Design at the Speed of Adjectives — Paul Bakaus, Renaissance Geek, Inc.

[music]

Cool. Uh, let's get this going. Welcome

everyone. Thanks for coming. Um, my name

is Paul and, uh, I'm going to try to

save you from the midday slump. So,

let's, uh, let's see if we can do that.

Um, okay. So this talk, this cold open

of this talk will make a lot more sense

if you know uh what impeccable is. Uh

but if you don't know what it is, it's a

design, it's a design skill that turns

your coding harness into a better

designer and hopefully you into a better

designer. Um and you can try it out. It

works across all harnesses, cloth code,

github, copilot, cursor, codex, etc. Um,

and this talk is really about uh my

approach to how to building this tool as

opposed to the tool itself. Um, but

let's get started with a pretty typical

website. So, this is a intentionally

very basic website and I want to give

you that one as context to what I'm

going to show you next. So, you know,

it's it's a it's it's an okay website.

It's not great. It's pretty bland. Um

but it at least it has some color some

something. Um so now here is um the

command make it bolder make the workflow

section bolder with impeccable.

Um so this is with impeccable installed.

So now there are it's not perfect. There

are some problems with this. for

example, the um the section numbers that

you have there, that's a very typical AI

slop tail uh that uh that GPT loves to

do and I mean Claude actually loves to

do as well and

it sometimes creeps in. So I wouldn't

say this is perfect by any means but I

think it's I would say bolder than

before. Um

now a lot of people install impeccable

try it out uh and then they ask me well

I don't know like maybe it could be

placebo maybe the model is good enough

in itself right uh not sure if it

actually works well let's compare it to

this is exactly the same project GPD55

on extra high um same exact prompt

without impeccable

so there is a slight difference I would

say but you be the judge of

Um, so the before and after is pretty

different and I'm going to talk about

why that is and um and and what the

approach is.

So designing at the speed of adjectives

and um to get the elephant out of the

room, they are not just adjectives,

they're also verbs. Uh but some of them

are adjectives.

First off, the role of the engineer and

the design are blurring. Um, I've seen

more people become design engineers than

ever. Designers are moving into code,

engineers are moving into design and

vice versa. Some of the best comments I

get from people who walk up to me and

say like, well, impeccable gives me this

shared language of design that everybody

can communicate now in. But really,

these worlds are all colliding in my

opinion and the typical handoff is kind

of broken. like the the waterfall

process of I start with design, maybe I

start with like the what on the PM side,

then it goes into design and then

there's like this handoff and this

critique process and then ultimately the

engineer builds it. That thing is just

not real anymore. I don't know about

you, but um I think that's starting to

collapse very quickly in small and large

companies.

And when it comes to the actual work of

design,

I feel like there's right now kind of

like two worlds that you can play in.

Either it's direct manipulation sort of

like in the pixel space, right? So

you're in Figma and you're manipulating

margins, paddings, whatever it is. Um or

you're in web flow or you're in some

other tool where you directly

manipulating the final output uh or the

design. Now that's fine, but then you

feel like you're getting behind because

everybody else is like agentic and going

crazy with loops and loop maxing, right?

And now you're going on the other

extreme, which is simply telling your

agent, please design this for me or

please build this. But it feels like to

me at least there's this there's this

middle ground that we haven't explored

enough like what is the exact level of

control? How can we insert the human in

the loop at the exact right time?

Uh and so this this came to mind then

it's pretty popular tweet a while ago.

Um so centering a diff with opus. Yes.

Uh not a great use of opus. Uh but you

know it kind of speaks to that problem.

It's like okay well when do we use which

tool? When is which tool adequate to do

what job?

In my opinion right now for most work

the direct manipulation of padding,

margins, spacing and so on is actually

at a elevation that's too low.

