Matt Stauffer:
Hey, and welcome back to Laravel podcast season seven. I am your host, Matt Stauffer, CEO of Tighten. And this season, you're going to be, I'm going to be joined every episode by a member of the Laravel team. Today, I'm talking to David Hill, Head of Design at Laravel. David, can you say hi and share a little bit about what you do at Laravel?

David Hill:
Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, my name is David Hill. I am the Head of Design at Laravel. And yeah, that basically encompasses all aspects of design from product through to marketing through to brand design. And my role day to day is to lead the team, grow the team, and to make sure that business and customer needs are met through design.

Matt Stauffer:
That sounds like a very formal, structured answer, like somebody who knows how to be in a leadership position. It's like you've done this before. We're actually gonna start there, doing it before, because I don't actually know a ton about your history. And so I looked at your LinkedIn before the call and I was like, VP at Barclays. So I need you to tell me what's your journey to get to day one at Laravel. And that could be just what were you doing before versus what you're doing here. You can start back to high school, whatever, what was the journey to get here?

David Hill:
Ooh, I actually do like to start going all the way back to like where I started from, which is I started off as an industrial designer.

Matt Stauffer:
Love it.

David Hill:
So my love was products like physical products. So I studied like maths, further maths, physics, and then product design thinking I was going to be like a mechanical engineer or some sort of engineer. But I was always like artistic and creative, like drawing a lot. And then I did an art foundation before I went to university and then found that actually my thing, like I knew it was

Matt Stauffer:
Okay.

David Hill:
I knew it was going to be product design, I definitely knew it was product design. That was my first love, probably still is my true love. Physical design is really cool.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah. Huh. Yeah.

David Hill:
I started off as an industrial designer, graduated as one of those, and went into a consultancy for three years designing all kinds of things. Injection molded plastic products from power tools to fly killers to things to tag cattle on farms, to make prototypes and get into fields and actually use things, which is fun. I actually still bump into my designs near where I live. So the council gives you a food waste caddy, which I played a part in designing.

Matt Stauffer:
Really?

David Hill:
Our local shop has the thing that holds the baskets that you buy your shopping with. I designed this thing. The thing that you put your batteries in to recycle the batteries, I designed that. My neighbor has a wall charging unit for their electric car that charges their electric car, was the first thing that went to Mass Production I designed. the local soft play where my kid goes has a cafe and it has a fly killer in the cafe. My wife hates it because I'm always just nudging and just nudging and pointing and she's like, is it one of your designs? And I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And she's just so not impressed at all. But I'm like, it's a fly killer. A fly killer is cool. I know what we're into that. it's there anyway.

Matt Stauffer:
You see it? I love it. Uh-huh. That's incredible.

David Hill:
Not that I'm advocating that we kill animals, like do not kill animals, but flies, you know, it's different. But no, yeah, so I started off as an industrial designer, but whilst I like did that, I was always like tinkering on the web since like late teens. And I started tinkering more when I actually became like an actual industrial designer for a consultancy, because I realized how long it took to actually get products into production. Whereas on the web, I could just like hit deploy.

Matt Stauffer:
Wow.

David Hill:
I there was no deploy button. I would just like drag and dropping like, you know, FTP client. Yeah. And it was there it was there. And I was like, oh, wow, this is kind of cool. I was just making things on the web with WordPress, figured out custom post types and taxonomies and like, you know, the ACF plugin, is like, you know, a godsend to me. I could just make things into a database, which was cool. And then I left that industrial design role, went traveling for a year, came back and got offered an opportunity at Barclays, which is a bank, which is

Matt Stauffer:
Yep.

David Hill:
kind of like, wasn't looking for it. It just kind of came my way. And that was pitched as like half product design and half like digital product design. It's like designing like biometric fingerprint scanners for like high net worth clients, like the actual product and then the software that goes with it. Over time, that role just became more and more digital design rather than physical product design, which I didn't mind. Like the world was kind of shifting and it was more progressive digital product design. Like there was more remote opportunities. It was better.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah. Yeah.

David Hill:
Like it just, don't know why, because physical design is harder, but somewhere it just doesn't pay as much. So like I just, yeah, I made the decision to make that switch because yeah, I loved it as equally. And so yeah, the title VP of Design at Barclays, like, I mean, that's probably gives it more gravitas than it sounds because like it's a bank and everyone kind of gets a fancy title. It wasn't like I was like, you know, like next to the CEO in a board meeting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It just, it just, it sounds.

Matt Stauffer:
the board meeting exactly.

David Hill:
sounds as good better than it is.

Matt Stauffer:
Sounds good. Yeah.

