Works But Makes Noises – Details, episodes & analysis

Ten foot skeletons, Gen Z nonchalance vs. Millennial effortfulness,  Zohran's campaign design, Al Gore was the worst client.

Links mentioned in the show

Zohran Mamdani’s Campaign Logo Looked Nothing Like a Campaign Logo
https://www.curbed.com/article/zohran-mamdani-campaign-logo-graphic-design.html

Fully automated 'private chef'
https://x.com/miyuselene/status/1982517846124192011?s=20

NEO home robot
https://www.1x.tech/neo

David McGillivray is a designer and creative director in upstate New York, designing for early stage tech companies through his own practice. He also co-founded Offhours and runs Corners, an art and design store in the Catskills.

Jacob Heftmann is a Los Angeles-based surfer and graphic designer. He is currently the Design Director at Grilli Type. Previously he was on the faculty at Parsons and founded XXIX and Index in New York City.

Artwork by Pablo Delcan
Music by Mondo Boys
Artwork typeface; GT Standard Mono by Grilli Type

www.worksbutmakesnoises.com

Surfing in Mexico, Gap is back, having a personal ‘uniform’, Electric Bikes, NYC Subway design, AI slop (oh no), edible rocks, 90’s ad agency offices, naming things.

David McGillivray is a designer and creative director in upstate New York, designing for early stage tech companies through his own practice. He also co-founded Offhours and runs Corners, an art and design store in the Catskills.

Jacob Heftmann is a Los Angeles-based surfer and graphic designer. He is currently the Design Director at Grilli Type. Previously he was on the faculty at Parsons and founded XXIX and Index in New York City.

Artwork by Pablo Delcan
Music by Mondo Boys
Artwork typeface; GT Standard Mono by Grilli Type

www.worksbutmakesnoises.com

New Grillitype launches, social battery collapse, Palermo wedding gossip, buying a 2008 Subaru on Facebook Marketplace, DMV purgatory, LL Bean collab trim, new iPhone and AirPods takes, AI brand builders, Jacob hates moodboards, designer existentialism

David McGillivray is a designer and creative director in upstate New York, designing for early stage tech companies through his own practice. He also co-founded Offhours and runs Corners, an art and design store in the Catskills.

Jacob Heftmann is a Los Angeles-based surfer and graphic designer. He is currently the Design Director at Grilli Type. Previously he was on the faculty at Parsons and founded XXIX and Index in New York City.

Artwork by Pablo Delcan
Music by Mondo Boys
Artwork typeface; GT Standard Mono by Grilli Type

www.worksbutmakesnoises.com

Catskills nervous system reset, tiny New York party memories, birthday art pilgrimages, Mass MoCA, basic-taste art confessions, work-life blur, Apple event ambivalence, light-phone fantasies

David McGillivray is a designer and creative director in upstate New York, designing for early stage tech companies through his own practice. He also co-founded Offhours and runs Corners, an art and design store in the Catskills.

Jacob Heftmann is a Los Angeles-based surfer and graphic designer. He is currently the Design Director at Grilli Type. Previously he was on the faculty at Parsons and founded XXIX and Index in New York City.

Artwork by Pablo Delcan
Music by Mondo Boys
Artwork typeface; GT Standard Mono by Grilli Type

www.worksbutmakesnoises.com

Snowstorms in the Catskills, Jacob’s month on the North Shore, selling the Audi and becoming a full-time Subaru guy, mechanics doing power slides in your car, talking lamps and unhinged home robots, Terminator bots and the sci-fi week online, Apple entering a new design era, Google’s Nano-Banana and AI faking sketchbooks, Bloom and the rise of brand-asset generators, the new CNBC logo mess, Utah 2034 and the puzzle of future-proof Olympic branding, the icons of Olympic identity from Mexico 68 to Munich 72 and Montreal 76, and why mockups are still the secret weapon in design.

🖼️ Visual Show Notes
https://worksbutmakesnoises.com/episodes/5

David McGillivray is a designer and creative director in upstate New York, designing for early stage tech companies through his own practice. He also co-founded Offhours and runs Corners, an art and design store in the Catskills.

Jacob Heftmann is a Los Angeles-based surfer and graphic designer. He is currently the Design Director at Grilli Type. Previously he was on the faculty at Parsons and founded XXIX and Index in New York City.

Artwork by Pablo Delcan
Music by Mondo Boys
Artwork typeface; GT Standard Mono by Grilli Type

www.worksbutmakesnoises.com

The 52" monitor, home-cooked software, claude code, vibe coding, personal tools, craft, authenticity and imperfection, authorship and taste, designing without scale, having an independent design practice, freelancing vs studios, building a career on your own terms.