And on the other hand um if you go fully

agentic you get web pages like this now

that you would you would get this in

like 2022 I would say. So everybody here

can point out the typical AI slot

patterns. Um but the purple gradients

were actually way beyond that. there are

no purple gradients anymore uh in most

frontier models. Um now we just get this

and it's kind of wears a different suit

as Claude would say. Um but uh but it

really is slop as well. It's just a

moving target. So now we have I call

this claude beige. We have these

instrument serif fonts. We have italics.

And it's not necessarily a bad design.

It's just everything that comes out of

claw design looks that way. And when

everything looks the same, you kind of

get algorithmic unilo as I call it. Uh

so also not great.

Now here's my first hot take of today's

session. You cannot oneshot design.

Um now many people want to and maybe

we'll get there eventually. I just don't

think it's possible at the current

moment. Uh maybe not ever. Um, I think

in order to build something that really

looks and feels great and is effective

design, you need to have something

that's context context rich which has

been informed by what you're trying to

do, what your audience is, what you're

trying to build. And also it will have

to be multi-shot. You will have to

iterate on your design. Uh, and you I

mean even if you're a soloreneur, but if

you're not a soloreneur, you might have

different people who have different

opinions. Users have opinions. I mean

design is messy. it's process and

wishing it away and just saying like

solve this problem for me agent will not

unfortunately solve your problem. Um

now the other problem is if you don't

know the language of design or if your

stakeholders don't know the language of

design gets really frustrating really

quickly too. So if you've ever designed

something um you kind of know like this

kind of experience um and then you know

the inner feeling builds up of like

and at some point you're like

uh

so really what you have to ask first is

what's the emotional territory? What

should this never feel like? What's

what's the reference? What's the

audience? These are all really important

questions to figure out. Like you can't

go to a human design studio even if it's

the best design studio in the world. You

go to design director and you say like

you know what I want to design for my

brand and a design dire not nods. It's

like got it and then walks away. That

doesn't make any sense. Like they

obviously have to figure out what it is

that you're trying to build and what

you're trying to get out of it.

Importantly on this example even sort of

like the 2026 version of AI slop you

know quickly vibe coded page nobody

decided anything here

like you just oneshotted this nobody

decided anything on this page this was

just I mean it's maybe competent but

completely empty

so my uh thesis that I make here and

what I've been trying to build over the

last couple months is a tool that gives

you just the amount of control needed to

steer your agent in the right direction

with adjectives and verbs.

And these are the types of words I'm

talking about. Talking about words like

make this bolder, make this quieter, uh

distill this. So basically

simplification, um polish this, um make

it denser or harden this. Um harden for

instance would mean uh make sure that

this design works across the board.

Maybe the performance is bad on certain

devices. Maybe it's not responsive. Um,

and so these are these are words

that we use in the world of design. And

I noticed when seeing two people attempt

the exact same task and one is an

engineer who's never really touched

design at all and the other one is a

designer um there's a stark difference

even when they use the same model and

same harness everything in the output

that they're getting based on the

language that they use. So, I've been

trying to put that language basically

compress it into a skill uh and into a

system to be able to express yourselves

better. And so, for example, you could

have like a baseline um over here, but

then you make it bolder and the agent

actually knows what bolder in your

context means. You make it quieter, it

knows what it means. You distill and it

knows what it means.

Um, but then bolder how what does bolder

mean in the context of your project?

That's a really important question

because as you could tell at the

beginning of the demo uh in the cold

open uh when you just ask GPT or claude

whatever make this bolder it doesn't

know anything about what you mean. Uh

now it has its own sense of reference of

like what boulder could mean but it will

do whatever it wants right it will

invent new colors it will invent new

gradients. it will I mean it doesn't

matter um what it actually means in

impeccable

not gradients not glass not neon but

actually hierarchy scale decisive type

so uh things that uh don't break your

design system and adequately raise the

attention that the user would put on it

uh and this is an actual sentence from

the the file that is loaded when you say

bolder impeccable um show someone your

work and say AI make this bolder made

this bolder if they believe you you

failed this is something that we

actually instruct the agent to do for

themselves and then the agent oftent

times reflects and like I don't know

think I did some bad work here

an adjective is a light wart and a light

wart such a German term and Matt Puk

actually talked about this recently uh

who also makes some really excellent

skills. And so this is uh stolen by one

of his tweets, but I really think uh um

it makes a lot of sense. Um these are

words that h that you basically imbue

with meaning that you infuse with

meaning and they mean something. They

already mean something to the model, but

then you translate this into the area

that you're interested in

and the right altitude really shifts.

