Today we launched the Obra shadcn/ui Pro Kit.
You can read more on the Obra shadcn/ui blog in the announcement post!
Launched: Obra shadcn/ui pro kit
- Posted in obra-studio product shadcn
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New Figma plugin – Obra Autodocs
- Posted in build-in-public figma figma-plugins
Editorial note: I totally forgot to publish this. By now Autodocs has its own website; and it’s being used in our Obra Shadcn/ui Pro kit.
I posted a video about the first version of Obra Autodocs about two week ago. Since this first version was so promising, I kept working on it to improve it.
Since then I’ve spent several evenings and time after doing my daily work hacking away at this plugin.
It’s not since FigOCR that I felt so passionate about a Figma plugin and making it great.
(FYI, we recently rebranded Screenshot to Layout to FigOCR)
While doing daily design work, I’ve run the plugin through its paces.
I’ve tested it with complex design systems such as our own Obra shadcn/ui community kit as well as a Material Design kit, a Windows design kit and Apple’s templates.
Here’s a new demo of the product:
It’s being released as a €9 plugin I am selling through LemonSqueezy.
If you look on that page, you’ll see FigOCR is a commercial plugin as well.
Selling these 2 plugins is my mental preparation for the bigger product launching soon – which is the Pro version of the Obra shadcn/ui kit. You can read about why we’re going commercial here.
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Bedrock 3: a tool to bring structure to (vibe-coded) front-end prototypes
- Posted in bedrock build-in-public obra-studio
Yesterday I was working on the Angular and React versions of Bedrock 3. The Angular version has been tested with a real prototype. The React version is early but coming along nicely.
What is Bedrock 3? It’s a layer on top of a dev environment that helps you make sense of your project when it’s still in a design phase. For more context, see my previous blog post.
There are currently 3 “flavors” of Bedrock in existence:
- bedrock3-nunjucks – Static HTML/CSS/JavaScript
- bedrock3-angular-tailwind4 – Angular 21 + Tailwind CSS 4
- bedrock3-tanstack-shadcn – React + TanStack Router + shadcn/ui
It is easy to make new “flavors” of Bedrock when needed; with Opus 4.5 I was able to set up the tanstack/shadcn version in just 20 minutes.
Example of Bedrock 3 Angular, showing a vibe coded prototype, where as a designer, you can go through the different pages and their states 
Example of a “page state”; for designers, it’s useful to show screens in multiple states in a structured manner. 
Every Bedrock flavor comes with a built-in Storybook. In this case, Storybook for Angular. What this means is that for any given tech stack, we can deliver a base working environment where designers can make prototoypes; or where developers can prepare the front-end in a stack that closely resembles the production stack.
Each Bedrock flavor comes with a built-in Storybook.
Let’s give an example: imagine you are using Nuxt/Vue.js in your project. Your main project in development is going through a redesign. How would Bedrock fit into this logic?
- Designers are typically using Figma to design screens, and they might have a few prototypes in Figma Make, Lovable, or other tools (important: these don’t use Vue.js)
- Product managers are typically using Miro/Figjam, some kind of issue tracking tool like Linear/Jira/Github issues
- Front and back-end developers have versions of the real codebase (i.e. using Nuxt and Vue.js) in various states of development. They also make their own prototypes (typically they do use Nuxt/Vue.js since they know how to work with their own tech stack)
How can all these parties work together?
My vision is the following:
- Designers keep working in Figma for the visual layer – you need the canvas environment to decide what things will look like
- Technically-oriented designers, product managers or front-end developers can then make Bedrock-based prototypes of the designs.
- Depending on the needs they choose the right Bedrock flavor. Not all Bedrock flavors are the same: the base bedrock3-nunjucks is much easier to work with than bedrock3-angular-tailwind4.
- If the need is to get design validation my choice would be to use the simplest stack (standard html/css). The designer doesn’t have to deal with Vue or Tailwind: they just get to a result.
- If the need is to prepare production code my choice would be to use the stack that is closest to the production stack: Bedrock3-nuxt-vue-tailwind.
- Over time, a designer might move to use Bedrock3-nuxt-vue-tailwind instead of Bedrock3-nunjucks (regular html/vanilla CSS)
- Depending on the needs they choose the right Bedrock flavor. Not all Bedrock flavors are the same: the base bedrock3-nunjucks is much easier to work with than bedrock3-angular-tailwind4.
Why all these flavors?
Bedrock tries providing an environment that is close to the actual stack. If the end result is going to be shadcn/ui and React, you might as well “vibe code” in an environment that has shadcn/ui and React. If you know what your design system should look likem you have a set of known assets, you are using Tailwind, a specific icon set, or anything like that, it should be embedded in your prototyping environment.
Why not Lovable or Figma Make?
The problem with Lovable and Figma Make is they are too basic for larger prototypes.
- At their core, they are always React-based. Not everyone uses React. It might not matter for design validation (see below) but over time, the disparity between versions becomes a source of frustration
- These tools struggle when codebases become too big.