David Hill:
It's kind of maybe that's unlocked an opportunity for me. But yeah, then so how did I end up at Laravel though? So that's like, that's like, like the first part of my career. And then Barclays just being a bank and being this big institution, I left there after about three and a half years because there was some big shifts there. And then I just went freelance, like I'd already had like my own business like since I graduated, I started a company straight away. And then I just went back to doing that full time for like eight years.
And then I started a company with some internet friends called Terminal.

Matt Stauffer:
Heard of it.

David Hill:
And it was about, yeah, was about, when I say like a month, about a month, like, cause we started that in May and I started in June with Laravel. So like somewhere in between that May and June, I was listening to one of your podcasts with Taylor where he mentioned we need a designer..

Matt Stauffer:
Oh cool.

David Hill:
And then I was like, Laravel needs a designer? Like, and I've been using Laravel since 2020. So I started making my first apps with Laravel in 2020And I just DMed Adam, Adam Elmore, my friend, and just said like, I even ask, do you know Taylor well enough that you could introduce me? And no sneaky back door trying like sneak in. And I didn't hear back from him for a couple of days. And then I just hear from Taylor and like, and then, and then yeah, like it's like the next day let's jump on a call. And so we did. And then I think it was within 24 hours, I was offered a contract and

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah.

David Hill:
And that was on a Friday and by Monday I'd signed it and then left my, I was like freelancing, like as a long-term contractor somewhere. And I just decided to leave that and yeah, meet the switch.

Matt Stauffer:
Wow, that's incredible. I mean, I keep hearing stories from people about just, that's one of the reasons I want to ask them is because there's so many like, well, I knew this person who knew this person, but that was a level of intentionality that not a lot of the stories have. I also did not realize that Terminal was so fresh then. I just figured I hadn't heard about it. You know, I was like, oh yeah, you know, this Terminal started showing up. It probably was like prominent. Everybody's been seeing it for the last couple of years. I didn't realize it was just brand new then. That's incredible.

David Hill:
It was React Miami. So it was like May of last year, I think was React Miami, first one that was like when we launched like a, tech blend. So we've been working on it for like a couple of months prior to that.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah, that's incredible. Okay, so we've talked about your kind of like professional journey to get to Laravel, but I'm actually also really curious in your artistic journey to get to where you are as a creator. And just a heads up for you, anytime I'm going to be interviewing somebody, go to Titan Slack and I say, hey, this person's going to be on what questions do you have? So Guillermo at Tighten asked us quite a few questions, so thanks Guillermo. And one of his first questions, I'm also super curious about is what has shaped your taste as an artist? And I'm especially interested in like what shapes your taste in artists when you haven't been spending the whole time doing digital design. Although I do think you've been doing freelance for a couple decades at this point, right? So it's not like something new, but like what has gotten you to the point where you know what you like and what your specific aesthetic is?

David Hill:
I wouldn't class myself as an artist because like design is different to art. So like design is solving problems. I just, I like solving problems. I like it when there's constraints and there's a problem and you've got to figure out the solution and whether that's like whatever medium that's in, whether it's like print, digital, physical. In terms of aesthetic, I mean, I think your role as a designer is to adapt your aesthetic. Like maybe you do have like, you your go-to, maybe it's your go-to because it's

Matt Stauffer:
Mm-hmm.

David Hill:
quick and easy or just comfortable. It's like, it's the trend of the moment. Like, my aesthetic of the day is not my aesthetic of like 20 years ago. Like, so it's yeah, it's definitely changed and adapted. Yeah, I think you have to you have to change and adapt. And yeah, I'm not an artist. I'm a designer.

Matt Stauffer:
Great. So, so, and you have to adapt to kind of Laravel's way of doing things. And prior to you, Laravel had Taylor and then he had occasionally worked with an external consultancy to do some brand work. I think it might've been Focus Lab that did a round. And then I think Jack McDade had done some work and maybe one other person had done some design work, but a large portion of the design work happened when either Taylor or somebody else was like, well, I got to build a page. Let's just take whatever design work Focus Lab did or whatever existing stuff, you know, was there and just kind of like, just spit it out. I feel like the, the structure of a formal design team and format really kind of started with you. What was it like and also kind of what challenges are there working with an existing brand where the brand is really well established, but also it's never been set up in a way where like a formal art director would do.

David Hill:
Yeah, great question. So the Laravel brand, like I loved it. Like since I first saw it, like, I mean, I like, I like the old one as well. Like, I think we should bring back that retro logo.

Matt Stauffer:
Nice.

David Hill:
Like it's like a, like in a side, like, but yeah. But I, yeah.

Matt Stauffer:
a little swoopy one. Yeah.

David Hill:
So I loved the design. I always just thought Laravel's design team was bigger than it was. It was only once I was on the inside that I realized, wait, you guys have been doing this without a designer? When I asked Taylor, like, I had him send me the Figma and he was like, yeah, we don't have Figma.