Um, now I don't think you can solve any

problems at that altitude. That's super

important too. Uh, there is still room

for the very beginning. For instance, if

you just want exploratory work and you

just want to get something on the screen

or you just want the last amount of

polish. I don't think right now uh AI is

good enough to replace humans for the

last 5, 10, maybe even 20% of the work

to get it from good to great. Uh but it

does actually make it better. Now I've

built tools for more than 20 years. I

guess I'm dating myself here. Uh but

whenever I build a tool, I actually map

the workflow first. I think about what

is the actual workflow of the target

user that I'm trying to help. And the

workflow of design is not linear. It's

messy. Has many different stages. Uh

there are different people involved. And

so I kind of mapped every part of the

process and thought about well what are

the injection points along that route

and how can we help along that route.

And so you start with initialization

with the shaping process of design uh

you go over to uh crafting to iterating

uh with all these verbs and adjectives

and then to the actual harden and polish

phase and finally you kind of bring it

back to your design system. You do some

tech debt cleanup design deck cleanup.

Um, now here's one example of a command

that I wasn't actually sure about

shipping and it's called overdrive. Um,

I basically built this uh built this

command in Impeccable that uh tries to

create something completely over the top

and it was kind of like a a half of a

joke maybe. Um, but people absolutely

are rabbit about this about this thing.

Um, and they love it. Um, and so this is

just one example of I mean this is not

oneshotted. Uh this is a um sort of

realistic event horizon shader um that

I've built for my shader library radiant

shaders. But I did actually use the

overdrive command for this to uh

overdrive it even more uh and make it

more ridiculous. So sometimes I come up

with these uh commands I'm actually not

sure about and I test them with the

community and once it sticks uh I

realize okay well there are more people

who are getting joy out of this.

Um

oh here we go. Here we go. Okay. Um, an

adjective with nothing behind is just a

nicer prompt. So, you really have to

tell the agent what you mean by the word

that you're using. Uh, it it has so many

different meanings uh within its

training materials that you really have

to tell it. Um, now here's another

thing.

I've gotten so many requests

for an automatic way of using

Impeccable. So many. It's so

frustrating. Like so at least once a

week somebody tweets at me say like you

know what would be cool just let

impeccable do all the work by itself. I

don't have to decide on any command

anymore. That's not the point. The point

is to give you a way to steer what you

want to end up with. It's never going to

be a tool to oneshot design. That's not

the intent. And I'll never I mean

there's a pull request standing uh

standing out right now that I'm going to

close because of that.

There is no auto and there will be no

auto

in my opinion and uh this is a bit

awkward maybe for some of the next

speakers but I think taste cannot be

amplified uh sorry I think taste can be

amplified I think I call this amplified

craft uh and I think you can work with

tools to sharpen your taste and bring

out more of your taste I really do not

think it can be lab ground lab grown I

think it is uh taste by definition sort

of is uh contextual It's cultural. It's

scars. And once everybody replicates the

same thing, it starts to become really

muddy and we don't think of it as taste

anymore. That's my opinion. And I know

this is like a hotly contested topic.

Uh, but I'm not trying to solve taste

with my tools.

Um,

that's what I got. Uh, this was about

finding the right level of control for

design. Thank you very much. And, uh, I

think I have time for a few questions if

you have any. Thank you.

>> [music]