- They don’t actually know about your design system in a meaningful way
- For Make, the feature where Figma links to your design system is an exercise in frustration
- For Lovable, there is no link to your design system at all
The way I work & how Bedrock fits in
What you need to do to be productive, in my opinion, is use an agentic coding tool like Claude Code or OpenAI’s Codex. Personally I pay a good amount of money every month for these tools to help me code prototypes and do front-end work.
I prompt to implement screen designs, while retaining my component context in Storybook. Sometimes I focus entirely on the components to have a good base to build the screens. Other times I am entirely focused on the screens themselves.
I use Bedrock for both types of work:
- Get design validation: it’s much easier and productive for me to make an AI-based prototype than it is to detail everything in a static design tool like Figma (although I use Figma in a phase where we are figuring things out)
- Prepare front-end code for production: in this case I also use Bedrock, in a flavor that resembles the production code as much as possible
In both cases I heavily rely on the built-in Storybook integration to see what my components look like, and to steer the AI agents in the right direction.
While we develop these tools internally at Obra.studio they are not open sourced yet. Do reach out if you are interested.
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Bedrock 3: A design deliverable for the AI age
- Posted in bedrock build-in-public open-source
I’m currently working on Bedrock 3, and I wanted to share some context about why I’m bringing this project back to life.
Bedrock was a static site generator designed to create HTML/CSS prototypes, originally released in 2015 under an MIT license. We used it heavily at my previous design company, Mono.
Bedrock 1 (2015)
The idea behind Bedrock 1 was solid for its time. We wanted to give developers a set of HTML/CSS templates along with a styleguide documenting all the components used.
Components, in this context, simply meant HTML and CSS—nothing more complicated than that. We relied on Bootstrap and other known frameworks, combined with a series of repeatable aspects we got really good at: generating icon fonts, customizing Bootstrap themes, and so on.
Where Bedrock 1 really shined was showcasing complex user flows and managing hundreds of components. Our prototypes powered some of Belgium’s biggest scaleups. We maintained Bedrock 1 for seven years.
Around the same time we started, React, Vue, and other JavaScript frameworks began gaining serious traction. The expectations for what constituted a “front-end deliverable” started to shift.
Over time, it became increasingly difficult for a design team to deliver front-end work. The frameworks kept becoming more complicated. From adding TypeScript, to library complexity itself (i.e. React hooks), to build pipeline problems (remember Grunt and Gulp?), and so on. The complexity kept compounding. At the same time, design tools were getting stronger. Figma’s feature set kept growing, and around 2018 the vibe shifted towards using Figma prototypes as the design deliverable. In general, the need to show design in the browser became a little less important.
It’s also around this time that I essentially gave up on teaching new designers how to code. There was a disconnect within the Mono team: both founders both had 10+ years of design experience including writing front-end code, while most employees came straight out of school, or had just a few years of experience (but with no code background).
When they were learning to code, they were learning the wrong things. People were enrolling in React bootcamps before they understood semantic HTML or how to properly work with CSS. They were dealing with problems that were completely irrelevant to a design deliverable (understanding what useEffect does is an example). The whole point was always to deliver a prototype that showed how the app or website should work. That’s it. But the general learning materials around learning what front-end development for a designer constituted got completely warped.
From a founder’s perspective, we also had many thoughts about the word “prototype.” In a way, it vastly undervalued our deliverable. Most of the code we delivered was essentially production-ready. Calling it a prototype made it sound like throwaway work, when in reality it was often solid, reusable front-end code (depending on how long projects went on). As founders we did grow up fixing IE6 bugs and we knew how to express design in CSS at quite a deep level.
Most front-end developers at the time were busy with other things than what concerned us. Front-enders were dealing with APIs, grabbing data with GraphQL, fixing iframe security issues — and on top of that dealing with the idiosyncrasies of something like React performance issues.
As designers, we had other concerns—accessibility, web performance, visual look, coherence. What ended up happening was that the combination of the work of the “real” front-end engineers and our design-related front-end work via the Bedrock 1 deliverable provided a great base for the front-end.
The prototype work was received well by our clients: managers loved they had a prototype that would never break and used it for sales. Backend developers loved that they didn’t have to deal with the parts of the front-end they didn’t care about. Dedicated front-end developers were happy to take the design vision and then apply their layer of work on top of it. But something was missing.
Bedrock 2 (2018)
Around 2018 I got the idea to create Bedrock 2. The intent was to use React, Vue, Angular, Ember.js or Svelte as the deliverable format. Whatever framework the client was using – there would be multiple flavors of Bedrock depending on the client’s needs.
I did some work on this, creating versions for Vue (Nuxt), Next.js and Sapper (now SvelteKit). We actually used bedrock2-angular and bedrock2-ember to ship work in client projects. It was good,but but the idea ultimately got abandoned because of the mismatch I mentioned earlier: designer skills weren’t keeping pace with front-end frameworks getting more complicated. Ultimately the skill to do this work remained with the founders and 1 particular employee who did bridge the gap to do both design and front-end development.
Around 2021, we disbanded Mono. After Mono, I worked as a product designer at Doccle for a few years. Within that job, I learned more about React and TypeScript.
A bit before, I became a Svelte enthusiast, following the project heavily from 2020 until now. During 2020 to 2024 I upped my front-end skills, but still felt uncomfortable writing certain types of code because of the ergonomics—heavy TypeScript, for example.
