Agency → Product
Hey—it’s Matt.
I spent over a decade running a design agency, where design wasn’t an afterthought—it was the whole point. Every project started with taste and detail, but always in service of someone else’s product.
That’s why Jessica Hische’s story about building Studioworks stood out to me. She shows how a lettering-first mindset doesn’t just make software beautiful—it can shape the actual product decisions. Her taste became the compass, not just the craft.
It’s the same shift I’ve felt moving from agency work into building Jasin. The design instincts I used to deploy for clients now sit at the center of my own product—shaping not just how it looks, but what it is.
Have a great weekend.
MOST INTERESTING
The History of Themeable User Interfaces
From early GUIs and video game sprites to today’s design tokens, theming has been part of digital design for decades. The essay makes the case that tokens—paired with good governance—are the quiet engine behind scalable design systems.
TOOLS + TECH
Macrowave
A small app that turns your Mac into a private, peer-to-peer radio station. You can stream audio in real time with no tracking, and there’s even an iPhone app for listening.
NVIDIA Jetson AGX Thor
NVIDIA is putting server-class AI compute into a $3,499 robotics kit. Think 2,070 FP4 teraflops and 128GB of memory, packaged in something closer to a laptop than a rack of GPUs. For AI startups (or those thinking about it), that’s a huge leap.
Framer hits $2B valuation
Framer just raised $100M at a $2B valuation, with plans to push deeper into enterprise and AI. They’re sitting at ~$50M ARR and breakeven. It’s another signal that no-code isn’t just for side projects anymore—it’s running full-scale company sites.
BUILDER MINDSET
Designing for Ephemerality
A thoughtful reminder that software should be built with its eventual end in mind. That means planning exit paths, keeping data portable, and leaving artifacts worth holding onto.
The Illusion of Alignment
The essay makes the case for pre-mortems, shared definitions of success, and clear ownership so projects don’t crumble under polite head-nods.
Lettering Artist → Software Founder
Jessica Hische shares how her lettering background shaped the way she built Studioworks. A useful example of how design taste isn’t just cosmetic—it can shape strategy and product direction from the ground up.
The Bubble That Knows It’s a Bubble
AI looks like past tech bubbles—fueled by breakthroughs, speculation, and overreach. The difference now is how self-aware the players are. But recognition alone doesn’t prevent the cycle from playing out.
CLOSING THOUGHT
Running an agency taught me how to obsess over craft. Building a product taught me that the same instincts decide more than how something looks—they decide what it becomes.
Stay sharp, stay building, and I’ll see you next week.
Cheers,
Matt Downey
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MY STACK
These are the tools that help me run my business every day. I happily pay for each of them—they’re worth every penny. I hope you find them useful, too.
- Beehiiv → How I send this newsletter every week. 10/10 would recommend.
- Brain.fm → How I kickstart my productivity and find flow-state.
- Mercury → The best business banking I’ve ever used.
- Screen Studio → How I record engaging videos.
- Typefully → How I post content to my socials.
- Kick → My bookkeeping on auto-pilot.