Strath McKay: AI Has Made Design Harder

Like people always ask, oh man, is your job getting so much easier now with AI? And I'd say truthfully, I think it's getting harder to be honest. It's way harder than it used to be. And like stuff that we used to get paid for as designers like a year ago even doesn't exist anymore. Like, you know, it's quick to get 80% of the way there and then you'll spend a week plus just doing these small changes. And I'm like, there's got to be a better way.

Welcome to Beyond the Brief. On today's episode, I'm speaking with Strath McKay, co-founder of Akima Studio based out of Byron Bay. Strath has built a broad and slightly unconventional design career. He started as a mechanic before then moving into branding and graphic design and working with everyone from coffee companies through to Web3 businesses before finally settling in digital products and UX. It has a strong visual point of view, which is backed by a real understanding of our products work and how people use them. Two things really stood out to me in this conversation. The first is how Strath is using AI creatively. He's not simply asking it to produce finished work. He's building small, completely customised tools that give him new ways to create. If an existing product doesn't have the controls or output that he needs, it can now make the exact tool that the project calls for. The second is how he's using the same technology to remove the drudgery. In this episode, we cover a proposal system that That he built that turns a client conversation into a simple website based proposal in minutes. And it was this dual nature of utilization that was really interesting to me from the creative support through the operational improvements. It was a great conversation and we cover a lot. So let's get into it. Strath, welcome to the show. Strath, welcome to the show. How are you?

Good man. How are you?

Yeah, I'm great. It's good to have you on. It's been really good to see from afar, Akeema, the work that you've been doing. You sort of hit me up when I was early in my journey as well. And I really liked the work that you're doing. So I thought it'd be really good to have you on and talk about what you've done, where you've come from and how you're using AI within the studio. So let me know a little bit about your past and your history. Where have you come from and what have you done?

Yeah, for sure. Thanks for having me, by the way. Yeah, it's a pretty interesting origin story, to be honest. But just a little intro about myself. I'm Strath. I'm based on the East Coast of Australia. So I'm currently running Akima Studio, which you mentioned. So we're basically like a boutique design studio. It's myself and my business partner, Jake. And focus mostly on like web design, product design, a lot more AI stuff now. So, but like, as you know, with how fast things are changing, that service offering changes just about every couple of months into like, you know, the different things that we do and how that all works, how we work with clients. So yeah, it's a very interesting time, but definitely enjoying it for sure.

Yeah, we'll get into that.

Yeah, for sure. But your question about the origin story, like what's...

Tom, and what's led you to this path now where you've started Akima and you're doing this digital product design?

Yeah. So, actually a pretty interesting story. I used to be a mechanic, so I came out of school and I'm from a small surf town on the East Coast of Australia. So everyone was either becoming a tradie or something similar. So I didn't know what to do. Jumped into that, realised pretty quickly that I hated it. And this is just like when Instagram was first coming out, starting to become a thing. I started seeing people like working remotely, living overseas, like the whole digital nomad thing. And I just remember thinking, if I can do that, like my life will be sorted. Like, so I pretty much made it my number one goal. It's like if I can work from a laptop and live overseas, yeah, I'll be the happiest man alive, which we'll get into, but it doesn't quite work out like that. Yeah. So from there, it sort of led me into like, okay, what can I do? And at the time I was doing a bit of photography and stuff like that. And I thought, oh, I need to do something where it can be a hundred percent remote, work on the laptop. So I was already in this sort of creative industry. So I thought, you know what, I'm going to be, become a designer. Like at the time it was graphic design was the big thing, obviously web design too, but it was like early days of, of products and apps and iPhones and stuff like that. So quit my job, bought a laptop and, signed up for a uni course.

Yes. That's awesome. You just decided to, you just quit and away you went. Was that daunting or at the time it was sort of that youthful naivety where you'd just like, oh, I'll just do it.

Oh man. I was so ready. I was like, I'll, I'll do anything. Like it was, it was a bit of a mix of that youthful naivety and just like, oh yeah, I'll hustle whatever I have to do to make it work.

You really didn't want to be a mechanic. No way.

But, it's an interesting story how I kind of got into it. So I signed up for this uni course. It was three years, like a bachelor of design. I just got a laptop, like probably two weeks before that. So before I was just like, you know, using the phone pretty green to the whole thing. And then I was on a photo shoot. Like I was doing a bit of paid photography work and then I was on this shoot and I met this guy who was paying for the shoot and he had a startup, based in Brizzy, like a tech startup. And he's like, oh, I'm putting together in this creative team. I told him like, yeah, man, I'm studying design, blah, blah, I hadn't even started yet, but I was just sort of like told him as a designer and he's like, oh, do you, would you be keen to like come and work for us? Maybe do like a paid internship or something. I was like, yeah, sure. So jumped into that and started this internship and it was just like such a ridiculous situation. I had no idea what I was doing, but I was kind of pretending I was a designer. Cause I told him I was, so I'm sitting there.

I think we, we all still are.

Oh man.

We all still pretend. Yeah. Oh, that's great. It's so you just, it just exposed to a lot, really early on, but you just had to, you had to pretend and learn really fast. Right?

Yeah, exactly. But like, that's honestly the best way to do it is just get chucked in the deep end. And yeah, he would, you know, they would request all this stuff. Like, Hey, can you get this to us and design this? And I'd be there like trying to figure out like YouTubing, how to do Illustrator and Photoshop.

It's nice.

You know, I meant to know what I'm doing. But I learned, learned fast, which was, which was really good. Great.

So how'd you end up in Bali then?

Yeah. Interesting story. Like, obviously, as I mentioned, it was always the goal is to, go and live overseas and work from the laptop. So it took a little bit longer than I expected. I thought it was going to be a quick journey, but ended up, you know, doing that internship that turned into a paid job. And then this was still in my first year of uni. Another full-time design role. And so I remember sitting, it was like just before the end of my first year at uni, I remember sitting there, like talking to the other people there and going, hang on. Like I have so much more experience than any of these people. Like essentially they had no idea. And I was like, man, I'm already onto like my second, essentially full-time design job. And like the amount of things I've learned during that has been ridiculous. And I'm like, why would I waste the next two years here when I can just go and like, just dive in head first and actually work for clients. Cause like, as you know, you know, if you're doing like a mock-up job or whatever, it's so different to like a real client project where it's like, you know, there's serious consequences for getting things wrong. And you got to do it properly. You know, you got to check, check all your pictures.