Matt Stauffer:
Hahaha

David Hill:
I was like, oh wow, we're really starting from the start here. I know that was fun. Yeah, so what was it like? So yeah, the designer that you mentioned, like Focus Lab, amazing agency, I followed those for a long time, Jack McDade, incredible designer. And so yeah, they'd already done a lot of great work and we just wanted to build on that.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah.

David Hill:
I want to say over the last 12 months, although there's been some subtle shifts and maybe some design directions with the brand, we haven't yet really formalized that into this is our new brand because it's still adapting, we're still figuring things out. To be honest, we've spent most of our time focused on product. There's been a lot of product work in the last 12 months, so there's been a lot of product work. There's marketing work that communicates that product. The products are slightly...

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah.

David Hill:
They're not exactly branded Laravel. That's like a whole discussion we have. We give that such deep thought and like, how much should everything look the same versus how much should it all be wildly different? What is that DNA that runs through it all that makes it feel like Laravel? We have to find it, establish it, refine it. That's a whole process. And you're doing that usually under tight time constraints because there's just so much to ship all the time. We haven't yet sat down and said, oh these are all our learnings. This is our new brand guidelines and then published on the web for everyone to see and use. That will come, but it's just, and that's in the process. I think it's a really fun brand to work with.

There's lots of opportunity with it. I mean, a lot of people just think the cube icon and like the L icon and red, but then we try to have more fun with that, with the new website and introduce more color and like be bold with that color.

I don't know if anyone's noticed this, but I'm just going to say it out loud anyway. like, if you look at like the work of the last five months, like we haven't used the icon all that much. Like we just tend to keep using the word mark. I don't know if anyone's noticed that, but I've not really been pairing the icon with the word mark. It's kind of like we try to decouple it in places and just like let each live by itself. They don't always have to be together. That's a small little detail. But yeah, I think it's a, I think it's really fun brand to work with and we'll publish more of our learning soon.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah. Yeah.

David Hill:
I want to get really into the depths of like, Laravel has its own typography and its own icon set and why not? Why can't we do those things? That would be really fun. A serif, a mono, all that good stuff.

Matt Stauffer:
That's really exciting. And I was actually had a couple of questions that kind of you started to dive into it a little bit, but I'm really curious, like, what is your day to day right now? And both in terms of like, just what steps do you do every day, but also like, how involved are you with product? like, you know, UX and UI versus marketing versus open source. Like what, what all are you involved in and kind of what is your day to day and being involved in that?

David Hill:
That's a great question. I asked myself that same question.

Matt Stauffer:
What do I actually do here?

David Hill:
Honestly, yeah, no, because it's changed so much. Because it's been such monumental shifts, feels like was 12 months ago it was me. Now we're a team of six designers. And so there's been a lot of hiring, and hiring takes time, and then onboarding new designers takes time. So in that process, in that time frame, the first few months, was just manage myself. And I was working on Cloud. That's why I was hired, was I joined at the start of June.with the task of like, was given the title of Head of Design, but it was just me. So we'd like, you know, we knew we were going to grow the team, but for those early days, it was me. And it was, yeah, you're hired to make sure there is Laravel Cloud product for the demo when we go on stage. And that was my day-to-day. It was so focused. It was that. And now, like, then we started to hire extra designers and other products. And so I had to start transitioning away from doing day-to-day design. And it wasn't just like a...turn the switch off and I no longer do day-to-day design. It's been like a gradual process. Now I'm going through this weird phase and it's maybe because I just turned 40 at the weekend, right? So like, it's like, it's a midlife crisis.

Matt Stauffer:
Happy Birthday!

David Hill:
Thank you very much. But the, yeah, I'm going through this like midlife crisis where I'm like, how much should I get involved? How much should I step back? And it's like, you're like a footballer, like a soccer player where it's like, I can still play. I'm only 40. I can still play. Like, like leave me in the game. Yeah, put me in. I can still, I can still do this. But then it's also like, I should step back and let other people cook.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah. Put me a coach. Yes.

David Hill:
And it's like, let people own their decisions. And so I'm kind of like navigating that in a way. My day to day is that I see myself as responsible for working across everything and kind of trying to be like the glue that like binds things together because the designers are all focused like primarily like on their products like we have.

Designers, we all talk and collaborate, we have like our channel and we all kind of, we all get along great, but like they're all, everyone's focused on like each product. So like we've got two designers on cloud, one on forge, one on nightwatch, and then we have like a marketing and brand designer. And they're all, because they're all focused, maybe they don't like look up and look around at what other people are doing. And so it's my job to try and be like, like we just recently solved that on like Cloud. Maybe we could take that over to another product and vice versa.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah.

David Hill:
So I try and facilitate that and do that and just give overall direction of just some like patterns that like perhaps you don't want to go down or like patterns we do want to include. I've probably spent most of my time over the last few weeks on marketing related stuff just because we've got Laracon coming up. So if you're not already going, you should buy a ticket because it's the biggest one yet. Shameless plug there. But so that's where my focus has been over last few months.

