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 | 39 | Founded | 2 years ago | Last Issue | 4 days ago |
| Active | |||||
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upstreamjournal.substack.comLatest Issues
The Joy Is the Tell
A job interview is not where I expected to figure out what I actually think about AI and creativity. But there I was, answering a straightforward question about how I use design tools, and what came out was something truer than anything I'd...
Why I’m Helping Build AI Design LA
I moved to LA earlier this year looking for my next design leadership role, and also trying, like most people in tech right now, to figure out what AI actually means for how we work. The most interesting opportunity ended up being neither o...
Why I Built a Raft, Not a Ship
I spent most of my twenties and thirties moving back and forth between Tokyo and San Francisco, which meant I spent most of that time thinking about the same problem from opposite sides of the ocean. How does a brand or a product actually t...
Stop Adding AI to the Design Process. Re-engineer It.
Last time I argued that seven AI-native designers don’t make an AI-native team. Each person gets faster, the coordination around them doesn’t move, and the team ends up more fragmented than it started.
The reason I’m continuing to write ab...
The AI-Native Designer Was Only Phase One
Over coffee recently, another Design Director and I got into a long conversation about what it actually means to transform a design team with AI. We weren’t talking about how to get one designer to use Claude, Figma Make, Cursor, or Lovable...
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| Subscribers | Engagement | 61 | Monthly Web Visits | ||
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| Accepts Sponsors | Estimated Cost per Ad | ||||
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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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