Yeah. I remember at uni, I had an entire semester to do an identity and a gig poster, for a festival or something. And that was the, that was the whole semester. And out of, out of uni, you have to do that in like a week.

Yeah.

It's just the real, the real world, it works at a lot of different pace. So yeah, I definitely understand where you're coming from. If you, you're working with clients, you, you, you're going to level up really, really quickly.

Yeah, for sure. Super interesting. But, yeah, onto that of like, so this was a lot more graphic design kind of stuff and just, I was always interested, like getting into web and app design and everything. Yeah. It was still pretty like relatively new to it. This will lead into how we got to Bali. So I had a mentor at the time, who I met in my, during my internship and he was a product designer and he was always sort of pushing me into this product kind of side of thing. This is a few years later and he goes, oh man, I've got this, job to design an app like end to end branding UX UI, like the full thing. Do you want to do it with me? I was like, yeah, sure. So it's like, I jumped into that with him and just got to sit in on the whole experience. So we had all these stakeholder meetings, like I was going there and, you know, watching him work because he was obviously had a lot more experience than me. And it's like, well, like this is actually crazy. It's a crazy world. Like, you know, get it, diving deep into the old business requirements and how it actually works to build a product from scratch. Which I learned a lot. So I did quite a bit of work with him. And then obviously. You know, that turned into more things, got referrals and stuff. And then I had planned to move to Bali and I just started a, my previous studio, which was a lot more focused on like branding and stuff. And this guy calls me up and goes, Hey man, I've got this job. If you want it, it's a crypto gig based in the U S are you interested? And I was like, yeah, sure. So he put me in contact with them and it was just like, that's a whole crazy story in itself, but essentially got this like contracting gig that turned into a two year engagement with this, crypto company called Juicebox.

And so at the time you were, you would, you were designing for like coffee brands and stuff, right? I did a little bit of research. You were doing sort of graphic design work and this sort of Web3 stuff came out of nowhere. Did you have any experience with Web3 at all?

Yeah. It was kind of like the, the perfect storm. So I was, I've been into crypto, I think like yourself since the early days, 2017 was like my first exposure and, you know, went through that whole bull market and got super into it then and obviously the next one. And so I was always super into crypto and it sort of just like came up this opportunity to do, you know, do you want this, it's like product design role, but in crypto. And I was like, yeah, of course.

Yeah. Yeah. Amazing. Cause the experience, the actual, user experience of the whole space is, I mean, I'm going to be blunt. I think it's pretty awful. It's very hard to use the products.

It's insane, man. You just can't even believe how bad it is for.

Yeah. Yeah. And so to, to expect the average person to use that sort of stuff, I think is, is a bit of a reach because of how bad the experience is. So I guess as a product designer, it's a good opportunity because you, you have to really understand the whole, the way it all works with your wallets and etc. And to create something that's usable is a big, big challenge in that space. So did you learn a lot from that about like user experience and flows and things like that?

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. So this, it was an interesting, kind of scenario. Cause it was essentially, it was like a, it was a DAO basically, but they had like contributors who are like paid contributors. So it's like, I say contracting gig, but it was like, yeah, the structure was very different, but it was all anonymous as well. Yeah. Like a lot of stuff is in crypto, which I mean, if you've been in the crypto space, that, that sounds normal. But when I tell people like I worked at this job for two years and spoke to people every day and I didn't know what they looked like or who they were and they're just like, what do you mean dude?

So this, this guy is my, my boss and he's a, he's a fluffy rabbit. You know, you just have no idea what it, random little thumbnails of people.

What? It's crazy, man. It's like, it's a, it's a wild world, but I was always really interested in it. Cause like, obviously as a UX designer getting into crypto, I was like, this is ridiculous. Like all of these products, they, you know, they're kind of made by developers and they go, oh, this is how we want it to work. And like, everyone will just, they expect everyone to know everything. I'm like, this is crazy dude. Like the average person would never be able to come on here and just.

I, I could never get my head around that. I don't know whether it's a, it's a level of, it's potentially hubris. I don't know, but they, they expect people to use it the way that it makes sense to them. And it, that doesn't make sense to anybody. It's just, you know. You have to cut, you have to start with the experience and work back from there. And I think that's a, it's a hard pill to swallow for some people in that space. And there wasn't very many projects that I experimented with where I thought, okay, this is actually really enjoyable to use. Even some of the mainstream stuff's really hard. Like I use Jack Dorsey's BitKey for Cold War. And even that is, you know, it's supposed to be super simple, but sometimes it's, it confuses me, right? So it's, it's, an interesting space. And so you did, you did a couple of years in that and, and tribal fire learning all the ins and outs.

Yeah. Yeah. Sure. Again, like I, the role that I took on was the lead UX designer, for this company. And I was essentially like, you know, I didn't have no idea what I doing. Like I'd done a few apps here and there and websites, but I was pretty, pretty new to the whole space. And then like getting chucked in with a whole bunch of solidity developers and everything. And they're just like blah, blah, contracts and this and that. And, you know, just having to learn on the fly. But I think it taught me so much about all the lingo. Yeah. Yeah. But like about actual user experience design, which I think a lot of us came into this to kind of do, which I was always super interested in. Like, and I think that's something that doesn't get spoken about. I don't know about you, but like, I haven't heard the word UX design in such a long time, like on Twitter or.

I, I, yeah, I, I think you're right. I think that the title of UX designer, it kind of conjures up this image of like post-it notes and bad wireframes. And someone that does, you know, you research with focus groups and stuff. I think that that is somewhat changing, you know, UX designer is, is someone who see, it's almost like your product lead, you know, you're thinking about the experience of the application through from start to finish, you're not just designing screens. So there's more to it. Yeah. And I don't know if UX designer as a title is, is, I think it's changing. I think you're right. Yeah.

Definitely. Like I, it would be quite laughable nowadays for someone to just be like, oh, I'm just going to be a UX designer and I can't do any visual design and I can't, you know, build products or anything. I'm just going to do, you know, the sticky notes in the workshops and that's it. I mean, maybe at a massive company.

Well, yeah. Well, what, okay. Question for you. Why do you think that is like, is there, it feels like roles are converging. It feels like as a designer, you have to do more. Do you feel that with your, your customers and clients? Yeah. Why do you think that's happening?