Matt Stauffer:
Okay. With programming, which I'm more familiar with, moving from being an individual contributor up to being kind of like a leader of programmers, there's like a in-between point where you're still involved in all the code, but you're more reviewing other people's code and helping an architect versus actually writing it. And then there's like another level where you're no longer involved in the code at all. And like other people are doing that. And I'm at that level where like I should not be involved in the code of any of our projects.

Are you up where I am where you don't even get to be involved in the design process? Or are you still like, yeah, this person is responsible for Forge, but I'm stepping in. I'm helping them with design challenges. I'm reviewing all their work and giving a thumbs up. Like, where are you at that level?

David Hill:
I'd say like I'm in the middle somewhere. So I'm not yet like at your level. I'm, but every product is different as well.

Matt Stauffer:
Okay. You're not fully out.

David Hill:
Like we're such a distributed team that like I can't always be involved and like, nor should I be like, try not to, I never want to be a blocker. I only want to try and help. Sometimes I might step on some toes, but I don't mean to. It's like, it's only with the best of intentions. Like every product is different that we have. Some people prefer feedback and we pair and we sync, we use tuple and we just like jam for a couple of hours. But ultimately, I leave it with them to then take that, run with it, and execute and polish it. It's not for me to, I don't sit there for hours every day doing that. I do pick up the occasional, like, ask where, like, I think of what I can share without giving things away of what we're working on. But there might be just a small need for a quick marketing site. Or for example, we've just released a change log. And it's like, oh, we just need this design.

I don't want to disturb any of the designers because I know everyone's busy. So I'll just pick that up and it'll be like, you know, a one day, two day kind of like little sprint, sprint. So I do that kind of thing just to, but that's more so just to like people, the people focused on more important things. Yeah.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah, I assume that you're the one who made the initial landing announcement page with that kind of really clean typography.

David Hill:
So that was a collaboration. That was a really fun project.

Matt Stauffer:
Oh yeah, I love that.

David Hill:
That was a, we, we had a, we had like the February 24th, that date will be ingrained with me forever because that February 24th, we committed to so many things that needed so many sites and so much marketing material. And it was Laracon EU at the start of February. And we kind of like, we had to get so much work done for that. And we were there for a few days prior for Hackathon. And it was just such a busy period. And it was like, let's just get through.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah.

David Hill:
Laracon EU and do our demos there of what we're showcasing. And then once Laracon EU is over, then we'll switch focus to the February 24th. You've got two, three weeks, whatever it is. And yeah, we just picked up a lot of things from Refresh and had to run with it. So we designed the Cloud landing page. And that was between myself, Hugo, and Tilly. We did that in a week.

Matt Stauffer:
Okay.

David Hill:
And then it was Hugo and Jason Beggs who ran with it and developed it for a week. Somewhere along the way, someone had the smart idea of why don't we code the illustrations instead of use SVGs or PNGs, which I don't know why you would do that under such time constraints, but we knew it would like, we wanted to make it feel like if that's your first experience of Cloud and we knew how much love had gone into like the actual product itself. So we want to try and convey a little bit of that.

Matt Stauffer:
Mm-hmm.

David Hill:
on the marketing side. And even though we had two weeks, it was like, we really pushed ourselves. There was early starts, late nights, there was one all nighter the night before, there was no sleep for two days. It was a labor of love that whole lunch.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah, I saw how much work y'all put into it. So that was like the Laravel Cloud landing page when you guys actually landed. But the original one was just like a, we got this kind of like this Cloud thing that's coming, was that one I feel like is a, because I think that the Laravel Cloud landing page that came out was a, in the vein of how people do marketing pages, here's a very unique and clever and creative way to do it, right? That first one that was just the text,

That one, feel like, was something that I have seen very little of in the SaaS world.

David Hill:
Yeah. So that one was more a, well, yeah, that one was just me because there was just me back then. That was for the original launch, the demo. And so much time went into the product. There was the Cloud product. I was responsible for all of the Laracon Dallas materials and assets. I was also working on like the basketball game and all the assets and everything. The design went into that, which you were a part of, you know about that.
That was like a very, very busy summer. And then we started talking about the marketing site and I was like, what if we just don't do a traditional marketing site? What if we just had like a video, which I made the video for as well, like it's shoot and edit the video. I was like, we just have a video with just a letter from Taylor and what that, like keep it simple and different and just, that's, we're just trying to communicate a demo. We're not yet, and we'll save.

We have like a series of launches and that's just like, you know, simplest launch. And then we'll do like the fancy website when we launch the actual product. That's what we did. That was fun. And then we, yeah, thanks.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah, I thought it was brilliant. I really, really enjoyed it. And it was so strongly branded. I'm sorry, the lag, keep going.