I mostly returned to product design and designing in Figma; but the itch to deliver part of the work in the browser remained, and I found myself sometimes creating front-end prototypes for specific purposes.
Bedrock 3 (2026)
Fast forward to 2026. Why revive Bedrock now?
- I have an agency again and there is a need for a structured deliverable, that can also be taught to designers internally
- It’s now realistic for a designer to prompt code; AI has made this possible in a way that wasn’t before. With the right tool
- With how people are working across design and development, there’s a massive need for a cohesive deliverable that can serve as a source of truth.
Right now, design work is scattered everywhere: Figma Design, Figma Make, front-end prototypes on tools like Lovable, and design prototypes that aren’t even made by designers anymore—they’re made by PMs, front-end developers, or just about anyone with a brain and access to an LLM.
When we worked on Bedrock at Mono, we got really good at our deliverable. We had branch-based prototypes to show design changes and facilitate discussions. We had clean URLs that could reference the design system. We had static documentation. All in one place. That cohesion matters.
The deployment space is also a problem. It’s dominated by too many VC-backed companies, when all you really need is a little VPS somewhere. Cloud deployment of prototypes should be simple—they tend to be static, with no backend to worry about.
I’m building Bedrock 3 primarily for our own needs—for client work happening at Obra Studio. But I’ve started thinking about how it could function as an open source project.
A general idea that survives from the never-shipped Bedrock 2 are the “flavors”. Different versions of Bedrock 3 would exist for different needs:
bedrock3-shadn-react, bedrock3-vue-nuxt,bedrock3-nunjucksetc. Some of the needs are based on the template language used, some on the underlying metaframework or JS component tech, some on the UI framework used (e.g. shadcn). Splitting this up elegantly will be a challenge but it will mostly be informed by client work. For example, one of our clients uses Angular, so we will definitely have an Angular variant.I am thinking of eventually providing a CLI tool to set up your Bedrock the way you want it.
Here are some early screenshots:
Marketing site WIP 
An empty Bedrock running (Nunjucks flavor) 
Storybook running in Bedrock 3 – We standardize on Storybook
Example of what a “full” navigation sidebar would look like. In a real deliverable all the screems of for example a web app would appear on the right side. I’m a massive believer in open source. Just like with our shadcn/ui kit, we will likely be open sourcing most of these tools.
We’re a design agency – when we’re out of the picture—which is simply what happens after a design delivery for a one-off project — anybody finding the deliverable can look at the documentation. The underlying logic and code is still there for anyone to use. That just makes for a professional deliverable people can use to bring their apps further.
If you’re curious to follow along with Bedrock 3’s development, keep an eye on @usebedrock on X, or subscribe to the Obra newsletter. If you want to talk about how this can help your company, get in touch!
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Why I’m bullish on $FIG
- Posted in beleggen
A few years ago Adobe wanted to buy Figma for 20 billion dollars. There was a deal, and if that deal eventually went through, fine, but if the deal fell apart, 5% would be paid in cash to Figma — so 1 billion dollars.
And that deal did indeed fall apart. A regulator in the UK decided that it would be too monopolistic of a deal, that Adobe would become too powerful if they made that acquisition.
So Figma received that one billion, and three years later Figma went public.
Last year, in July, Figma had its IPO.
And the initial offered price — that’s an important number to remember — was set around 33 dollars.
What then happened is that the price, even before the IPO actually took place, shot up to 115 dollars.
So for some reason — and someone should explain this to me sometime — certain people get preferential treatment. They seem to be allowed to buy earlier than others, probably linked to investments. I’m not an expert on IPOs at all. Ever since I’ve started with stocks, few companies IPO’d in general.
So regarding $FIG – I was never able to buy on the first day, my trading app didn’t allow me to. That actually turned out to be a good thing, so it wouldn’t be temped (my initial target price was 18 dollars BTW; when I my “calculations” based on the prospectus, I thought Figma was worth around 12 billion)
That price, which was completely driven up, also completely collapsed afterward. It really went down in little shocks: from about 115 to 90, to 75, to somewhere in the 50s. Presumably related to early investors or employees selling off their stock in parts.
And eventually, in December, the price was hovering around 36-38 dollars.
I watched that very closely, because I’ve been following Figma as a company for a long time. And it’s the first time in my “investment” career (aka 3-4 years of doing stocks) I feels strongly about making a larger investment.
Professionally, as a designer, I use Figma every day.
I’ve also given courses in Figma, and I still do. Those courses mean that I’ve seen practically every corner of the user interface at least once.
When new features come out, I try them.
When something new appears — like Figma Weave, for example, a startup they acquired — I test it.
I’m on X / Twitter every day reading news and opinions, and Figma is often a topic.
I’m subscribed to the Figma subreddit, I follow the community, and I’ve also written a number of plugins for Figma.
Long story short: I’m a Figma nerd.
Regarding investing, I’ve come to believe that if, for example, you invest in medical stocks, you need to know what you’re doing. You need to know which medicines are coming to market, who is successful with their experiments, who is getting approvals, and so on. I’m probably explaining that poorly, but the field of medicine clearly isn’t my field.