Oh man. Absolutely. Like people always ask, oh man, is your job getting so much easier now with AI? Yeah. I think it's getting harder to be honest. It's, it's way harder than it used to be. And like something that just blows my mind is stuff that we used to get paid for as designers like a year ago, even doesn't exist anymore. Like, I don't know about you, but a year ago I was getting paid well to do static, Figma designs and just hand them off to developers. Nowadays, like that is just absolutely not a thing. You know, it's like, you pretty much expected to be able to build, build your own stuff. And, you know, at least to a, to a degree that's like, you can hand it off to someone to implement, but it needs to be, you know, you can't just be like, oh, here's my static design and go and do it. So that side of things, there is the,

Yeah, sorry, I was gonna say, yeah, you're right. Expectations have changed. You know, it's, if you're just doing static screens, there are some people that are still doing that quite successfully. And I think it takes a while for the entire market to catch up. I'm sure you could sell that, you know, in certain cities, but generally speaking, you're right. Like I, I find that when I'm working with people now, they, they don't want to just see a design. They actually want to use the thing, you know, like, well, what do you mean you haven't built a prototype? Like I heard AI made that really easy. So there's this expectation that the technology makes things so easy now, that you just have to do more. So I, I, am with you. You have to do a lot more.

A lot more. It's crazy. And I think, especially with clients that like understand it a bit, but not enough to realise how difficult some of the stuff is. And I feel like something that is frustrating, people are valuing design a little bit less depending on the client. But like, I had a client call this morning and we're talking about, you know, the redesign of this, this site. And it's like quite a complex, like web app. And she goes, oh, can't you just use Reloom? And I'm like, you could, but it's just, it's not like, she's obviously seen like, you know, you see like the promotional video. And it's like, wow, you can just go click click click and it makes the wireframes. And then you get this perfect design. And I'm like, yeah, it's never going to turn out like that. And it's, it's not that easy. And, you know, I was sort of explaining the process of doing the discovery and like talking, because it's like, if it's a complex experience, like talking to some of the users, finding out where they're getting stuck and actually doing like a design process rather than just like, can you make it look better? But I think people are now just thinking AI is just this magic thing. Just boom, click a few buttons and it's, it's new machines. Yeah. It's the same thing. It's just crazy.

You're, you're, yeah, absolutely. And it's the same, look, it's just the same thing as like when Canva came out, right? Or even Microsoft Word, you know, people thought, oh, I'll, I used, you know, if you do identity design, used to do business cards and letterheads, like that was the thing, right? You build the letterhead template. That shows how old I am. But then, you know, people got Word and they just do it themselves. But then they'd mess everything up, you know, they get the bleeds wrong or, you know, they couldn't print it properly or they just like, they put paste graphics in rather than having fonts and stuff. So it's the same with this. So I can say with Canva, you know, oh, you can just, just use Canva now and I can do it myself. It's like, yes, you can, but it's with AI tools, someone who knows what they're doing is going to get a much better result than someone who doesn't. So if you're going to use Claude to spit out an app design with Claude design, make me an app design for this, you're just going to get average and it's going to look like everyone else that, that went as far as that. And it's not going to work very well. It requires someone like yourself who's got the experience of actually thinking through how it's supposed to work and distilling that down into a unique experience, that only shows the user what they need to see. It guides them through. It's really easy, right? You can't just, yeah, shout out to Relium though. It is a cool product. I like, and those, they're really, they're, they're good guys. But yeah, you know, those sorts of products have made people think that it's a lot easier than it really is, but they're just like, they're just a type of paintbrush, right?

Exactly.

Yeah. So, so what was next? Yeah. What happened after that? Yeah.

After the crypto thing?

Yeah. So you, you, did a bit of crypto, you worked with wallets, you did a bunch of UX and, yeah. How did you get back into Queensland and, and into Akima?

Yeah. So this, this part is pretty interesting. So I was working for this for Juicebox and having a lot of fun and then had a few referrals from that and started working with some other agencies, like all in the crypto space, kind of design in, in that space and helping, you know, create these products and just different things. And I was just getting a lot of work coming in and at the same time, like we were getting paid in crypto for some of these jobs. And then you're like, you're getting these tokens and then they're going up and we're coming into this bull market. And it was just starting to get into this kind of out of control crypto bull market situation, which I know you're, you've, you've probably experienced. And at, at the time I'm living in Bali, so it was like, I was living with my wife and then my best mate and his wife lived there and we're all sort of doing a similar thing. And yeah, it just got to a point where I was like, man, I've been so burnt out from like, I was just hustling for basically seven years straight to try and get to this point. And now I've like, I've hit what I would essentially call like my dream life. And I'm like, I'm going to take a bit of time off. So, you know, while this crypto is rolling in and, you know, I had some of these projects and stuff, I'm just going to, you know, take a step back, take a bit of time off. And this like little bit of time off turned into over a year off, just completely off. So it was like pretty crazy, but I just, I feel grateful that I got to experience that. And it should have probably taken me longer to get bored. I mean, but I got probably about three or four months in, I realised like, man, you can't just, if you just surf every day and do nothing, it gets pretty boring pretty quickly. So it's like, I need to, I need to do something. But I had like a wedding coming up. So I got married and went on this long honeymoon and just had a lot of fun. But coming back to that, it just starts to feel super pointless and empty after a while. You just like, you know, wake up, go surfing, go to the cafe, like hang out. And you're like, what do you mean this?

It's one of those things that sounds nice. You know, I had a similar experience. It sounds nice to do that, but you lose purpose and you feel like you're, for me anyway, it kind of feels like your brain just stops working. You, you've got to, and if you're a hustler, you've been doing that for seven years. You know, you're the, you, you want to keep doing that. You know, it's something that's in. For sure.

And something that I, what made me realise like, okay, I need to go and like, you know, get back into the world and start doing something, getting my purpose, you know, make an impact, whatever you want to call it is like going to these like social, obviously living in Bali, there's a lot of social situations, heaps of parties and paddle. And like, you're always meeting people and you'd meet people and they'd be like, what do you do? And it's like, oh, well, I'm a designer. You, or used to be a designer. Now I do crypto. And it's like, it's just such a boring story. Like nobody cares that you just do crypto. You know, it's so sorry to all like the crypto bros out there, but I just felt so boring.

It's not a positive one, is it? Yeah. No, no way.

