companies can hear from the people their decisions affect. Or as Mihika puts it, “We see our work as being the voice of these humans in the rooms they are otherwise not in.”

We talk about why they add "show your work" to "simplify" as a core design principle, building the brand around the word human, and landing on a pixel game town aesthetic for an early stage company selling to F100 buyers.

Read more from our latest guest on Creative Conviction - full interview in the thread!

cc @thisisrayouf

[Rayouf @thisisrayouf]

Liz Dorman owns more than a hundred old phones. There is a 1970s Bell telephone, Siemens handsets that were released in seasonal collections like clothing, and her prized piece: a hot pink Motorola Razr signed by Paris Hilton. To Dorman, the collection is evidence that technology used to be weird, expressive, and fun, and she believes it can be again. So, she founded @eraworldsto to build what she calls "couture computing."

It was so much fun talking to @lizwandersworld for @creativecpress, whose vision of what hardware should be is rooted in delight and individuality. Read the full interview at the link in the thread.

cc @Libbiefrost

[Libbie Frost @Libbiefrost]

Colin Daymond Hanna (@colindaymond) literally climbed a mountainside in the Austrian Alps to take this interview with us. It felt fitting - Colin describes himself as a child of the earth.

Chapter by chapter, life showed him that software can be a force for good - if it's built transparently, with the good of the user in mind. Earendil, which he co-founded with Armin (@mitsuhiko) and creates the beloved tools Pi (@badlogicgames) and Lefos, is that belief turned into a company.

We talked about the seven principles they wrote before building anything, why you should own your harness, and why every small detail - down to the waves coded on the landing page and a hand-drawn elven boat logo - traces back to one ethos: light in the darkness.

cc @thisisrayouf

[Creative Conviction @creativecpress]

@JLo Read the full interview on our website (https://t.co/VKjWY99Jr7) or substack (https://t.co/ms6cMXx8lF)

[Creative Conviction @creativecpress]

Noah Kerner is a New Yorker who started Give Kids Art, an art nonprofit for underserved children, used to DJ for celebs like @JLo, wrote a book called Chasing Cool about what makes things magnetic, and is the CEO of Acorns, a financial wellness app with millions of customers...

[Creative Conviction @creativecpress]

@JLo In this interview, he joins us to discuss his convictions beneath it all - Every child is born an artist. We all dream. Nothing profound comes from following the data. And the question that keeps creativity alive is "why." What kills it - “just cuz.”

[Diego Segura @messybirkin]

had some visitors at the office recently ( @thisisrayouf and @Libbiefrost ) who happened also to let me talk into a microphone for a while!

interview up, along with some designers i really admire, on https://t.co/zn3Dcv1Cww

[Libbie Frost @Libbiefrost]

if someone pitches you on trash can robotics, this might be your sign.

also - new interview drop with diego, full link in thread!

[Rayouf @thisisrayouf]

Diego Segura (@messybirkin), founder of the design studio, Family Office (https://t.co/0xpvOD5DC7) joins us as the next guest for @creativecpress . He broke into design as a teenage dropout and became the youngest designer at COLLINS

We paid him a visit at his sun-drenched Tribeca studio, lined with shelves of books covering everything from geopolitics to money markets to, of course, design. The range of titles is a useful introduction to how Diego sees the world, and it goes some way toward explaining Terms-Eccles, his platform covering capital and culture, which also hosts an annual Tax Day party. Read the full interview in the thread.

cc @Libbiefrost

[Creative Conviction @creativecpress]

Read the full interview on our website: https://t.co/f0IqYXjEU2

[Creative Conviction @creativecpress]

Diego Segura (@messybirkin), founder of the design studio, Family Office (https://t.co/JuCfAPVqHA), joins us as the next guest for Creative Conviction. He broke into design as a teenage dropout, and became the youngest designer at COLLINS.

[Libbie Frost @Libbiefrost]

im excited to see scaling tech companies hiring for creative directors!! here's a short list hiring now: https://t.co/dahd18BWTZ

[Rayouf @thisisrayouf]

A core design decision early for @tolanworld was figuring out how to get around models that weren’t up to date on the world. The clever insight by creative director @lucas_zanotto was to have this little AI friend assume the visual identity of an alien, making its lack of knowledge feel endearing rather than like a product flaw

read more in thread 🧵

[Libbie Frost @Libbiefrost]

why a little alien is a good friend!

read our latest interview on creative conviction with Quinten Farmer (@quintendf), founder and ceo of Tolan (@tolanworld).

we trace the creative decisions behind Tolan - betting on voice early, treating memory as its own primitive, prototyping with artists, awful AI poetry, a 1970s social theory, and lessons from busy dinner tables.

full interview in the thread. cc @thisisrayouf

[Rayouf @thisisrayouf]

We sat down with @PaulJun_ , Creative Director of Brand at @tryramp, for a conversation on the future of brand design: how brand and product are converging, how AI enables small teams to go from story to software and what it means to make brand programmable.

cc @Libbiefrost

[Libbie Frost @Libbiefrost]

ben hylak (@benhylak) and zubin koticha (@snarkyzk), two of the three co-founders of raindrop (@raindrop_ai), join us as the next guests in our series spotlighting creative leaders building in AI.

being honest with themselves is the culture that shapes every creative call they make. it is why they decided to build where they are also the user, and why one of the most creative things at raindrop is the nouns themselves. an entirely new problem set needs an entirely new vocabulary - stumbles, issues, experiments - kept consistent from the UI to the SDK to the DB, both for humans and for agents. get the nouns right and the whole platform becomes comprehensible.

link to full interview in the thread. cc @alexisgauba, @thisisrayouf

[Libbie Frost @Libbiefrost]

nir zicherman (@NirZicherman), co-founder and ceo of Oboe, joins us as the next guest in our series spotlighting creative leaders building in AI.

nir taught himself to program in law school, co-founded Anchor, sold it to Spotify, and went on to build the audiobooks business there (thank you nir, i use it every day). now he’s building Oboe, a consumer learning platform rooted in the belief that billions of people already use the internet to learn, and yet none of the tools they reach for were built to teach them.

Oboe stands out as one of the rare consumer AI products going broad and global rather than narrow, built by a founder building for the ambitious, long term.

link to full interview in the thread.