The field that is my field is tech. But more specifically: what I really follow is design tools. How often does a design tool have an IPO? That almost never happens.
With the big stocks — the “big 7” — it’s hard to reason about why they go up or down.
A company like Microsoft, for example, has so many divisions and so many details that if you really want to follow that in depth, you’ll be pretty busy. You have Azure, the software division, hardware including Xbox… if you want to do value investing, there are so many areas you’d have to understand.
But Figma is basically just a design program. Now Figma is trying to build out a suite of apps with which they want to compete with Adobe.
That’s something I can reason about with what I know. I can relate their Sites product to Framer; I can track the evolution of their main Design product. I can see what value Draw offers vs. Adobe’s offering. I can see how Make stacks up to something like Lovable.
Adobe has a market capitalization of more than 120 billion dollars.
So why do I believe in Figma as a stock?
Adobe wanted to buy Figma for 20 billion, and right now — going back to that 33-dollar number — the stock price is currently hovering around what Adobe was willing to pay.
In fact, today it’s gotten a bit worse and is now around 29 dollars. The past five days has been terrible for the stock, going down 20%.
My bet would be that Figma is worth at least 40 billion within a few years. If it’s that, it would only be 1/3 of the market cap of Adobe (mind you, a company that has been around since the eighties).
That “within a few years” is important. Why not now? Why only in a few years?
Because it still needs to become clear what’s going to happen with the design tools market.
20 billion – what Adobe thought it was worth – is still a lot of money.
At the moment everyone is hyping AI tools, and many people are claiming that all design tools are going to disappear because they’ll be replaced by AI tools. Those AI tools are mainly code editors.
I personally don’t believe that’s going to happen. I believe that the design tool as a creative canvas will continue to exist.
And in the creative canvas space, there are few competitors.
Framer is a competitor that announced its own design mode, but that’s still at a very low level compared to what you can do with Figma. The tools in there are simply subpar.
That’s also why I keep coming back to Photoshop. I tried to be Adobe-free, and that attempt lasted exactly ten days.
Now I’m under deadline pressure, I need photo editing tools that work properly, and I don’t have time to learn Affinity — even though it’s now free and was acquired by Canva.
I don’t have time to learn a tool only to discover that the feature I need doesn’t exist. So I’m back on the Adobe train.
And there’s a reason Adobe software has such a large market cap.
For years, Adobe has been the gold standard for tens of thousands — maybe hundreds of thousands — of companies worldwide that need to do graphic design.
Packaging design. Color processes. Fashion design. Print workflows.
They have been dealing with things Figma hasn’t even thought about yet.
Figma is extremely bad at bitmap editing.
But where Figma is extremely good is digital product design.
And that fact, together with a few other strengths, makes me believe it can still evolve.
I foresee that if Figma becomes more complete as a suite — in logic, in what you can do with it — it could eventually overtake Adobe, or sit right next to Adobe.
Adobe has been stagnating for years when it comes to software evolution. A software package like Illustrator hasn’t fundamentally improved.
But the fundamentals — which aren’t always ideal — still work well for certain use cases. For example, editing vector art in Illustrator has long been considered the best approach.
There were things that simply didn’t exist in Figma until last year, when Figma Draw expanded things. And even now, if you do advanced vector work, there are still many features you’ll miss when working in Figma.
That said, I think Figma’s vector capabilities are underestimated. You can actually do quite a lot with them. People who default to Illustrator for all vector work are exaggerating, in my opinion. We drew all of the Obra Icons in Figma.
I think Figma is on the right path. Its vector engine is solid — it exists, it works — but it still needs major expansion.
Adobe is stronger in other areas: color management, bitmap editing in Photoshop, Lightroom capturing a large part of the photography market.
Adobe clearly captures different markets than Figma.
Figma captures digital product design. Adobe tried to capture that market with Adobe XD, but that didn’t really work.
So to conclude: is Figma worth what it’s worth today? Is Figma worth 20 billion? Will it become 30 or 40 billion?
I think so. So I think that if I invest a certain amount now, that amount could increase by 50%, maybe even 200%. Will it be worth 50% more? Double? We don’t actually know.
Will another product emerge that completely dominates and destroys the market? If that happens, it will probably take time. And then you can still sell at a loss. I don’t foresee the Figma stock going below $18.
So will I bet further on this now? I think so. I follow it closely enough to be able to sell if it stops making sense.
When would it stop making sense to invest?
The biggest risk to Figma is a competitor doing a better job.
There’s the category of AI tools — but as I said, I don’t believe in that threat.
Apps like Magic Path; people saying “I don’t need a design tool anymore, I’ll design with a Cursor or in the cloud.” I think that’s enthusiasm from trying out new tools. That’s not actual design.
Don’t get me wrong, these tools are useful for a specific type of work. I love “designing” with those tools when I know where I am going. But really I’m just prompting front-ends – that’s not design. That’s actually disrupting programming.
I don’t see the AI tools having a big impact on design tools. And I think if they do, Figma is smart enough to pivot in the right direction (as evidenced by Figma Make & Figma’s acquisition of Weave).