So yeah, we decided to make the move back to, back to, I was like, we're in Bali for three years. So it's like, all right, it's time to get back there. I want to start a business. Start at the time. I was like, I'm just going to jump back into freelancing and see where that takes me. And the, the tough part about that was like, when I stopped working, AI was just sort of becoming a thing. Like it wasn't really a big part of my process. Using ChatGPT a bit and You know, some of the stuff for client notes, but it really wasn't that big. And like, just having that year off and then coming back into it early 2025, it was like, whoa, everything's different now. Yeah. It's like seriously different. And so it was like quite an adjustment, just like jumping back in. But I think that kind of reinvigorated my excitement for the space of just being like, wow, like I can do this now and this now. And every month there's a new thing. And oh, now I can build and now we can code and shit. What if I did this?

And when, when was that, when was that moment for you where you, you really clicked that, oh, this is something different. This is something that's going to change everything. Cause everyone's had that moment when they play with this stuff, you know, starts with the chat bot, but then you have that moment where you think, okay, nothing's the same.

Yeah. I think it might've been early this year, like January 26 or end of 2025, where I really got into Claude Code. Mm-hmm. And I was like, oh, hang on. Mm-hmm. Like we can literally do anything now. Cause before, I don't know about you, but I, not that I felt limited by the developer handoff, but it like quite often, you know, I'd come up with this like amazing design and we're going to have this and, you know, animation direction and stuff. And you give it to the devs and like, no, we can't animate that. No, we can't do this. Like, so there was always that barrier of like what you could, they couldn't do.

They can, it just, it was too expensive and would take you off.

Exactly.

That was, yeah. So, and yeah, I had a similar experience and I've said this before. It was kind of, I've been using it for a while, but, for various things, generating images and doing the odd code snippets here and there, but it was never something that could be, I thought would be, you know, something I could lean into until yeah, like late last year. So it was the same, I think it was Opus four point something and, Claude Code. And, you know, you start playing with it and you're building things that you're testing it and you're building it and you're looking at the output. This is like production quality. This is blowing me away. That was a moment for me. It was that Christmas break. I just decided to spend more time learning and yeah, it knocked my socks off. Had an inkling before then you watching the progression get better. And then, you know, you, you see one model and you see the next model, you see the capability increase. And it does, you don't have to be an idiot to realise that it's going to keep going and it's going to be able to do more, but it's one thing to think about it. And it's another thing to sort of see it happen, and actually really impact your work. So yeah, it sounds like it had a pretty similar experience to me. It was playing with it around that period. And so if you, at that point then, did you sort of take that into a key mark or did you meet your, co-founder around that time or how did, how did that happen?

Yeah. Yeah. This is actually a really, another interesting story. So I was, yeah, sort of looking for the next thing. Like I was doing a bit of freelance when I got back and kind of, I was, you know, I'd been working alone essentially for quite a long time, freelancing and doing contracting stuff. And I was like, man, I want to do something in the world, like with people again. So I was sort of like trying to- Yeah. You know what I mean?

Like- Not funny, not funny avatars and anonymous heads. Yeah.

Yeah, for sure. And so I went down for a surf trip, to Byron Bay with a mate and he's like, oh, I just met this guy. He's going to come surfing with us tomorrow. And I thought, man, I don't want this random dude to come surfing with us. Like, you know what I mean? Anyway, so we get out there and we're just sitting in the surf, having a chat and he, I go, oh, what do you do? And he's like, oh, I'm a UX designer. And I was like, oh, no way. Like, cause it's, it's pretty rare to meet someone like in real life who does product design. Got chatting to him. I was like, yeah, I do the same thing. And then we surfed together. We were there for like three days. So we're just surfing every day and kept chatting about it. And he's like, oh, I'm thinking of starting this, like an agency. Cause he worked for a big agency at the time. He's like, I'm thinking of starting my own thing. RGA, right? Yeah. Yeah. Correct.

Very good. Yeah. Yeah.

And I was like, man, I'd be keen to, keen to jump in with you if you, if you're going to start something and he's like, let's do it. So we sort of started as a joke. We spoke about it and then we caught up like a month later and he's like, do you reckon we should just do this thing? So yeah, let's go. So we just kind of started and yeah, it just has been working super well since then. And you know, it's just pretty risky. You meet someone and they're complete random, like doing business for someone can be, as you probably know, it's always a bit of a risk.

Thank you. Great. Shout out to, is it Jake? Shout out to Jake.

Big shout out to Jake.

Nice. Oh, that's great. So, so the studio is going well. So, thanks for the, the, intro, the sort of history as well. That's great. You've done a lot. What was, what's kind of one thing that you learned from that journey that has led into the type of work you do now, right? It would, you know, you, you spent a lot of time in the crypto space. That's probably given you a bit of a UX brain. You've done a lot of branding, you know, you worked for, I think you did some branding and, you've got quite a diverse range of skills. What's kind of, what's kind of the main thing that you've taken from that to, to help you with the kind of work you're doing at Akima?

My biggest lesson I would say is you can just do way more than you think. And even if you think you don't know how to do it, especially now with AI, like if someone asks like, Hey, can you do this? Yeah, absolutely. I can do that. And you can always figure it out and it's probably not as hard as you think. And if it is, you can always, you know, get someone to help you. Yeah. So that's probably been my biggest takeaway. Another thing just on that is like the, I don't know if you've read the book, who not how, I think it's by Dan Sullivan. All right. I definitely recommend it, but it's like when you want to do something, it's like, who can help you do it rather than like, how can I do it? And that's just helped so many times of like, I don't know how to do this thing. And so, oh, I know someone who, you know, who's a specialist in that, reach out to them. They, you can always get help that way or they can push you through the right doors. And so, yeah, that's been, been a big unlock for me.

Oh, great. Yeah. Don't do it alone. Don't do it alone. Yeah.

Yeah, for sure. All right. Fantastic.

So, let's give it to Akima. Now you guys seem to be doing a bit of web, bit of digital design, product design. Give me the rundown of, of what your niche is, what you're focusing on. And then I want to sort of get an understanding of how you're using this new stack to create your work. How have you evolved from Figma and static screens to creating products?

