Vol 7
Cursor x Entrepreneurs First, reminders for the corporate self, new jobs, designer spotlight!
📸 Snapshots of past events
Design Meetup x Reve
SF Intern Picnic Figma
(NYC Figma photos coming soon!)
📅 What’s coming up
Design Meetup x Figma Summer Series in SF: 3 down, 4 to go…. Design Meetup and Figma are bringing designers together for intern mixers, demo nights, maker nights, artist talks, and more. You don’t want to miss this one. RSVP at luma.com/figmaforedu.
Design Meetup x Cursor x Entrepreneurs First Config After : Join us for an evening bringing together the next generation of designers, founders, and creative technologists fresh off Config. We’ll gather for food, drinks, and a series of fast-paced lightning demos where leading designers share the projects they’ve built, the tools changing their workflow, and how they’re adapting their craft. RSVP at luma.com/5wsl3qtq.
🦄 Opportunities
These jobs were posted in the past 2 days, so they’re still fresh!
Internships
[Fall 2026] 1Password Product Design Intern, EPM End-User
[Fall 2026] Neon Design Intern
New grad roles
📝 Note to corporate self
From an Anonymous New Grad + Product Designer @ Tech Company
I officially graduated college a month ago. Right now, I am physically and mentally stuck in the “in-between”—hanging onto the tail end of finishing school while waiting for the start date of my new job to trickle in. And with that come some thoughts and reflections.
Recently, I’ve been hit with a brutal reminder that life moves unforgivingly fast. Heavy, unexpected family crises hit out of nowhere, and the administrative tasks of adulthood don’t pause for your grief. There’s always a numbing, endless list of mundane logistics waiting for you. Recently, my days have been consumed with a weird blur of packing and unpacking my things, sorting through paperwork, figuring out what pharmacies my health insurance takes and scheduling hospital visits. As I’m figuring out life for the first time, I am taken aback by how easily the billions of admin tasks can eat your entire day, leaving no room to actually process what is happening. And the scariest part? I haven’t even started my full-time job yet, and I know this is only the start.
I can’t help but be terrified at how easy it is to just get swept up in the flow of life, putting my head down and just quietly handling things. As I join Corporate America, I don’t want my adaptability to turn into passive compliance. I worry that as I get busier, and the rigid routine of a corporate schedule settles in, I’ll forget how to find time to check in on myself.
So, I’m writing this down now before I get swept away by the current of work and life. Whether you are navigating this exact liminal space or are already years into the corporate grind, take a second to ask yourself these questions:
Are you proud of your life portfolio? My good friend and mentor, Jason, recently introduced me to this concept, and it helped remind me that you possess ultimate authority over your own life. While we are trained to look at a portfolio as a career term, it actually applies to the energy you invest in everything: your health, your relationships, and your peace. Is the broader life you are curating something you are proud to own?
Are you making room to just mess around? At a recent design event, the artist Akakya mentioned that the beauty of teaching younger folks was their ability to think more freely—they don’t overthink things, they are more explorative, and they are okay with making “bad” work. As adulthood settles in, give yourself permission to be terrible at a new hobby, sketch something ugly, or just mess around. It’s a necessary choice to keep your mind from getting rigid.
Have you touched grass lately? Don’t let your world shrink down to the size of a monitor. When was the last time you walked outside and took a full, deep breath? When was the last time you called a friend just to talk, or sat down to eat a proper, unhurried meal? Survival takes maintenance!
Life waits for no one, and there will always be another task, crisis, or deadline asking for your time. But at the end of the day, it is entirely up to you to lift your head up once in a while and make sure it’s a ride you actually want to be on.
🔍 Designer spotlight: Sophia Delrosario
Sophia Delrosario | Product Designer at Phia | Based in NYC
Favorite design tool right now?
I’ve been playing around with design platforms where everything you create in the canvas is already a code component. Wonder and Subframe are my current favorites!
Where do you draw your inspiration from as a designer?
When I need to get creatively unblocked, I look at side projects that other designers have made in their free time. I’ll scroll through Twitter and Instagram, and get so inspired by how their imagination runs and their minds work. Yes, looking at industry examples is super important - but so much unseen creativity lives in the indie sites and passion projects that our community makes <3
Additionally, I also love gallery sites like Spotted in Product and 60fps.design for cool microinteraction inspo!
What advice to early career designers do you have?
If I were to start over, I’d remind myself to have a "figure it out" mindset above all. It's so easy to get overwhelmed and discouraged when you enter the world of design, with all the tools, the vocabulary, the endless Figma shortcuts.... but you have to be a little delusional and genuinely believe you can figure pretty much anything out.
I didn’t know Figma going into my first designathon, I had no idea how to create animations when it was assigned as my first task at my job. But I said yes anyway, and after a few sleepless nights, research into different tools and strategies, and a lot of trial and error… I ended up figuring it out, and picked up some new skills along the way!
(Oh and also! Build in public, post your designs - you never know who's watching in the infinite, vast space that is the Internet!)
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🎨 Design Twitter roundup
See you soon,
Brandon + Ilyssa
incredible read