Tesla Optimus Fail
https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/1pfzxt0/tesla_optimus/

Dell's Big Boy
https://www.engadget.com/computing/dell-unveils-a-massive-52-inch-6k-ultrawide-curved-monitor-at-ces-2026-140024842.html

People Building with Claude Code
https://x.com/claudeai/status/2009666254815269313?s=20

Ryo Lu's OS 
https://os.ryo.lu/

Gabriel Valdivia's Big Calendar
https://x.com/gabrielvaldivia/status/2008259086614409438?s=20

David McGillivray is a designer and creative director in upstate New York, designing for early stage tech companies through his own practice. He also co-founded Offhours and runs Corners, an art and design store in the Catskills.

Jacob Heftmann is a Los Angeles-based surfer and graphic designer. He is currently the Design Director at Grilli Type. Previously he was on the faculty at Parsons and founded XXIX and Index in New York City.

Artwork by Pablo Delcan
Music by Mondo Boys
Artwork typeface; GT Standard Mono by Grilli Type

www.worksbutmakesnoises.com

How to pay off sleep debt, ancient internships, should designers c*de? design engineers, teaching at RISD and Parsons, experimental branding briefs and constraint-led projects, what design school doesn’t teach, archives versus mood boards, Arena as a second brain, collecting and scanning physical references, folk packaging and diner placemats, obscure illustrators and forgotten ephemera, taste as something you build over time, trend reports and in–out lists, writing as a way of thinking, print, tactility, control, and staying creatively engaged without chasing trends.

Elizabeth Goodspeed is an independent designer, art director, and writer specializing in branding, packaging, and book and editorial design. She’s also the US editor-at-large for It’s Nice That and publishes Casual Archivist, a design history focused newsletter.

https://elizabethgoodspeed.com/

David McGillivray is a designer and creative director in upstate New York, designing for early stage tech companies through his own practice. He also co-founded Offhours and runs Corners, an art and design store in the Catskills.

Jacob Heftmann is a Los Angeles-based surfer and graphic designer. He is currently the Design Director at Grilli Type. Previously he was on the faculty at Parsons and founded XXIX and Index in New York City.

Artwork by Pablo Delcan
Music by Mondo Boys
Artwork typeface; GT Standard Mono by Grilli Type

www.worksbutmakesnoises.com

Ive's Ferrari collab, tactile design, electric performance, AI copycats, creative IP, opt-in consent, database tools vs model training, human-washed tech, the Granola rebrand, analog aesthetics, faux authenticity, proof of humanity, OpenAI vs Anthropic, authenticity vs costume.

Jony Ive x Ferrari
https://www.highsnobiety.com/p/ferrari-luce-jony-ive-marc-newson-lovefrom/

Stripe Sessions: Jony Ive
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLb9g_8r-mE

Granola Rebrand
https://www.granola.ai/blog/a-new-look-for-granola

The End of Analog by Elizabeth Goodspeed
https://www.itsnicethat.com/articles/elizabeth-goodspeed-on-analogue-creative-industry-290126

Jason Combs
https://jasonsbmoc.com/

David McGillivray is a designer and creative director in upstate New York, designing for early stage tech companies through his own practice. He also co-founded Offhours and runs Corners, an art and design store in the Catskills.

Jacob Heftmann is a Los Angeles-based surfer and graphic designer. He is currently the Design Director at Grilli Type. Previously he was on the faculty at Parsons and founded XXIX and Index in New York City.

Artwork by Pablo Delcan
Music by Mondo Boys
Artwork typeface; GT Standard Mono by Grilli Type

www.worksbutmakesnoises.com

Robot vacuum fleets, Claude code experiments, Personal SaaSpocalypse, closed loop design workflows, building before designing, design is the bottleneck, pushing to prod, the death of wireframes, grey box trauma, and unlearning the process.

David McGillivray is a designer and creative director in upstate New York, designing for early stage tech companies through his own practice. He also co-founded Offhours and runs Corners, an art and design store in the Catskills.

Jacob Heftmann is a Los Angeles-based surfer and graphic designer. He is currently the Design Director at Grilli Type. Previously he was on the faculty at Parsons and founded XXIX and Index in New York City.

Artwork by Pablo Delcan
Music by Mondo Boys
Artwork typeface; GT Standard Mono by Grilli Type

www.worksbutmakesnoises.com

This week we’re joined by Allan Yu, designer and co-founder of community messaging app, Output. He previously worked as an early designer at Svpply, a cult favorite among designers, and later at Google Labs, Meta, and Shopify.

We talk on designer to founder reality checks, pivoting your startup (again and again), Svpply nostalgia, type foundry UX rants,  building a Discord for normal people, design craft vs shipping product, venture-backed startup pressure, fake users testing your product, why consumers don’t care about AI, AI as invisible product magic.

https://output.app

David McGillivray is a designer and creative director in upstate New York, designing for early stage tech companies through his own practice. He also co-founded Offhours and runs Corners, an art and design store in the Catskills.

Jacob Heftmann is a Los Angeles-based surfer and graphic designer. He is currently the Design Director at Grilli Type. Previously he was on the faculty at Parsons and founded XXIX and Index in New York City.

Artwork by Pablo Delcan
Music by Mondo Boys
Artwork typeface; GT Standard Mono by Grilli Type

www.worksbutmakesnoises.com