Yeah, sure. So, Akima has essentially started as like a boutique design studio. So obviously, Jake has this like massive agency experience, which can be amazing, but also quite a slow process. And I come from like the more visual design branding side of things into products. So we wanted to create a studio where, you know, it's very taste led, which is a bit of a bad buzzword, right? With all the AI slot, I guess we wanted to have something. It's like, we actually put our craft into it and spend a lot of time and care going through, you know, going through the user experience, the user journey, like diving deep into the visual language and like creating something that's different and meaningful. And it's mostly focused on websites, to be honest, at the moment, like products is definitely something we do, but I just feel like that niche for us is, is really good. And like brand identity and stuff. But really interestingly, a lot of the outreach we've had lately has been Shopify. Like the last three clients in a row have all been Shopify e-commerce, which is really interesting. So we haven't like advertised for that at all, but something I'm noticing, I don't know if it's like the current economy or what's going on, but people are like, Hey, we've got this brand we used to do well, sales have dropped and I think it might be the website or like this and this, but it's a theme I'm noticing a lot. Like I've had a lot of outreach specifically around that in like the design kind of space.

And so you, are you focused on the sort of the conversion aspect of those types of experiences as well, or is it, the whole, are you just design and build the website or are you working ongoingly to improve, you know, conversion rates and sales? Are you sort of a goals based, objective based studio as well?

Yeah, for sure. So conversion rate is, has been a big thing. Like Jake did a lot of work on that in his, like his role that he was doing before. Quite a bit of e-commerce stuff in the past. It's like, obviously very focused on that as well as the design stuff, but it's just crazy now, like what you can do. Obviously with these tools and Shopify's CLI, it's like before, I don't know if you've done much of it, but it was like such a nightmare to try and get custom stuff done in Shopify. You'd have to have these developers and, and now it's like, man, you can just go Codex CLI. Bang. I want this. I want this. I want to do this. And it's just like, just perfectly.

You never need to leave your IDE. I think it's, is it Toby, the, the CEO? I mean, he, you, you look at his GitHub, he's, he's shipping every day.

Yeah, for sure.

They are, they seem to be very progressive in this space and the Shopify is being retooled to be sort of like an agent first experience, right?

Yeah. They've got like the whole.

And that just sees it grow and grow and grow. I think they're doing a, yeah, they're doing a phenomenal job. And as a designer, if you can just, I know this sounds crazy, but if you can work in an IDE with text, I, rather than having to learn another UI, that's, that's a huge unlock. Like you can just work a lot faster.

For sure.

So you've, you've found that as well, right? So you, you, you're getting a lot of Shopify customers, maybe because it's, it's a great brand and they're growing a lot and people want to use it because people are using it. But how are you using the tooling to, to help your customers with these sites? Like, are you, you're finding it a lot faster, you know, run us through a typical workflow for creating a Shopify site with this, this new tools.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. It's, like you've probably found, honestly, my design process, I'd say now sounds bad, but it changes with every new client, like every project, because the rate, these tools are growing and changing. It's like, oh, now you don't have to do this, but you can do this. And now, oh, we have to do this. So we're trying this new thing. So it's just, it's just this like ever changing morphing kind of thing. And then it's hard.

I don't think that sounds bad. I, I, think that's the right approach. Yeah.

Like the clap, like the double diamond, like the design process, like, you know, gather all the things to do this, converge, diverge, like, and now it's just totally different. But, yeah, in, in terms of like how we use AI in this process, something I've been, I've been finding, finding really good is like having basically we've got like a skill that kind of takes client notes, like a transcript from a call. Like we always run a workshop before we start and then it like packages it into this like succinct document that gives us everything we need, like requirements and everything like that. And then that'll sort of export a list of everything we need to go through. And then I'm still doing a lot of like the, the visual direction stuff. So I love to like Jake handles most of the, the UX and the data and the wireframes and like figuring out customer journey. And I'm jumping into a lot more visual direction and figuring that out and design systems and everything. But we essentially, what I'm finding is this, this like back and forth between Figma and the AI. I'm actually using Figma quite a bit more now than I was in previous months, just like now with the Figma agents and stuff. I don't know if you've tried it, but it's, it's been pretty good.

I've tried it a lot. And yeah, the, the first MCP release I thought was awful. I think I've been, but lately it's been a lot better that last agent release that they did. I'm getting a lot better results and I can do a lot more from the IDE. Like I don't necessarily need to open Figma as much for small changes. And the quality is not perfect, but it gets you a good of the way there. And then you can just do that last sort of refinement, right? Yeah, so it has definitely gotten better and, and it's good to see you still using it. I think like Figma as a tool and I've tried all those tools like pencil and paper and all the different ones, but I think there's like a muscle memory with Figma. Like you used it for so many years. You just know all the shortcuts, you know, where everything is and you just sort of get in that flow state a lot quicker. So I, I'm with you. I find iterating with an agent and Figma still probably the best way to design. Something changes. I'm hanging out for opacity by Drew Wilson. That looks really good, but yeah.

I'll have to look into it. But, Claude design as well, been playing with like, you know, like none of those will ever give you anything that is shippable even remotely in my opinion. Yeah. So it's like, but being able to just be like, Hey, give me three, three concepts for this section. And then you're like, Oh, cool. I kind of like this. I'm going to take this and tweak it. So it's a lot of that, like, all right, I'm going to tweak this and go back and forth. But what I've found, like, I think a lot of people will say, Oh, design me this and creating this webpage. And then they'll sit there and Claude Code and say, change this, change this, add this. Yeah. Which I've, I've done a lot of, but it just, you end up, you know, it's quick to get 80% of the way there. And then you'll spend a week plus just doing these small changes. And I'm like, there's gotta be a better way. And so I've, I've kind of built this, I don't know what you could sort of a harness system sort of thing, just from different, different elements that like can really, really accurately pull from Figma using the MCP, but just checking everything, making sure it's perfect. So it's like getting, getting it 80% of the way there and pulling that into Figma and then designing sections myself, like, as you know, just to get that level of craft, like designing it by hand is pretty unbeatable, but then being able to pull it back into a preview and be like, all right, let's like try some, you know, different animations on here and see what the hover effects and try this and tweaking that kind of stuff that would used to take forever trying to figure out in Figma. Yeah. Yeah.

Oh, you've nailed the workflow. I think you're, you're, you're dead on the money there, like iterating in an IDE for the last 20% is a nightmare. So it sounds like you're doing things the right way. The, I want to, I want to hone in on what you said around, you've created something that sort of produces your Figma designs more accurately. So, so you would generate something, you get it to do, it sounds like you're iterating with it, create a bunch of variations, and then you're doing the fine tuning, but then you've built something so that it can take a lot of variations. Take a frame and accurately build it out like a one-to-one because I found that to be inconsistent. How did you do that? What are you doing?