David Hill:
No, no, I was just going to say, and then we riffed off of that for the Nightwatch one as well. were like, we were just, uh, yeah, I didn't want to reinvent that wheel again, but just because of constraints, like the team was so focused on product, like now's the time to focus on product and the, yeah, the marketing will take care of itself for that early demo.

Matt Stauffer:
Because it was so different it felt like it really stood out and I mean I've been you know in the Laravel world since before there was actual marketing material and I have not seen anything internally and externally there have been some people who've done letters There's been you know like there's been the rise and somewhat fall of the the best way to sell your video courses to have 15 pages of text on your home page right like those are all things but it was none of those and I just want to name the kind of like it it felt fun and fresh and unique and it was after Terminal, it was my first look of like, like David has a really unique kind of perspective on things and a unique approach to things.
Because I was curious when you're coming in, are you going to be, are you an artist? Are you an implementer? Where are you along that line? Because every designer has some kind of like, I don't know if that's a perfect line, but it feels to me that like there's the designers who are just like, I wanted to be an artist and I couldn't get paid for it. So I became a graphic designer.

And then there's the designers where it's purely about implementation. And then there's kind of like a line in between. And I was kind of watching you for that first while to see like, where do you lie in on there? So even kind of hearing some of your statements here about, I'm not, you I'm not an artist, I'm a designer. And yet you clearly have an artistic vision, you know, a design vision, sorry, you know, but like you clearly kind of have a vision there. So.

David Hill:
Yeah, no. Well, that's nice to hear. I yeah, I tried to approach everything. I mean, like all designers should approach it differently, but not different for the sake of being different.

Matt Stauffer:
Right. Yeah.

David Hill:
There was definitely thought went into that just because, again, it was about constraints. The constraint was I can peel off from doing product work, and I could then go and spend X amount of time designing a landing page that follows your typical features. Or we can like double down on feature work in the demo and really nail that and then just still have something which is equally as, you know, captivating and capture. Yeah, compelling. And also it felt like a moment because around that time, like a year ago, it felt like there was like, you know, we knew about the announcement, like the funding, we knew it was coming. We hadn't yet announced it before the demo, but we all knew internally. And so there was like this shift. It was like, you know, this, big this big shift at the time. So we wanted to try and capture that as well. I went with the letter as well. The iterations before that where I did the whole thing in like blue, like it was like blue typography and like everything was blue. It was just white and blue. And it was just like, everyone used to see Laravel in red. I shared it internally. Everyone was like, a little bit too far, a little bit too far, too much. So I was like, okay. But yeah.

Matt Stauffer:
It's too much. Oh, that's funny. So you mentioned constraints and I that's one of the reasons why know you are also an artist, but you know, it's okay. Every artist I know and I went to art school talks about the best art comes from the constraints versus like the wide open page, you know, like in a lot of design exercises and art exercises that you're given early on when you're being trained in that direction is

To say like and it seemed for writing right like with writing they're gonna give you a prompt and the point of the prompt is to say with this specific constraint you can actually find much more creativity than if you just had the wide open world in front of you. Terminal seems like it could have given you a lot of really interesting constraints versus you know for example like designing on the terminal, designing on a coffee bag, building a brand that is both very quirky and you know open to just a lot of creative, but you're also trying to look like a legitimate brand and make some money and stuff like that.

What was the experience of designing for Terminal like both from a perspective of just kind of like, it new to you relative to what you'd done prior? And were there anything really interesting around the constraints of designing for the actual physical terminal? Designing those coffee bags was sort of throwback to your old way. Just kind of what was it like?

David Hill:
Yeah, I mean, yeah, Terminal is like my kind of creative outlet in a sense sometimes.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah.

David Hill:
It's like the things that I can't get away with or do at Laravel. I can like, those ideas can get used at Terminal. In terms of constraints, like I'm really lucky that Adam Elmore is like an exceptional developer with like such a creative eye. And he can take like what are like rather like simple designs and he just sort of like adds like little flourishes to them sometimes.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah.

David Hill:
Yeah, I asked him what the constraints were and he just said, just design what you want and I'll try and make it work. So like, mean, obviously, like I took, I took a look at like what were the terminals style like out there. There weren't many. There seems to be a little bit of a rise of it over the last 12 months. Like there's a lot more of it I see.

Matt Stauffer:
Truly. Yeah.

David Hill:
I actually saw some work by Joe, Joe Tannenbaum before we worked together. And then when I found out we were together, like we were together, like a couple, we were working together. Yeah.

Matt Stauffer:
Nice.

Yeah. Yep.

David Hill:
Yeah, that was amazing. then recently, Ashley, Ashley Hindle, he's amazing. yeah, I've seen his work for a long time and then met him at Laravel Live UK. Now he's officially announced it today, think. Yeah, he announced it today. He's official. The terminal product, the design for all of that, again, is all based on constraints. The logo itself is obviously like, I didn't go crazy with it.

