Upstream
Lance ShieldsUpstream explores the future of design leadership, career reinvention, and AI’s impact on our lives. Written by Lance Shields, founder of Raft Design (raftdesign.studio) and a design leader formerly at Walmart and at Adobe.
| Platform |  | Pricing | Only free issues | Publishes | Twice weekly |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Issues | 45 | Founded | 2 years ago | Last Issue | 6 days ago |
| Active | |||||
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Your Portfolio Shows Your Past. Your Lab Shows Your Future.
For most of my career, a new idea meant a long wait. At agencies, at Adobe, at Walmart, getting from a sketch to something people could touch took a team, a roadmap and usually a quarter.
Lately I build things on my own. A globe that trace...
I'm feeling kinda 200
(For the non-engineers: when a website handles a request successfully, it answers with the number 200. It’s the internet’s thumbs up.)
Here’s roughly how I got there:
Me: I designed and built a website for my studio. People like it. Why c...
The journeys hiding inside everyday words
I started building Words Travel because of a novel I’m reading.
While reading Babel by R. F. Kuang, I became fascinated by the word histories woven into the story. Kuang is a Chinese-English translator with a background in Chinese studies,...
Go Boldly
Recently, I was driving through Hollywood when I passed a billboard with William Shatner on it. Across the image were two words: Go Boldly.
The Star Trek reference was obvious, but for some reason it hit differently this time. The original...
Introducing the Design Foundation Sprint
Today I’m launching the Design Foundation Sprint: a four-week, fixed-price engagement from Raft Design that gives funded startups a real brand and product foundation, built and led directly by me, before you’re ready to hire a full-time des...
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| Subscribers | Engagement | 58 | Monthly Web Visits | ||
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Authors
The writers behind this newsletter.
Lance Shields founded Raft Design, an AI-native design studio spanning the U.S. and Japan, after design leadership at Adobe, Walmart, and LegalOn. Writing on AI product design and the contradictions worth building a career around.
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