Dude, it's, it's one of the classic things. So I was like part of this store community where it was, it was kind of like a way to do that. And so I pulled a version of that from there and I was like, this is kind of working, but not super well. So I'm like, all right, let's try this. And like iterating on it, just trying it heaps at different times. And then like, all right, how can we morph this to work with Shopify to trying that? And then like, okay, this doesn't like something it was doing is like reading everything, every single time, and then going through the whole theme, every single time, checking everything and then making the change. And it was like, just spending all these tokens and just like taking forever. I was like, what's going on? So it's like building out this thing, you know, you're making all of these mistakes. And eventually it just got to the stage where it's like, okay, it's, it's checking its own work and checking it against Figma well enough that it's like, I'm actually finding it really fast to be able to build a section in Figma and then just say, hey, implement this, chuck it in there. And then I can tweak little bits and pieces and then bring it back if needed. But I'm finding that a lot faster than just going through, you know, 10 AI slot iterations and trying to tell, tell it to tweak it and go back and forth and everything. Right.

So it started with, it started with some sort of skill that you found and then you've just, you've just built on top of that through, I guess, pain.

Exactly.

Fix this problem. Why are you doing this? Improve this, improve this. So it's not something that you set out to sort of just go, I'm going to build this perfect system. It's organically occurred through the workflow itself. And you, you, you've sort of just spoken to the AI to improve that, that experience. Exactly.

And it's funny when I say, oh, I built this, like I didn't do anything Codex did, did it also. Yeah. But it's, yeah.

I find that's a barrier that people, people don't get, you know, a lot where they say, how do you do it? You just ask it, just talk to it and, and you work together, you know, it's, it's like a coworker.

Yeah. And if you don't know, you say, hey, I don't know. Yeah.

Exactly. Sorry. Yeah. You know, it's, it's infinitely patient. So you, so you, you've, you've built the system to build out Shopify sites. What else, what else are you doing in, in, with Shopify? Is there anything there from, so you're iterating on your designs, but you know, what about creating your product catalogs, all of the development, you're doing all of that in-house as well?

Yeah. Just the whole thing, which is, I am shocked about how kind of well it works. I mean, it is a lot harder than I thought as well. It's like easier and harder at the same time, which is, can be a lot of AI stuff, but yeah, doing, doing the whole thing. So previously, you know, you'd get a theme and then like try to add custom components and it was a bit of a nightmare. Now it's like, all right, sick. Like the sky's the limit. Let's just pull the theme and then, you know, recreate this design in Figma, add different sections. And then because Shopify has this structure already with the liquid connected to all the collections and products, you can essentially say, you know, as part of that skill, it has all of that baked in. That like everything needs to be editable through the backend of Shopify and everything needs to be connected to say the cart and the products and all of that. So it kind of knows and it'll ask you a lot of questions going through, but you can just be like, sweet, build this and add this, create this site basically. And then it's just building it all out in there. So it's, it's doing the whole thing, writing the code in liquid, connecting it to all the collections and the products and creating that experience.

Amazing. And you know, like a year ago, would you imagine that you'd be doing that kind of work?

Oh, no way. Not a chance. Yeah.

So it's broadening, it's broadening your capability as a designer.

Oh, absolutely.

What do you think about it? Also, the, I, I, I've said to a few people that like designers should now build and not develop. You know, you don't have to understand the code, but you have to actually, in my view, you have to see the rough edges. You have to see all the different edge cases and things like that as a designer. Are you feeling that as like, is it a space that you're trending towards you or you still? Spending a lot of time in Figma actually crafting designs.

No, definitely. Absolutely trending towards the, the building side of things. And I think it's, it's more exciting when you can, you know, see what you've created actually out in the world and.

Yeah.

Be pushing it and changing things. And, you know, it's still, because it's changing so quick, it's still such a crazy landscape where it's like, no one really knows what's going on, but it's, it's getting that good. Like I've a lot of developer friends and talking to them and some of them are like, and I honestly don't even check the code anymore. It's that good. I just ship it.

Yeah. It depends on the project for me as well. Yeah. If, as long as it's a really robust plan and, and your, your, tests are correct and it verifies, and then you'll have a, you'll verify yourself. I don't need to look at the code, you know? Yeah. I think it works. Okay, cool. So, Shopify building, what else are you guys focusing on at Akima? Is there other, other ways that you're kind of using AI to accelerate your, your work?

Yeah, for sure. Something else, which, as you said, like kind of came about as an accident of just like trial and error. I think we might've spoken about briefly is this proposal tool that we built for in-house and it's like, it's become the most useful thing ever. And it just, it was simply born out of like my biggest pain point over the last five years of freelancing has been proposals. Like I can't stand it because you, I don't know about you, but I've wasted so much time on quoting and proposals and, you know, oh, it's been a nightmare.

And then you, you spend the time to make it look right. Cause you're a designer and you can't not. Right. And then the client just ghosts you.

Exactly. Yeah.

All this time. There's been times. So what are you doing? Can you, can you share? Can you, could you show us what you, what you.

For sure. For sure. I might share my screen and then the other things I'll, I'll just go through quickly, which is like what pretty much everyone's doing right now, but just building your own custom tools for a project, which is, I think so, I mean, so exciting. Like, which I'll go through shortly, but when you're like, oh, I really need this effect for this thing. And it's like, there's probably something out there and you look for it, man, I just tell, you know, Codex to build me this and I've got it. And then I can just export it and it's done. I'll just, pull up a screen share and run you through this super quick.

Please.

Can you see this?

Yep. Yep. It's working well. Sweet.

