Kim

visual storyteller + illustrator — [email protected]

[Kim @kimwouters]

so many times magic happens when you just take the leap and reach out to someone..

[Jonas @jonasleupe]

Know how they tell you to never meet your heroes?

Been doing the exact opposite this year, and got to work with some of the most creative experts in the field (@danmall & @joeyabanks, looking at you guys).

Beyond proud to add @BeccaFarsace to that list.

Over the last couple of months, Becca and I worked extensively on rebranding the channel, creating merch and everything in-between.

Becca's been such a blessing to work with, and I can't wait for what the future 'll holds. But if it looks anything near to what this year looked like, I'm all in for in.

Gosh, you should see me smiling while I’m composing this.

[Jonas @jonasleupe]

Read the full interview, here: https://t.co/lOpbARIJ2R

[Puppies & Positivity @Puppieslover]

I will pay anything to have him on my flight

[Kim @kimwouters]

Wij hebben hier 6 bananendozen VOL unieke Communication Arts magazines en Print graphic design magazines.

Pareltjes om inspiratie op te doen en ideaal voor in elke design omgeving.

‘T zijn eigenlijk echt collector items. Weg wegens plaatsgebrek.

Roep effe bij interesse!

[Kim @kimwouters]

@drewwilson @valiocon 🎉❤️ a great mix of enthousiasm and nostalgia

[Drew Wilson @drewwilson]

🎟️ FREE TICKETS! 🎟️
Come hang @valiocon (Sep 11-14) for everyone's favorite creative tech conference!

I'm giving away TWO FULL TICKETS this week ($1,399 each)!

→ To enter: Just repost this post
→ Winners announced: Friday, May 23
→ Must book your resort stay using Valio Con's deep discount
→ Hurry: Early bird pricing ends in 10 days ($300 savings)

Who's in? 🏄‍♂️🧑‍💻

[Kim @kimwouters]

@drewwilson @stripe @clerk Joooooo noooo! You were there. I was at config! Would’ve loved to say hi! :) anyway: hi Drew!!

[Kim @kimwouters]

@flodeskinc unable to login this morning? Help!!

[Jonas @jonasleupe]

AI'm Having Thoughts

A few days ago, I was deep into No Bullshit Strategy by @smithesq. One of those books that doesn’t just inform—it sparks something. Mid-sentence, an idea lit up in my mind. I needed to capture it before it faded.

I glanced at my desk, noticing my open notebook, scattered with other thoughts. Grabbing a pen would have been the simplest option. But then I hesitated. How many times had I scribbled something down only to forget which notebook it was in? How often had I flipped through pages, knowing a thought was there but unable to find it?

Highlighting on a Kindle would have been another option. In a way, that would mean my Kindle becomes part of my mind—a digital extension of my memory. But here’s the issue: there’s no straightforward way to pull all those highlights together into something useful. Maybe there’s a hidden CSV export buried in the settings, but even if it exists, there’s no guarantee that whatever great future tool that might handle my thoughts can read the format. Instead of making my thoughts more accessible, they became fragmented, locked into systems that don’t talk to each other. And once again, my thoughts wouldn’t really be mine—they’d be stuck in yet another walled garden.

So, I did what seemed like the best choice: I reached for my phone and opened my notes app. Easy to type, easy to search, always with me. It felt like the perfect solution. But as I typed, another thought crept in—what if my AI assistant could remember this for me? Not just store the note, but actually connect it to other ideas I’d saved, remind me when relevant, help me build on it over time?

That’s when something clicked. Why not use any of today’s AI solutions? ChatGPT, Claude, Raycast—tools that already exist, ready to store and structure my thoughts. Typing out a passing thought, and then, weeks later, having an AI remind me of it at the perfect moment. Not just storing notes, but surfacing forgotten ideas, making connections I hadn’t noticed, and suggesting ways to expand on them. It would be like having a second brain—one that actually works with me, helping me refine and develop ideas over time.

But as exciting as that sounds, there’s a catch. All of this would come at a cost—not just in terms of money, but in control. My thoughts would once again become part of someone’s business model. They’d be taken hostage, 'forgotten' (as if anything truly disappears in the digital age) the moment I stop paying for the service. A paywall separating me from my own ideas, reducing my reflections to mere rented space in a system designed to profit off my thinking.

And don’t get me wrong—I'm completely fine with paying for a service. But I don’t like being held hostage by one. My ideas, my reflections shouldn’t be part of someone else’s business model, held ransom by a subscription fee.

I put my phone down, and the whole thing reminded me of an old box of journals I found while moving last summer. Years of scribbles, ideas, half-baked concepts. Some had turned into real projects. Others had just sat there, waiting for me to rediscover them. But at least they were mine. I could pick them up, flip through them, revisit old thoughts without asking anyone for permission.

But my digital notes? They aren't really mine. Take Google Keep, for example. Plenty of people used it to store their thoughts, only to wake up one day to find Google shutting it down, giving them 30 days to copy and paste their 'keeps' elsewhere. If only those notes were stored in an easily exportable format, moving them wouldn’t have been a hassle.

I’d love to share my thoughts with ChatGPT, but what happens when Claude launches a more advanced AI? Or when some startup finally builds something like Samantha from the movie Her? The cycle repeats: my ideas, locked into yet another system, waiting for the day I might need to rush to save them.

