Founder of Kainoa — an independent design practice. Prev: @X, @CashApp, @capitalxyz, and some others along the way

NYC + Midwest
Introducing Kainoa A multidisciplinary design practice for those who challenge the boundaries of technology kainoa.studio
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let’s have ourselves a great week ahead, champs
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I keep coming back to this photo we truly are living in the most epic time to be alive
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i think the most valuable thing designers can do in today’s world is let themselves be human take walks be inspired let yourself get drawn to details in nature seek God do things that only humans can do and you’ll find joy in creating work that machines never can
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when was the last time an automotive company did a brand refresh that was well-liked? ever?
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for every one time I hear someone say “design is dead”, I hear two founders say they’re struggling to hire a great designer
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just completed research for an ongoing brand project which resulted writing 3000+ words research has become one of my favorite pieces of brand development lately. it feels so deeply human. for me, the ideas discovered in research gets treated as a well of inspiration to draw from as the rest of the identity gets developed
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c. 2010
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the slop fatigue is quickly increasing
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visual references from a recent project. having so much fun with this one.
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an em dash is to writing, as a "·" is to UI
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.@StateAffairsUS is doing some of the most important work of any startup in the country right now. Proud advisor to the team, and truly believe it’s just the beginning.
More Americans believe we’ll colonize the moon before we fix K-12 education. This is a policy problem. We have been building a solution that’s already trusted by many of the Fortune 500 as well as 1/3 of federal and state elected officials in the United States. Organizations are more impacted by policy than by financial markets. Yet financial markets have been real-time for decades, and policy markets are still nearly impossible to follow. @StateAffairsUS has raised over $70M from @rabois, @khoslaventures, @foundersfund and others to fix that. We are creating the world’s first real-time knowledge graph for policy and regulatory markets. This platform is foundationally built on non-partisan journalism and the collection of on-the-ground data that isn’t digitally accessible. In the future, we believe every executive will watch policy markets the way they watch financial markets. Instead of reacting to regulation, they’ll navigate it proactively. Policy should iterate at the speed of our most innovative industries.
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branding, in its purest form (which it used to be closer to, imo) is the expression of PUSHNG culture it does feel that large rebrands today feel like a reflection OF culture
Vintage branding has a kind of confidence you don’t see much anymore.
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One of my favorites from the collection: NYT Supplement recapping Apollo 11 (Aug 3, 1969) Complete with a piece from Isaac Asimov and the first-published color photos taken by man on the surface
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who has some office space in nyc I can use on thursday?
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when it's extremely easy to build fast/cheap software... a large role of design is to prove that there was care put into what's being offered it has to show that there is value in what you built. don't make it easy for someone to believe they could go and vibecode it themselves
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inspired by @jsngr's thoughts here:
this is an instant sign that I won't want to use your product if you can't take the time to craft the thing that should sell me, I can't trust that you took the time for the rest of the product
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I respect the commitment to not delete this
Celebrating small wins is hardwired into "Achieve," our goal-tracking sample app. We wanted the simple act of checking off a task to feel like a celebration. Instead of the standard #Material ripple, we used Styles to drop in a custom, high-contrast completion animation—specifically, a brand-colored ring that expands and fades on tap, paired with a subtle pressed-state gradient. It lets us focus entirely on polishing those custom, rewarding micro-interactions while Material handles the foundation. #GoogleDesign #MaterialDesign #JetpackCompose #AndroidDev #UXDesign #InteractionDesign
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the strong urge to give odd instructions to someone’s AI notetaker before they join the call
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"These are just great new expensive pencils" Steve Jobs and John Lasseter in 1996, talking about Pixar and computer generated animation Beautifully relevant to today
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