S1
E6
54 mins
Jan 26, 2026
A Most Talented Designer's Tool Stack
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Lee Black has been designing for 25 years. He made those Figma pills with goldfish swimming inside. He also ran an app company that nearly broke him.
We talked about chasing money that never made him happy, why his tool stack hasn't really changed in a decade, and what happens when you master your tools so deeply that the rules start to bend.
Chapters
[00:00] - "It's not about learning everything"
[01:59] - Taking apart toys to understand how they work
[04:35] - Speed vs. quality
[07:19] - Music came first
[09:29] - His tool stack (it's simpler than you think)
[11:03] - "It hasn't really changed that much"
[12:44] - ChatGPT as an ideas buddy
[14:40] - How Midlife Engineering was born
[16:10] - What "polish" means to him
[18:17] - The Matrix scene that started the pills
[20:36] - "I want to put a fucking goldfish in there"
[21:09] - Designing with restraint
[23:27] - Dieter Rams as jazz, not gospel
[26:03] - Protecting taste when you scale
[31:05] - The app company that broke him
[48:16] - Advice for designers struggling right now
[51:57] - If nothing mattered, what would you work on?