Another category that could poissbly overtake Figma is other design tools.
Framer is primarily a website builder, but their engine is very good. They’ve introduced a design mode where the underlying engine could become very powerful. With the right type of work, they could potentially sit next to Figma for part of the workflow.
So that’s a risk. With $100M in VC money and constant evolutions – they could be a major competitor.
Then there are smaller competitors, like Paper. Paper raised 4.2 million from Accel Ventures. They’re doing well, but they’re only a few people. That being said, Figma also started with two a few people. And they still managed to build a major product (albeit after spending 4 years in stealth).
If you have the community backing, and if you capture the zeitgeist with your design app, a lot can happen.
A perfect storm could happen when several things happen at once:
- a competitor gets good
- Figma stagnates
- Figma sentiment turns more negative
Designers are very sensitive to price increases. Designers are also very sensitive to anti-community decisions. By that I mean political decisions, or decisions that damage the community.
Community is a feeling. There’s the Figma Community — files, plugins — powered by an open API. And little by little, Figma has been chipping away at that openness.
They say: this part of the API is no longer available unless you buy Enterprise. More and more features are moving to org-level and Enterprise-level plans.
At first, when those tiers existed, this was limited. And even now it’s still limited. With a Figma professional subscription you can do about 90% of what you want. But the featureset of the more expensive seems to be expanding (e.g. features like Code Connect).
It’s actually my theory they could get away with 1 more price increase on the pro level, since the amount for an editor there is still rather low.
But overall there is a risk that if they choose to work on the wrong features, coupled with a price increase, community sentiment will turn towards other tools. I’ve been tracking their design decisions for 10 year now, and besides some questionable releases when it came to AI designs and UI3 (Config ’24) I generally feel like they’ve always been on the right track.
So — this is my analysis. I believe in it. If it drops further — say to 28 — I’ll buy more. If it goes up, I’ll wait. If I suddenly had a lot of money to invest, I’d probably take a bigger risk and put some of it into Figma shares.
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Year in Review 2025
- Posted in lifelog year-in-review
Editor’s note: didn’t have time to publish this, and publishing it later than now would make me never publish it, so here goes!
I find myself in Berlin, visiting family. This past week, I re-read my last year in review and decided to repeat the format for this year.
Meta: tech/website experiments
I used to make these elaborate websites (like this one) to practice with web design techniques or new ways of creating websites. I don’t find myself having time for that anymore – but maybe I should pick it up again.
The 2025 version of those experiments would definitely be experimenting with AI. But even though AI is pretty powerful, it also leads to very generic output – I would still appreciate making the right parts by hand. I wouldn’t just dump my favorites into Gemini 3 and dump that infographic you see all over the web now here. That wouldn’t be me.
Perhaps another 2025 way to create these sites would be to use Figma Sites or Framer – but after a lot of reflection, and trying out those tools, I find the SaaS nature with specific content limits and ever-changing prices to not be a great fit for the type of websites I want to create for myself.
I don’t subscribe to a future where websites are locked to specific tools, with no export options, and your site staying online is tied to a permanent subscription. Over time, this just becomes too expensive, especially for sites that are meant to stay online – such as a “best of”.
In general, in 2026, I’m planning to invest more in solutions like Craft — or perhaps open-source CMS’es that are not tied to VC investments if I can find a good one.
Limited intake
This year I became a dad. I also rebooted my design agency. Combining these, one of the things I was mostly lacking was time. As a result, I didn’t actually watch that many movies or checked out as many games as I used to.
In general, I really had to dig a bit to know which movies I watched or which games made an impression on me. Music-wise, I really didn’t listen to that much new albums. I didn’t spend a whole lot of time on YouTube or with a new hobby like other years. Perhaps this will change as our child grows older… or maybe that’s just my new reality.
Personal interests
Personal finances
Last year I wrote about an interest in personal finance. This interest has kind of settled down as I have a plan about what I want to do with my personal finances. Overall I am holding stocks of companies that I see creating more value over time, which have a stable ground when it comes to their assets and IP.
In the more risk-heavy category, I am specifically keeping an eye on $FIG as a possible investment. I already have a small position and I am looking closely at the right moment to increase it.
Politics
What came back from previous years was an interest in politics. This year had both the Belgian elections, the Trump global trade show and even ended with Belgium playing a role in the global political discussion with Euroclear. I keep being interested in knowing what’s going on in the world.
One thing that bothers me is that I am not putting in enough time to understand the local context and specifically news from Latin America.
My resolution: understand the country and the surrounding LATAM context I live in more. Read more news and local magazines in Spanish.
Travel
I went to Belgium three times this year, mixing business trips with time for family and friends.
The first time going to Belgium I went skiing in France with a few friends. Getting there with an electric car added a few hours to our trip, but we made it. It was good to be back on the snowboard after more than ten years of not snowboarding at all. It really is like biking – you do not forget how to do it. I have some thoughts about safety (see the Sports section below) but overall I really enjoyed it.
Picturesque night charging 
On the slopes Around that time I gave a talk about designing with AI, which kind of became the theme of the year. This guide on our agency website got a good response on LinkedIn and kicked off the marketing year for Obra.
