Design Table Podcast

The Business Side Of Freelancing - How Nick Prices, Gets Paid, and Builds A Buffer

Nick's first freelance invoice was for six hundred euros, quoted with a straight face, even though he half expected the client to talk him down. In this episode of The D

Design Quick Fire Round - Job Titles, Email Design, and Why AI Made Us Less Proud Of Our Work

Nick's biggest newsletter open rate was fifty percent when his list was small. Now that it's grown, he's happy with thirty, and neither of them can fully explain why. In

Product Design Money Talk - How To Go From $50 To $95 An Hour Doing The Same Work

Nick's first freelance client paid him fifty dollars an hour. He said 'yes' before he  knew what the market rate was, and it turned out to be exactly the right way to fin

I Got Fired Over Christmas And Nobody Told Me - Product Design Horror Stories

In 2015, Nick drove to an interview in his moms car. Three minutes in, the hiring manager told him he would never make it as a designer. 10 Years later, he loses his prod

The 4 Skills Every Product Designer Needs Right Now (Figma isn't One of Them)

You can master every product design AI tool that exists and still get overruled in the meeting that matters most. That's because tools matter way less than what you read

Is AI replacing designers? Not Really. There's A Bigger Danger

Someone on your team just built a landing page with Claude and skipped you entirely. It used to be a product designer's nightmare, but now... it is called 'Tuesday'. In

10 Things Companies Hiring Product Designers Want From You Right Now

Zero to one product design work. That's the main skill companies are hiring designers for right now. You'd expect Figma knowledge or being 'native' with the latest AI too

Live Portfolio Review - Your Hero Section Is Costing You The Interview

Two seconds. That's how long you have before a hiring manager bounces off your portfolio. Most product design hero sections that time. In this episode of The Design Tabl

The take-home design challenge is broken. Here's how to survive it anyway.

Four hours of unpaid work. Seven rounds of interviews. And then a generic rejection email that reads like it was written by a robot. If you're hunting product design job

Do you have to use AI to get a design job? (our listener asks)

One of our listeners wrote us while being stuck between two things: loving the product design craft and needing a job badly. He likes doing the actual product design wor

Is Everything You Design Already Copied?

Every product. designer has had this thought at some point: "Someone's already built this. Am I even doing anything original?" It creeps in during a login screen, an onbo

You Are Not Behind: A Mental Health Check for Product Designers in 2026

Every new product design AI tool feels like a deadline. You have to use it or you're left behind. That's what you read on social media at least. In this episode, Tyler a

"Go Fix It Yourself" (The Best Thing A Senior Developer Told Me)

Product design is becoming more collaborative, more technical, and a lot harder to control. In this episode, Tyler and Nick talk about what happens when your design work

Everyone's Switching Design Tools - I'm Not. Here's Why

Product design workflows are changing fast and nobody has a clean answer for what to do about it. In our first ever live episode, Tyler (in-house at a fintech SaaS compa

I Spent a Month Trying to Quit Figma. It Failed.

Everywhere we look, product designers are sick and tired of AI this, AI that. It feels like every day, there is a new tool, a new workflow, a new “Figma is dead” post, a

Product Design Perfectionism: Why 97 Out of a 100 Is Not Good Enough

Two episodes of telling their career stories, and Nick and Tyler kept noticing the same thing: the lessons that actually mattered came from the rejections, the steps back

I Got Let Go Twice. Here’s How I Still Built a 16-Year Design Career

Most product designers want to have the clean career story. First, you go to school. You build a portfolio and get hired. Then you get promoted and become a senior produc

How Nick Became a Freelance Product Designer Making Six Figures

Lots of product designers dream about going freelance. No boss. No performance reviews. And you decide where and when you work. And then reality shows up. No guaranteed

Why The Best Product Designers SAY LESS In Interviews

Most product designers spend weeks (or even months) polishing their portfolio website. And then they get into the actual interview, open their mouth, and suddenly their c

If Figma Disappeared Tomorrow, Would You Still Have a Job?

Like many product designers, you’ve probably ran into one of the following challenges. One PM shows up with a prototype, an engineer suggests a user flow, or someone who