So what now? Maybe the answer is simpler than it seems. What if we just agreed on a universal format—something as straightforward as Markdown? A format that any AI, any tool, could read and understand. A simple, open way to store and transfer thoughts, without worrying about paywalls or platform lock-in. This is bigger than convenience—it’s about the future of thinking itself. As AI becomes more intertwined with how we process, remember, and build on ideas, we have to ask: who owns our thoughts? Will we be free to move them between different AI tools, or will we be locked into a single ecosystem, unable to take our knowledge with us?

The more I think about it, the more obvious it becomes—we need a decentralized way to handle this. A system where thoughts aren’t tied to one AI provider, but remain ours, accessible across platforms, eras, and innovations. We’re used to owning our books, our notebooks, our thoughts. Why should digital notes be any different? With decentralized social media on the rise—Mastodon, Threads—why couldn’t we have something similar for our ideas? A way to store and retrieve thoughts without being tied to a single company or service?

What if there were a way to take our thoughts wherever we go? A universal, open-source thought vault. A place where an AI assistant could help—but never own.

That moment, staring at my phone, I realized: we assume that when we write something down, we’ll always have access to it. But in a world where even our memories are turning into subscriptions, maybe it’s time we rethink where we store our thoughts.

[Jonas @jonasleupe]

Slow mornings and crisp air.

Cozy frames from a couple days spent in a cabin in the woods. Binge reading, binge coffee, binge keeping the fireplace alive.

[Jonas @jonasleupe]

Mockups will never be the same again.

Been messing around with @visualelectric for an upcoming project, and wow—this thing is wild. Just fire it up, generate a few snapshots, and boom, you’ve got something solid to work with. No more endless scrolling, tweaking or digging through stock sites. Just quick, decent shots straight out the gate.

Unreal.

[Dan Mall @danmall]

I just released the second edition of my Pricing Design book—for free!

The details and the backstory:

In 2014, I talked with my friend and mentor @jasonsantamaria about an idea I had for a book about pricing for designers. Two years, a proposal, a bunch of manuscripts and edits later, I published my first book, an @abookapart Brief called Pricing Design.

In March of 2024, A Book Apart closed their doors and gave authors back the rights to their books, along with a few conditions for authors that wanted to continue to distribute their books. Around that time, amidst some of the worst mass layoffs the tech industry has seen in a long while, I started to get increasingly more requests for my now unavailable book, presumably as more designers were looking to turn to taking their financial livelihoods into their own hands.

So, I decided to release a second edition.

The easiest way to read it is for free on the new Pricing Design website. If you’d like a PDF of it, you can request a free PDF to be emailed to you directly on the site. The printed paperback, Kindle/e-reader, and audiobook versions are all in the works and soon-to-be-released in the next couple of weeks, and you can sign up on the website to be notified once they’re out.

Also, it’s been almost 9 years since I wrote the book, so there’s a ton more I’ve learned about pricing that I want to share! If you request the free PDF, you’ll also have the ability to opt into a very actionable mini-lesson where I tell you exactly how to value price your first prospect, step-by-step.

The website and book design are all the brainchild of @jonasleupe, one of the people I’ve been working with over the last few months in my quest to find a designer who can ship. Jonas is kind, humble, and incredibly talented. I’ve really enjoyed our collaboration so far. (I’ll tell you more about Jonas and share more about the behind-the-scenes of hiring in a future post.)

If you’re thinking about making the leap to freelancing or need some new ways to level up in your design business, check out the new edition of Pricing Design: https://t.co/QJyzmG7dHb

[Jonas @jonasleupe]

Had a blast working with @danmall on the second edition of Pricing Design!

Dan wanted to reintroduce the book—originally published in 2016—as a free, online-first resource while also preparing it for multiple formats like print, Kindle, and audiobook.

The new Pricing Design website is live (https://t.co/2znuDptbzB), and the response has been incredible!

Beyond excited I could help Dan empower the design community even more 💫
—
Website built in @framer.
Go check it out at 👉🏻 https://t.co/2znuDptbzB

[Jonas @jonasleupe]

Now it’s getting 🥶 outside, it felt like the perfect time to drop pre-orders for new hoodies! (All profits go straight to @dewarmsteweek 🔥)

Cozy fleece on the inside, 80% cotton for that perfect fit. Grab yours at https://t.co/XtClxGzVEx (free personal delivery in Bruges) 🫶🏻

[B&S @_B___S]

Trying to get your dog to take his medicine

[Jonas @jonasleupe]

Who’s the best Color Grading Professional you know? 🎨

I used to dread color correction, but now I'm ready to dive in! Would very passionately love to learn.

Know someone willing to teach? I'll trade my branding skills for color magic.

Let's chat!​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ 👋🏻

[The Culturist @the_culturist_]

Why did past societies build so much "useless" beauty everywhere — and why did we stop?

It might be a measure of a culture's health... (thread) 🧵

[Buitengebieden @buitengebieden]

Something to make you smile.. 😊

[Buitengebieden @buitengebieden]

Elephant gives birth to her baby and the rest of the herd forms immediately a wall to protect mommy and the newborn.. 😊

[sam @samdape]

just run