Nice. So this is honestly probably like super unsophisticated compared to what some of your other guests do, but it's one of those things where it's like, I'll give you the quick story about it. And it's, it's just like, how quickly can you get it done to a working capacity? So the story behind this is like a lot of designers. I was over designing proposals taken way too long. And I was like, I'm so sick of this. So I was like, oh, I'm going to create a proposal tool. So I started building this ridiculous proposal tool, that just took, you know, I was like, oh, it needs to have this and we need to have a backend and all this stuff. And it just turned into this Frankenstein and I just ended up scrapping it. And it's like, man, this is ridiculous. I was using notion for proposals at the time, which had been working for, for years, which is pretty funny. And then one day we had a fairly big client coming up and I was like, oh, I need something. I can't just send them a notion. Like it's gotta be something good. So I was like, what's the quickest way I can build this? And I was like, what I, all I want is something I can just get an MD file that has like the structure. I can just whack it in there. And it just generates me like a page, like a, you know, like an HTML page that just looks good. So I got it to build that and I was like, oh, this actually looks sick. So I iterated on it a bit. Kind of landed it honestly hasn't changed heaps. There's a lot I need to do with it, but the system is essentially, we've got this, the project in GitHub and there's like a content section, which has the proposals. And essentially we have like a skill that turns, you know, like before you have a client call or whatever, it essentially pulls all of that. And I say, create a proposal based on like what they asked for. I usually go back and forth, just in like Cord or GPT and just edit it a little bit with the pricing and everything. But it's getting super accurate with like our pricing and standards and everything like that. We put it into here. So I just did like a mock-up one for OVRFLO. And then essentially it's just, it's this sub domain, which is just proposals.Akima.studio. And then has the slug of the client name. And then it's just this complete populated page, which is like essentially on our site. And yeah, then we can just send this directly to the client and it's completely editable. They can go through it. It has all of the, the options here. So it's got, this is just like an example for you, but for like a website, a few different options.

I'm in.

Different inclusions. But the best thing is like they can go through and then like check all the stuff. It's kind of got like terms and conditions, whatever. They can see all the next steps. I mean, this looks relatively AI, but then they can just go accept proposal and they can hit accept.

And that's all been generated from as a layer on top of markdown, which has been generated from a skill based on a meeting. So you have the meeting, your skill then takes that transcription and turns it into that markdown file. And then your system just takes the markdown and just, and generates the proposal as a HTML file on your subdomain.

Exactly. So it's like, it's such a seamless method now and it's, it's worked super well. Like honestly, people, everyone we send it to guys, man, this is like such a good thing. I'm usually receiving like these PDFs or whatever. So they're, and it's great getting the email saying like so-and-so accepted your proposal. Yeah. That's great. Let's go. Yes. Yeah. Cool. Love that.

That's brilliant. I think the important thing you mentioned, one of the things I want to raise there is when you said that you spend all this time trying to create a tool and it became a Frankenstein. And I think that's a fairly typical experience with this stuff is like, oh, because you feel that it can do so much. Like I can have an editor where I can drag this section and add that new section and have a backend, whatever. And then you very quickly realise that this is a surface that you have to maintain and improve and bug fix.

Exactly.

It doesn't stop is why, you know, and you've just, you've done the right, this is brilliant. You've just distilled it down into what's the simplest, fastest way to get a quality result. And I think that's something that a lot of listeners take away is like, HTML works so well for this type of tooling. You don't need to create a PDF and export it from Figma anymore. You know, use the, like lean into what these tools are good at and generating HTML, they just crush. This is brilliant. For sure.

Even like as a product designer, you think, oh, I need to have this backend and I need to be able to edit, you know, go and edit in there and edit the style and edit the text. And then it needs like a, you know, what you see is what you get. The whole thing's like, you don't need any of that. Like everything's a markdown and you can just run at it like that, which is.

And it's just running on a GitHub repo.

Yeah, exactly. And there's so much, yeah, so much you could do with it, which is, which is great. Yeah, that's great.

And once you get over that first initial, like, how do I push? What's a commit? You know, and you learn those basics. It's, it really opens up. That's so cool. Yeah. Well done.

Yeah. Thanks. The other, like, you know, this is something that's so basic that everyone does, but I just thought I'd share super quick is like just repetitive processes. For example, like with Akima, we had these, this kind of style, which is like these dither effects using the orange. And it's like, man, I was using all these different tools to do it and like exporting it, but they're all so bloated. And then you had to go back and find the dither effect and like tweak the style. I was like, I just want something where I can just whack an image in. It gives me the effect that I want. I can export it to the SVG, chuck it on the website. So it's like building something that has like one use case. So all this does is that. So it's like, I can just, for example, we use these like kind of illustrations and whatever, drop it in. And then you can just go bang. Like this is the dither effect that we can use. And like try a few different iterations. And like, this is stuff for you just using like marketing or whatever, but it's like, all right, sick. You can, you know, just have that export SVG, bang that into Figma or like, you know, website, whatever. And then another super random one is like, yes, it's just such a stupid app. Like it looks ridiculous. But I had this, this crypto client where we had this website and it was like a, this parallax effect where they had these, like this pixel grid on the bottom. And I was like, I really want to like be able to do that. And I tried all these things generating it and just couldn't do it. And I was like, man, I'm just going to just make my own and draw it. So I was just going to make this thing. And it's like, it just works perfectly. So it's like, I just drew this edge on the bottom and then like filled it in, exported that, used that on the website. It looked amazing. And then as part of that job, they're like, oh, they wanted these like custom icons. And I was trying to, you know, use tools like Quiver or whatever to design them like these grid icons. And I was like, man, I can just draw them in this. So it's like, you know, you can just draw these little These little things. And like within the grid and they turned out sick. And it's like, you know, this is something that took 20 minutes of that to make. And it's just like, bang.

Like if you're trying to do that in Figma, you know, you create some sort of dot grid, you zoom right in, you'd have a square and then you duplicate it or something.

Dude, that's what I was doing. And it was like, man.

This took you probably nothing to build. And you've got a tailor-made tool to give you the exact output that you want.

Exactly.

And this is the same. I'm seeing this across the board. Like even Steve on last week's episode, He's built something similar. And so many designers, you know, Yany from Dio is another, he just, he's a wizard. And he's done the same thing. He's created all these tools that help you creatively express yourself in just the way that you want, that you can use it for the project, you know. For sure. And you're not locked into what Figma has. You're not locked into what Webflow has or whatever. You know, you can create your own UI. And I just think that's such a powerful thing. I saw an interview with Tomas Bangalta from Daft Punk the other day. And he was talking about how he doesn't use AI because the creation experience for him is not about voice to text. You know, it's, it's about all these fringe areas of experimentation with playing with things and just things sort of organically bubbling out of that. And I thought, yeah, like that's, that's true. It's really powerful. But I think the one thing that he's probably missing is you can generate the UI that you want. So if you want to play with something, you can, you can get this, this tooling to create you the varying levels of sliders and knobs and dials to, to, manipulate sound, you know. So I feel that a lot of people have that experience where potentially like, oh, if I'm just going to sit here and ask this tool to generate that dot grid for me, it's going to suck. But if I get it to generate the tool where I can express myself in it, then it's not because I have the control. And I think you, what you just showed me sort of reinforces that. And I'm seeing that across the board. So many designers are doing this and I love it. I don't know. I don't know if, if anyone's building some kind of place where you could just store all these types of tools or even if it's worth it because it's so easy to build and throw this stuff away.