Matt Stauffer:
Nice, now he's here. I love it, yeah.

David Hill:
I I've shared my exploration or I might do one day is like just, you know, didn't go too wide because then you wanted to keep it simple. And it's just like that orange square. And then we just started to like buy that square at the end of sentences. It was like, well, we'll just have a hoodie with like the word hoodie and like square at the end. It's like, it simple. The original website design, like the terminal design, I actually did that because I was away at a friend's 40th birthday party with like, with for a weekend, like families and kids everywhere.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah.

David Hill:
I had to peel away for like three hours and just like right in the morning I got up early and I was like, I just need to design, we have to ship it, so have to design it. I was like, the constraint is I've only got three hours, so I've got to keep it simple. And I also knew that Laravel is like my full-time focus. Terminal is kind of like on the side, so it's like the two never have to like fight each other. Yeah, so it's like anything I do has to be like, there's time constraints to it for Terminal. Like it has to be simple. So that's...

That's basically where it came from. like with like the packaging, again, that was, I didn't want to have to think every time we had a bug, oh, we've got a new bag. I've got to start from scratch. It's almost like the Penguin books, right? It's like, they've got like a template, a theme, and then it's like, we've got this panel at the front, it wraps around the side, and that is like our creative panel. We can go wild in there. We can stay within those constraints. We can break out sometimes, but we're just going to follow the same template and just have to like duplicate the file and just place new designs in that panel and send it to print.

We'll flip them together.

Matt Stauffer:
Well, I mean, they feel, I know you know this, but just from outside, they feel incredibly cohesive and also incredibly varied at the same time, which is to me a remarkable achievement, that's not, it's hard to get both and you got both. So I think you're good at your job. Of course.

David Hill:
Yeah. Thanks, man. Thanks. I will see how you keep saying that. I think things are going to change in the... Well, we've got, we created this membership called Cron, which is a Laravel podcast.

Matt Stauffer:
Whatever, we're talking to you, okay?

David Hill:
You shouldn't talk about this so much, but we've got a Cron and okay, cool. And that requires us to like shit more consistently monthly. So you have like our staple blends, is like the case of designs, but then the monthly blends are more like, you know, experimental and we can have fun with it and like break the rules and they'll be bit different.

Matt Stauffer:
That's really fun. I had seen Cron, but I hadn't got a chance to take a look at it. And just so you know, if anybody has not tried it out, you should definitely check out Terminal Coffee. They made an artisan blend. I assume that was a one-off and it's not available anymore, but it was very good. Like I'm a coffee nerd and I was like, I'm going to, I said this on the internet, but I'll say this now on the podcast. I expected that I was going to order it and it was going to be a novelty that I was going to do to support my friends.

And I was like, yeah, I'm going do this thing because I like you and because I want to have the fun experience of ordering coffee through the terminal. And I tried it. I was like, this is really good coffee. That was not a part of the plan. So yeah, that turned out really nicely.

David Hill:
Yeah, it's legit. Like we really tried. Like it's a family friend and they really do source good coffee. It's not like this, no, what's the word, like drop shipped kind of experience. It's not that at all.

Matt Stauffer:
Yes, it's definitely what I expected and I was wrong. Yeah.

David Hill:
Not that at all. But no, to your point about artisan, you can still get artisan, but you have to come to Laracon to buy it because that's where it's all going to be.

Matt Stauffer:
Love that. Buy your Laracon tickets. Okay, so a couple more questions for you before we wrap. I wanted to talk a little bit about like Laravel versus other places you've been, because obviously you have not, like a lot of people who I've talked to came from Vercell or came from other, like I was embedded in a different technical community. And I know that's not exactly the case for you, but I do know that you're kind of connected to other places in the internet. Do you have a sense for what the general design aesthetic and design interest and design ability among the people of the Laravel community is compared to other technical communities that you have access to.
And I don't have an answer. This is not like a leading question, but I'm like, well, we are PHP developers. So maybe we're like worse at design versus JavaScript, which is more front end people. But I don't actually know. Do you have like a sense for how design does or doesn't play a role in Laravel versus elsewhere on the internet?

David Hill:
That is a good question. I mean, I don't want to, I wouldn't pit it against PHP versus JavaScript and like, who can do that and who can't? Yeah, I don't need that.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah, we don't need any more of this. Yeah.

David Hill:
But the, I would say, I mean, my experience of, so my experience of the Laravel community started back in 2020, in the 2019, 2020. I got to meet a bunch of people in the community. felt like it's just such a friendly community. I just asked questions and just say, hey, Laravel community. And people would like, I would find people and they would find me.

Matt Stauffer:
I love it.

