Dive Club
How a visual designer with no engineering background builds his own websites
with James McDonald, 45 min
Published
More info
- Guest
- James McDonald
- Published
- Length
- 45 min
- Views when added
- 16,366
- Channel subscribers
- 69,500
Chapters from YouTube
- James McDonald is a visual designer, and the host of Dive Club calls him one of his favorites on the planet.
- Designers usually hand their files to engineers, and James always did too.
- Now he builds the site himself in Claude, an AI that writes the code.
- He still uses Figma, the design app, and shows his real files next to the finished pages.
- His main habit is making small throwaway tools that produce visual ideas for him.
What they say
Tap a line to open it, tap a bullet to play.
James never built his own work, and now he's building a homepage in Claude.
He starts by building small tools that throw out visual ideas.
When Figma can't do something, a throwaway tool can.
For him Figma is still better for finding directions, and Claude takes it from there.
Animation used to need storyboards for engineers, and now he just asks.
An idea that failed once can fit perfectly somewhere else later.
Earlier, a Mac app for Ring cameras showed him he could build whole projects.
He sees building as one more skill, and it's opening doors.
If you only watch 10 min
Best if you're a designer who lives in Figma and hasn't tried building yet.
Books, people and tools they mention
Tools and companies
Written by AI from YouTube's captions and checked against them, so mistakes are possible. Captions don't name speakers. Report a mistake
Watch the whole video on YouTube (opens youtube.com)