Giving a talk about designing with AI In May I visited Barcelona for the Svelte Summit conference. I also visited Belgium, this time for a business focussed trip & spending a first work day in real-life with the first long-term Obra collaborator.
Up until now, the travel was mostly business focussed, but I also did some trips for leisure. In my year-in-review post for 2024 I wished for some more travel inside Mexico and this came true:
- we travelled to La Paz in Baja California for our “babymoon” (the last holiday without a child in your family).
- Later, when our child was born, we drove to Acapulco – a first longer trip with the baby. The five hours drive went well, but Acapulco itself not in the best state. I probably wouldn’t recommend it unless you just want to stay in your hotel and enjoy the beach. But that’s not exactly my style of travelling.
La Paz is beautiful In December – now – I am on a longer trip (see the last post about this). The best part so far was showing our kid to family; and a little Obra team dinner.
My travel resolution: take a big trip before our baby turns 2 years old. It is still realistic to go to on a bigger trip with a 1 year old, while if we ever have two toddler-aged children for example it would become more difficult organisation-wise.
Work
I chronicled my work life on this blog enough already – working on the first year of my building my agency (again) has been very satisfying.
If you are interested, you can peruse the blog archives with the Obra Studio tag to read what happened. In short, I am establishing a boutique design agency from Mexico, with a team and client base in both Europa and the US.
My work resolution: keep working on making Obra Studio a succesful agency
Side projects – Shadcn/ui kit
Our Obra shadcn/ui UI kit was duplicated over 25,000 times. At this point, we’re also using it in 2 real projects, so I am hesitant to even call it a side project anymore. It’s been an unexpected success.
Where to take this: keep growing the kit as an open source project while using it in commercial projects
Side projects – Tacos y Tech
Tacos y Tech was an event for designers, developers and product managers where we would just meet up in a tacos place (with lots of seating) to talk tech.
A typical event would look like this:
We organised Tacos y Tech 8 times throughout the year (6 regular events and 2 invite-only “special” events). We learned a fair bit about organising a low-key repeatable event to bring the local design/dev community together.
Where to take this: I am thinking about not doing anything with the events in 2025; they take time and I didn’t get out of it what I wanted (i.e. find talented designers & devs in Mexico)
An office
Lately I’ve been wanting to find an office.
The reason I want an office is to be able to work together with collaborators in the same place. A secondary reason is also having focus in my work days.
While I truly believe in remote work as the main way of working for a company, I’ve always liked having a hybrid strategy where people can meet in real life. Getting to know each other as a team gives a new dynamic to the work that otherwise wouldn’t exist.
In my hub strategy, I have 2 hubs: Mexico City and Belgium (the triangle Antwerp/Brussels/Ghent is small enough to be considered “a hub”).
Lately I’ve been scouting co-working places as well as private offices to find the right environment to work in.
What’s on my mind is having a place we can customize to our liking with design posters, some place we can lock up where expensive things like monitors can stay safe; a place you want to come to instead of have to go to. I haven’t found the right spot yet, but I will be investing more time in this search in 2026.
Example of what I don’t want but Mexico seems to be full of: tiny offices. Fitting 5 people in this tiny space – and desks that fit just a tiny laptop? That’s not going to work! Music
The amount of new music I checked out is embarrasingly low. I’ve found that my media consumption habits already changed because of a lack of time. I listen to way more podcasts, because you can do that while doing light sports or during a walk with the baby.
The music highlight of 2025 was going to Corona Capital in Mexico City for one day which featured Queens of the Stone Age, Kaiser Chiefs, Foo Fighters and Franz Ferdinand on the same night!
Queens of the Stone Age at Corona Capital 2025 My top albums I liked where Tropicoqueta by Karol G en Als het neerstort by Belgian artist Simon. According to Spotify I listened to 3,5 hours a day of music; but I think most of that was just background music while working. I wanted to consciously listen to new albums and didn’t get to that resolution.
My music resolution: try to consciously listen to new releases.
Year’s favorite: Queens of the Stone Age
Movies
I feel like I totally missed out on movies this year. If I scroll through the IMDB releases of 2025 I feel I haven’t seen anything. I am missing mainstream releases but also a lot of indie European movies I used to watch. This week I got the chance to see The Secret Agent, which was great — but finding myself in the cinema seems to have become a rare thing.
I remember One Battle After Another in cinemas as my highlight of the year, but other than that, I didn’t watch much. Going to the cinema and having a newborn are two things that don’t really go together well. I did watch Frankenstein on Netflix, which was great.
In the beginning of the year I was a bit disappointed with Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning. A bigger miss was the Superman movie, which was horrible.
Looking back at my year in review of last year, I didn’t get to my personal movie resolution: dust off my projector and spend some more time watching quality movies. I’ll try again this year; on a positive note, the amount of cool movies to watch keeps growing this way.
Year’s favorite: Frankenstein
Movie resolution: look into a short-throw laser projector again, and watch some movies
Games
I found that my gaming habits changed in 2026. If I knew the first 2 hours of a game would be cool and it cost €50, I used to wait to buy the game on a sale – now I will just do it. A €80 game is still a bit of a stretch.