Exactly. Like they're just local and you just like use it onto the next thing. People post like those threads where has all like the designer built tools, you know, oh, this one's sick. And you can just go such a rabbit hole down there to different things. But like.

Yeah. It's inspiring, right? It makes you, makes you want to explore more and, and push yourself further than you, you ever had before as a designer.

Absolutely. I think it's like expressing yourself to the AI is pretty much the, that's the hard part. That's the limit being able to describe what you want and how you want it. And like, even just watching how other people use it. You learn so much. Like, I don't know. You probably listen to a dive club with Reed and you see people on there and you're like, they're building stuff. You know? Oh, never thought to ask that. And then you just try that. And it's like, or even Josh pocket with like the dial kit. And it's like, oh, bring me up a dial kit to change this. You know? Like, oh, this is so much better. Like I was just trying to explain it before and, you know, like animation speeds and stuff like.

Yeah. You have to learn the vocabulary. And again, that's another reason why to your example before you said where, you know, it doesn't, Reloom just do that for you is. Well, you've spent all these years understanding the vocabulary of product design and how to get the most out of the tools. So the average person, the quality of the average output is going to get better, but someone who yields the tools with experience is always going to do better. Yeah. That's really cool. So conversion. I want to just want to come back to that whilst that thought's still in my head. Are you using any sort of tools to monitor user usage and suggest improvements to your system, to your, to your Shopify sites or anything like that? How are you, tracking performance and, and, iterating on design if, if you are.

Man, I wish I could give you a really good answer for this, but we have yet to ship a live, a live Shopify site.

Oh, right.

This is something we're working on. And that's kind of Jake's wheelhouse. So he's a lot more the data analytics side Yeah. Of Yeah. Yeah. If I'm being completely honest, I'm more, more of the product designer, visual designer.

So, which is still amazing in itself. Oh, that's okay. Look, I mean, it's something that I'm really interested in and there's a whole bunch of products out there that are experimenting with the space. And I, I've got some experience, but not, you know, not crazy experience. So, I'm just seeing.

I was going to say, I've been really curious about, about what you've been seeing or what you've been using as well.

I, I, you, there's a post dog have a great tool. I've used, like if I'm, I'm doing analytics, you know, just sort of even Google analytics is fine. Microsoft clarity actually works. Okay. But there's, there's tools that you can sort of export reports and bring into your agent. There's tools that are agent native. I haven't had too much of an experience, experiment with like agent native tooling, but I know that PostHog is sort of heading in that right direction where you just plug it into your, your experience. It gives you all the data and then you can start to work with it, in your ID to suggest improvements and things like that. So it, that's why I ask is, is I haven't had an incredible amount of experimentation yet in that area.

Yeah, for sure. Yeah. PostHog, PostHog is really good. I mean, I've used a lot of like Hotjar and clarity and stuff previously, but yeah, it's interesting. I think this, this whole concept of like these agentic websites, which is becoming like a thing where it's like a self-improving website, almost like it's getting the analytics and then making suggestions and you're approving them. And then it's, it's iterating on that in real time by itself, which I think is going to come into e-commerce massively of like agentic conversion rate optimisation. It's going to be wild.

Yeah. I mean, I'm going to be honest, those things sound dreamy, but, I, I see the output that gets generated by this stuff. And I would just never ship it. Especially with content. Like I have some pretty strict sort of skills and guidelines around content. And even with those, it's still just can't do a great job of it. So if you, you were, I've seen people do that where they just sort of have these agents continuously watching and, and, you know, every day you might get a PR with like, Hey, I noticed this. Here's the potential solution. I've designed it. I've built it. Do you want to review and approve? And that sounds amazing. But I just feel that you, you, you're pulling yourself out so far then that, you know, you're just going to get this generic slop of, quality. So I think there's probably a fine balance there where it's still kind of human led. I don't know the, I don't know yet, but yeah, it's, it does, it certainly sounds fantastic.

I agree, man, to be honest, like, like a lot of these things, it's never quite as good as it seems. And then, yeah, you definitely need that human touch. Yeah. You can never just let it run.

Maybe, maybe we could do a round two with Jake.

Yeah, for sure.

He's to pick his brain. All right, cool. Well, look, you've, you've shown a lot. I really appreciate your time. I guess before we sort of close out, is there anything that you would, you would, say to sort of budding designers or designers in this space that are like overwhelmed with this sort of technology or don't really know what to do? What have you learned that you can share that would put them at ease?

Probably my biggest thing is just like being able to put the blinders on and just focus on one thing. Cause I'm sure you, you get this as well. Like when you go on, on X a lot and you're looking at X and YouTube and everyone's doing this and Instagram, you're like, fuck, everyone's so good. And there's just so many tools and you can get that like AI psychosis, like where it's just like all too much. And something I've just really focused on is like, I'll get an idea or something I want to pursue. And then just kind of just focus on that and like just churning out the noise and being able to be like, I'm just going to go deep on this for a little bit. And, you know, maybe it's, it's not even going on X or any social media at all until you've, you've figured out what you want to do. And then like, all right, cool. Cause I find when you're, there's just too much and you're too overwhelmed, you're not doing anything well. You're like, oh, I'm going to do a little bit of this. I'm going to do a little bit of that. And yeah. So that's something I've found really helpful. As well as, yeah, if someone was starting out, it's just like doing as much client work as you can. I think that was my biggest thing. Like I never really learned from just like sitting down and trying to learn like YouTube or uni or whatever. It's like, Hey, you've got this project. You have to build a website and it has to be good because someone's paying you. Otherwise like you're going to be, this is going to be trouble. And it's like just that, like you just go leaps and bounds doing, doing a real client project. Even if you don't really know what you're doing, you can figure it out on the way. But yeah, I just think that's by far the best way to learn is, is getting into real projects.

You have to put in the reps, right? It's a muscle and you've got to use it. The more you do it, the better you get. And that's great, great advice too. Don't, don't feel like you have to be tapped into the zeitgeist 24 hours a day. It's okay to disconnect from the matrix and be human and spend the time focusing and crafting.

Go touch grass, as they say.

Love it. All right, mate. Look, thanks for your time. On that note, I think I might go touch some grass. It's been a pleasure speaking with you. And yeah, I'll see you later.

Absolutely, man. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you.