David Hill:
I would say that my experience through that community is that it's lots of indie makers, so that they're responsible for the design and the development. And because they're responsible for the design, there's lots of, and all this is said in the most positive way, there's no shame. It's like they leverage tools that they have available to them, right? Because they recognize that they're not a designer. So they're using lots of...you know, the Tailwind UI stuff and Shad Cian stuff. So there's lots of like that. But then, and then when there is a need for design, like to like, they, like, I want to say over design it maybe because like, because they maybe they're conscious that they're not a designer. So like, then they compensate over design things and things just get busy. But I wouldn't say that's like, that's like a Laravel versus non Laravel thing. I think that's just a, if you're not a designer sometimes knowing when to say no, and you just keep on adding more stuff to it. So I think that's just more like a, yeah, full stack developer thing that tends to happen sometimes. And not in everybody, obviously, that's just a, I'm generalizing a lot, but it's...

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah. Well, and that, that does lead to one of my other questions, which is I always like to ask people on podcasts, like if someone wanted to get to be where you are today, what are some places, are there courses, are there practices, are there books, are there podcasts, videos, are there any other kinds of resources you'd say like, if you want to eventually become, you know, like at my level, here are a couple of things that helped me get here.

David Hill:
I you have to, I say to people all the time and friends in particular, like you have to do the doing. It sounds like it doesn't even make sense in a way, like do the doing, like you just have to do. Like you can take like the amount of courses that I've bought and not taken, like, and so I could recommend, I could recommend a course, but it doesn't mean like you're going to take it and means I'm not taking it. And the amount of books I bought and maybe read half and not finished it. So.

Matt Stauffer:
Sitting on the shelf somewhere, yeah.

David Hill:
Yeah, like you have to just, my phone, my wife laughs because the photos on my phone are just either like the kids, family or just like random things that I see. Just like we go past a like a tube station advert and I think a picture, we're taking a picture of it as an advert for like, I don't know, dog food. And I'm like, yeah, but look at the typography. Like I'm just, so I take pictures of everything.

Matt Stauffer:
I'm good.

David Hill:
I bookmark lots of things like inspiration. Like I have like a very organized bookmark section and like I categorize things so that whenever I have to design something, I'm not just sat in front of a blank screen. I just pull references straight away. And it's not like I'm copying. It's just like, I need inspiration. Like I need that stimulus. So yeah, my advice would be you have to put in the time, you have to put in the hours, you have to just pick a design tool. Doesn't even matter which. I mean, Figma is probably the dominant one right now, but

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah.

David Hill:
We didn't have that back in the day. was, you know, MS Paint and then it was Photoshop and Sketch. So no, I would say open up Figma and start designing. Start with a pen and paper and start designing. Just take other people's designs, even if you're struggling with ideas and just riff on it and just try and recreate stuff. There's certain parts of design muscles that you have to...

stretch and practice with one is like creating concepts, like start with a concept and have your own concepts. And if you're not there yet, then just for your own personal, you know, needs like just not to share and claim claim as your own, but just for you at home, just take other people's designs and just try to copy it. So you just learn the tools like you learn your actual tool. Exactly. Master your tool and then start layering in like your concepts like well I've known my tool now and I've got this idea and yeah.

Matt Stauffer:
The implementation ability. Yeah. Huh.

David Hill:
That's just do the doing. That's all I can say really.

Matt Stauffer:
I love that. So as you have been working at Laravel, I mean, I know probably a decent amount what you've been doing is learning on leaning on existing skills because you both have been an implementation person. We've also been a leader, you know, at Barclays, you know, had a team underneath you. Are there things that you've done at Laravel where you're like, I had to learn this on job. I've never done anything like this before.

David Hill:
Public speaking, is something that I didn't,

Matt Stauffer:
Okay, fair. How was that for you?

David Hill:
I mean, that was like an out of body experience. Like the most I'd spoken to, spoken to, sorry, speaking, is my wedding, which is like family and friends, 100 people. And then Taylor asked me to, you know, talk at the keynote last year. And I was like, I was like, start of June, I wasn't employed by Laravel. Now I'm stood backstage next to Taylor at

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah.

David Hill:
you know, in Dallas, like about to go on. And the funniest thing was, was I didn't know when I was going on. Like it wasn't like I was waiting for like the hour mark or the half an hour mark. I just didn't know when I was going on. I probably should have known there was just so much going on. And Sam just stood there waiting to hear my name and just like, it was no, so public speaking is something that I hadn't really had to do. No internal presentations to large groups perhaps, but nothing on that scale. So yeah, in terms of

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah. Well, you're excellent at it, Sorry.

David Hill:
Oh, thank you. But in terms of day to day, it also comes to mind right now. I mean, there's lots. At times, it feels a lot more technical. I feel like I'm closer to the technology side of things and trying to understand the technology, especially on Cloud, than I may have done in the past. Just because maybe it's not just software as a service, it's a platform. So there's just more to understand. So that's been a big interest and learning point.