Admittedly, I bought a few too many games I’ve only played a few hours know, but I am happy to have had the experiences.
I have this vague business plan of possibly working on a gaming publication at some point in my life, but I don’t think it’s the right time. In October I started writing some game reviews and made some preliminary website designs for a project called “BeGamer”. I intend to use this publication as a sort of demo project as I change some of my business focus to website development.
As for the games themselves:
- I eyed getting the Switch 2 but didn’t buy it. When Hollow Knight: Silksong came out, I tried the original Hollow Knight on my Switch 1. I understand why it’s such a famous game now and I am happy to have played it (albeit I think I only got to 30% completion)
- Overall my PS5 has not been getting much playtime. I bought the THPS3+4 reboot and barely played it. My PS Plus subscription expired and the content on PS Plus just wasn’t good enough to renew it.
- I really enjoyed Mafia: The Old Country on PS5. It’s a short game so I was able to finish it in a few weeks despite having a newborn. I was impressed by the graphics and the story.
- One random indie game I enjoyed is Lost in Random: The Eternal Die. You can pick it up for cheap and it’s pretty good! It’s a roguelike game where you get stronger every run.
- I liked the Oblivion reboot for a while, but didn’t get very far again, since this is one of those time intensive games.
- When Hades II came out, I bought it and immediately played it. I finished the game – Steam says I have 45 hours logged and that’s probably the game I played most.
- I still really like playing Age of Empires 4; but I just didn’t have any real time to invest in it. I bought the latest DLC and should check it out more. Maybe pick up some competitive play.
- I really liked the episodic Dispatch. 100% recommended as a chill game (that is maybe more like a TV series)
- I’ve been watching some videos about Assetto Corsa: Rally and hopefully I can get back to having a basic sim racing setup in Mexico at some point. That seems more like a 2027 plan though.
Year’s favorite: Hades II
Gaming resolution: Keep checking out interesting titles, and maybe get into some competitive AoE4
Sports
2025 was not the best year for sports: I went biking a few times with the road bike but ultimately stopped using it in summer. Road biking is a lot of fun but also feels very unsafe in Mexico City.\
Notice the bus passing by 😂 As a new dad, I am worried about getting into an accident and not being able to take care of my family. I have a similar feeling when snowboarding. With snowboarding (and mountain biking for that matter) you are mostly in control, whereas with road biking, you are sometimes in the middle of traffic, making it harder to control the situation.
I went running a few times but didn’t make a conscious effort to get into it.
Lately I picked up a Sunday habit of going in the “ciclothon” (in CDMX they free up the roads every Sunday for running and biking) with a more relaxed bike.
What I wanted to do is bring one of my bikes that’s still in Belgium to Mexico to enjoy the ciclothon (or some smaller bike adventures) with a cooler bike. However, I wonder if it’s worth the hassle or whether I shouldn’t just buy a similar bike in Mexico. Because there will also likely be times that I want to use the bike for fun in Belgium.
My resolution: find a safe way to enjoy adventurous biking. Find a fun bike to enjoy the ciclothon and some leisurely and relatively safe CDMX biking (around Chapultepec Park/Bosques for example)
Language learning
I stopped the Spanish classes with my teacher in the beginning of the year to focus on my business.
As I live in Mexico my Spanish is naturally getting better, but I feel it could use a boost by specific studying.
My goals:
- Get an official degree like B2, as a stepping stone to a better one (C-level)
- Find a (Mexican) news source in Spanish and read it consistently
Looking forward
For 2026 I am thinking about a year that is focussed on growing our family, and growing my business.
In 2024 ago I got married; in 2025 we got a first child; I think 2026 will be intense enough just running my business, taking care of my family and sometimes finding time for personal interests.
Vamonos!
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Nog eens in België
- Posted in agency-life nederlands obra-studio
Ik ben de laatste weken nog eens in België, met als primaire reden om familie te zien voor kerst. Op professioneel vlak heb ik van het moment gebruik gemaakt om
- bij sommige van onze klanten op bezoek gegaan, onder andere het M HKA en Universiteit Gent.
- een workshop te geven bij Mobile Vikings over specifieke evoluties in Figma
- enkele real-life 1 op 1 gesprekken te hebben met designers die mogelijk bij het team kunnen komen
- met het Obra-team een etentje te organiseren. Het was enorm leuk om elkaar eens allemaal in het echt te zien. Als oprichter heb ik contact met iedereen, maar vaak één op één. Nu kon het team elkaar beter leren kennen.
Momenteel heb ik het gevoel nog veel werk te hebben om het jaar te kunnen afsluiten, maar ik merk ook dat het tijd is om te aanvaarden dat sommige dingen voor volgend jaar zullen zijn, en toch ook een beetje vakantie te nemen.
Zoals ik schreef in de vorige post gaat het op zich wel goed met Obra Studio. Er waren goeie team vibes op ons event, en ik denk in mijn missie geslaagd te zijn om (het begin van) een bedrijf uit te bouwen vanuit Mexico.
Ik kijk er naar uit om het tweede jaar in te gaan: ik heb een strategie in mijn hoofd en ben benieuwd waar we binnen een jaar zullen staan.
