Digital Erik is freee for the following folks:
👉 Anyone who signs up for Learn UI Design (which closes Apr 30 🔥)
👉 If in LUID, anyone who signs up for another course of mine by Apr 30
👉 If in multiple courses... you're in! Email me! 💌 erik@learnui.design
Seeing the "why" behind ideas (as well as citation links) is *WAY* nicer than your typical LLM-assisted design experience 😅
Here's what another user (who was *also* working on copywriting) said this morning:
Today, I'm testing out Digital Erik on COPYWRITING.
(Digital Erik is the custom chatbot I've trained on 70k+ words of my design content 🤖)
It has access to ALL Landing Page Academy transcripts + worksheets
So it can BRAINSTORM ideas, say WHY they work, and WHERE to learn more
Now I just need to get reliable, accurate URL-accessible timestamps working. *That* would be a nice UX 😅
One thing I'm really stoked about with Digital Erik is that he cites his sources. I have this hunch that "almost 70 hours of video across 3 courses" sometimes sounds more like a chore than an asset.
But if an intelligent agent can point you to *EXACTLY* where your question is answered... nice! 😎
Right now, Digital Erik does not have a logo.
As much as I love UI, coming up with logos has never been my thing. Branding is truly its own craft. Any advice?
(The current version is "Digital Erik" written in Freight Text, which Digital Erik guesses is my fav font. Not bad! 😎)
To get there, I've developed a battery of sample questions (gradable by *another* chatbot, of course) to evaluate how different architecture changes affect answer quality. Still gettin' there 😅
I get so stoked when Digital Erik gives good advice. Granted... it's a design chatbot trained solely on my own content. It *BETTER* give good advice 🙈
But there's part of me that yells "PREACH!" when it nails an answer.
It's been super fun to be making a product again, even if I'm not sure how exactly this will fit in to the whole thing. But given how much structured content I have around basically every area of visual design this seems like something 100% worth doing 😎
So I've been working on a new project... Digital Erik!
It's a chatbot trained on 45 hours of my design course transcripts & resources + dozens of blog posts and YouTube videos (~70k words of content!).
I've got a LOT of design content out there…
🎥 70 hours of video across 3 courses
👨💻 Dozens of blog posts
📫 100+ email newsletters
📣 Content here, & other social sites...
If I uploaded ALL of this to a Digital Erik design chatbot 🤖…
What would you MOST want to ask/do?
I actually just published a blog post manifesto on this. Read it. Share it. And if you decide to start designing what's hard to do in Figma... holler 😎
www.learnui.design/blog/hard-i...
Look, design trends are a sort of supply-and-demand thing.
What our tools make easy, you see a LOT of, and it gets boring 🥱
What our tools make hard, you see LESS of, and it can ✨ shine ✨
So, if you want your designs to stand out... DO WHAT'S HARD IN FIGMA.
Do what's hard to do in Figma.
"Like what?", you ask.
I don't care, ANYTHING that static vector editors suck at.
WebGL! custom photography! 3-D animations! isometric illustrations!
"How do I make this design look more interesting?"
"How do I make my portfolio stand out?"
"How should I use AI in my design workflow?"
I've got the same answer for each of these 😎
explainers.blog/posts/why-i...
I just launched a blog. (Those are still cool in 2026, right?)
It's currently on the front page of Hacker News (!)
First post, "Why is the sky blue?"
I wanted (a) an excuse to practice explaining complex things simply, and (b) to try out some new design techniques. Success!
🔥 Design tip: when trying out a new font, explore ALL the properties to try and find gold. There’s a lot more than normal and bold. Sometimes extrabold italic is 👌
Make sure to search:
🏋️ Very light or heavy weights
✨ Italics
🔠 Uppercase
⭐ Special characters -–—!?&*·←→«»
OK, it's crazy how 4 different AI site generators come up with such SIMILAR results.
Prompt includes NOTHING on specific copy, colors, images, or layouts.
What does this tell you?
So suppose I have ~70 hours of video lessons of me teaching design.
Where do I upload them so my students can chat with an LLM-powered version of my advice? Maybe even structure it to do design reviews?
Have you made a "meh" landing page with AI (Lovable, v0, etc) and want feedback?
Comment with the link or DM me. I'll shoot over some* feedback to everyone who responds 🤙
*Exact amount depends on response volume. Offer not valid in the state of Tennessee.
Looks like "Log in" has *positive* letter-spacing, which is probably a holdover from an older design where it was uppercase.
☝️ In general, don't add positive letter-spacing to sentence-case text.
Evernote is now using Figtree as a brand font, and they're doing a great job with it. Some typography tips:
✅ Negative letter-spacing in the header gives a crisper, tighter feel
✅ Use of non-standard weights to give a little extra emphasis (top nav uses medium weight text)
What else you got saved? 😎
unsplash.com/@britishlib...
unsplash.com/@birmingham...
unsplash.com/@libraryofc...
www.rawpixel.com/category/53...
images.nasa.gov/
Is AI "stealing with one step added"?
It doesn't seem like that to me 🤷♂️
But there's something undeniably nice about using human-produced assets for design work.
Here are some of my fav links for (free-to-use) paintings, illustrations, and renders...
I also wrote WAY too much about why mesh gradients are so broadly useful 😅 It's the hidden logic of design – enjoy.
www.learnui.design/blog/mesh-g...
I scratched my own itch and created a tool for making mesh gradients. May it inspire your own vibe-coded design tools 🫡
learnui.design/tools/mesh-...
Most underrated design trend of 2025… mesh gradients
(OK, technically this started earlier, but it felt like it really picked up last year)
You can adapt them for SO many brands and use-cases. It's shocking to me we don't see these lil' guys EVERYWHERE.
🏆 Most ridiculous design trend of 2025... 🥁
XL FOOTERS
It's true. We've gone all these years without any real love given to footers. But just including your logo at size one-billion? 🧐🧐🧐 There's no *there* there. My prediction is this will fade just as quickly as it rose.