But even then I can't claim to even understand all of it or half of it. I just know I had to understand more of it in order to be able to design for it.

Matt Stauffer:
Yeah. So you said you've been building with Laravel since 2020. Do you think that being a developer, capable developer with experience developing makes it easier being a designer development company versus if you just came in blind?

David Hill:
I think so. I mean, you added the word capable. I didn't say capable.

Matt Stauffer:
I did.

David Hill:
I know that I haven't really made anything notable for a little while now, but basically I wanted to get back into coding. And so I tweeted, what should I learn? What is the new thing? And I said I had a bit of PHP experience from WordPress. And then Laravel was like the response. And I actually hired a developer in Morocco called Abdelila. And he, yeah, he coached me. We tupled like daily and like, just paid him and like, he taught me how to make apps. So that was cool. I recently showed Joe Dixon. We revived one of my old projects when we were at Laravel Live together. And he's like, let's dig it out. Let's see. So that he will say that I'm not capable having seen the code base.

Matt Stauffer:
Cool.

David Hill:
Uh, so I was really proud. I was like, we got to go in again. I was like, look at this and you can do this. And I was like, it's you know, it's actually off requests. And I'm like, I was like, I think events and notifications and it's like, you know, at custom domains and he, was like, nothing I could say could impress this guy. He's like, I made Cloud. Yeah. So

Matt Stauffer:
I mean, you're not comparing yourself against the fairest other person, you know? Like, you know, start with somebody lower than Joe.

David Hill:
No, know. Yeah, I know, right. But no, no. I think my thing is when I'm making things or designing things, like it's just knowing when to stop, right? Like that handover point. Like, and I think I've got better at it now, but like you have to know what comes next. think like you can't really design to something if then you don't know how it's implemented. And I think sometimes that can be an advantage because you can just be wildly creative. But I think when you're doing like in like a business setting, there has to be like a level of pragmatism to it. So you have to know how it's going be made to know the constraints again. and even if it's just HTML, CSS, you don't have to get into the back end, you know, works.

Matt Stauffer:
All right, I have one last question for you and then I'll ask you if there's anything else you wanted to cover. But my one last question for you is if you suddenly didn't have this crazy overwhelm, which you've just been slammed for a year and your whole team slammed for a year, so you care for them. If you hit a point where you had like, let's say three, four weeks where you didn't have anything on your plate, is there like a dream design project at Laravel where you're like, oh man, because you had mentioned kind of the fonts and stuff like that, the custom fonts, is that it? Or is there anything else where you're like, If I just had the time, I would love to do this.

David Hill:
New question. I mean, yeah, I think it's the brand is the one, the brand is the one part of like, I mentioned the product marketing and brand and it's the one that it kind of touches on everything. Like that Laravel brand like touches through everything. And yet we still haven't carved out the time to really give it the time it deserves. So I would love to figure out all aspects of that. don't think four weeks is even enough to start doing that. You can try and put a dent in it, but there's just so much. The tone of voice and animation. Animation is a big one for me at the minute. We're trying to include more of it at Laracon. We did it with the speaker announcements, just trying to add a little bit of motion and movement instead of static PNGs. We really want to try and add more motion and movement to things.

Matt Stauffer:
Certainly not. Yeah.

David Hill:
No, yeah, I would want to spend more time on the brand side. I would love to have a typography. I just think that'd be so cool. Like to have like a Laravel typeface. But yeah.

Matt Stauffer:
That'd be really cool. Yeah. I love that. Okay. Well, then my actual last question is, there anything that you hoped we could have talked about today that we didn't get a chance to talk about?

David Hill:
I think on demand, it's actually quite fun. First podcast, so was like, yeah, this is a bit of fun.

Matt Stauffer:
I love that. God, that makes me happy. you're, you know, I tell a lot of these people this after we get off the call, but I'm just going to tell you directly since we're here, like you're doing a great job. Like you're a fantastic guest. You have, you, you, you, not only do you tell interesting stories and you kind of go off the edge a little bit, but you like know when to kind of take a pause and give it, you're, you're doing a great job. So you should do more of this.

David Hill:
Thanks man. Appreciate that.

Matt Stauffer:
Well, I mean, guess that is the wrap of this one. So thank you so much for hanging out. Thank you for sharing. Of course, thank you for the work you do for our community and look forward to seeing what you've been putting together for Forge, Laracon and all the other things that are coming out soon.

David Hill:
Yeah, it's going to be a busy few weeks.

Matt Stauffer:
I believe it. Well, thank you for a little bit your time in the midst of all this.

David Hill:
Thanks Matt, appreciate it. Bye.

Matt Stauffer:
Okay, the rest of y'all, we'll see you next time.