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Zo gaat het goed, zo gaat het beter
- Posted in agency-life nederlands obra-studio
We zijn nu 1 jaar bezig met Obra Studio, en ik had onlangs een hele analyse geschreven van acht pagina’s over het hoe en waarom. Ik heb besloten die verticaal te klasseren — ik ben Warren Buffett niet… — en enkel de conclusie mee te nemen: als bedrijf moeten we een breder aanbod hebben, en zullen we in de toekomst ook promoten dat we naast digital product design, ook werken aan design en development van high-end websites.
Met high-end websites bedoelen we niet de website van de bakker om de hoek, maar uitdagende websites met specifieke requirements, zoals websites voor museums en websites voor mediapublicaties.
Daarnaast gaan we binnen het bestaande aanbod van digital product design meer inzetten op consulting-type opdrachten, waar designers ingebed worden in een team. Dat is wat software startups en scale-ups willen; en waar we met Obra Support een formule voor hebben.
In september en oktober was het nog relatief stil qua werk, maar hebben we van twee klanten klanten voor de lange termijn gemaakt. Deze maand zijn vele projecten in een stroomversnelling gekomen, en kwam er onlangs nog een groot project bij. Ik wacht nog op een antwoord over een project dat té interessant is om niet te doen. Resultaat: agenda vol, en puzzelen geblazen. Een typisch eindejaarsfenomeen.
As such is agency life; maar te veel werk is ook het luxeprobleem dat je nodig hebt om te groeien. Te veel werk betekent dat je een tijdje over capaciteit draait met te weinig mensen, om dan weer het risico te kunnen nemen iemand erbij te nemen in het team.
Binnenkort ben ik in België en hebben we een etentje met dat team. Dat is voor mij een officieel kantelmoment om jaar twee van het agency in te zetten. Dit jaar heeft enkele laagtes gekend maar eigenlijk vooral veel hoogtes. Vooral op teamvlak ben ik blij met een goede groei. Ik heb toffe nieuwe mensen leren kennen, en ook kunnen rekenen op designers en developers die ik al goed kende. Ook heb ik veel businesspartnersteun gekregen uit onverwachte hoek.
Wat betreft klanten bouwden we aan projecten voor 10+ klanten in de VS, Luxemburg, Duitsland en natuurlijk België. Van startups tot scaleups aan de softwarekant tot museums en universiteiten aan de high-end websitekant. Ik mag daar allemaal nog niet te veel over zeggen maar als ik kijk voor wie we zoal werken ben ik best trots.
Op marketing vlak werkten we aan een initiële reputatieuitbouw: onze website, veel blog posts, een UI kit met publiek succes, en een gids over designing with AI die booming was op LinkedIn. Over LinkedIn gesproken; we gingen van 0 naar toch een respectabele 500+ volgers op LinkedIn. Volgend jaar plannen we meer ownership te nemen over onze kanalen en een nieuwsbrief te lanceren.
Op naar jaar twee!
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Frictie
- Posted in de-afspraak persoonlijk
Deze week was de heer Julien de Wit op TV, die een column in Trends had geschreven over “moeilijk gaat ook.”
Dat balans ook enkel kan bestaan door disbalans. De arme Julien werd in De Afspraak bijna levend gevuld door een psycholoog, een gen-Z actrice en natuurlijk de immer politiek correcte Bart Schols.
Ik vond dat hij met zijn column meer dan gelijk had. Een beetje frictie vind ik net super interessant. Frictie doet groeien. Frictie doet leven.
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Gekleurde vakjes
- Posted in career open-source productivity professioneel
Het is interessant om te kijken naar de vakjes op Github die aangeven hoeveel er gewerkt wordt aan code.
Dit geeft zeker geen volledig beeld, omdat code soms op Gitlab staat of niet meegeteld wordt hier wegens geen eigenaar van de repositories in kwestie.
Maar het is toch leuk om er even naar te kijken.
Dit was het laatste jaar van Mono: heel veel activiteit, die stilviel in november en december.
Dan, de Doccle periode:
Dit jaar was ik full-time designer en gebruikte ik Github enkel voor een paar kleine werk prototypes. Je ziet dat het werk heel geconcentreerd is.
In 2023 is er zeker niet veel geprogrammeerd – nog altijd full-time aan de slag voor Doccle, dan – maar vanaf juli ben ik begonnen aan Screenshot to Layout (link).
Een project waar ik een 20-tal dagen voor stopzetting nog altijd over twijfel of ik het wel wíl stopzetten.
In 2024 ook heel beperkt: een beetje maintenance aan Screenshot to Layout. Werk aan Obra Icons. Maar eigenlijk betrekkelijk weinig te zien op Github, aangezien dat werk voor 80% uit de iconen maken zelf bestond.
Maar zie kijken we naar dit jaar, dan is het toch steviger qua output: 2 keer meer dan in 2023, en 3 keer meer dan in 2024.
De Obra website, experimenten met SveltePlot, een zijproject om een React Native app te maken en werk voor klanten op codevlak.
Met de toekomstplannen die ik heb zie ik dat niet verminderen, eigenlijk.
