Smash Notes

Back to Koen & Jorn: Framer Reloaded, with Koen Bok & Jorn van Dijk.

Why Can't AI Make a Website Button Blue?

Koen Bok and Jorn van Dijk say a chat tool can make a landing page fast, and speed is the main advantage, but the page looks generic. A landing page for Soleio comes back quickly and looks like the others. Asking the chat to make a button blue often fails. The back and forth feels like a walkie-talkie. Newer tools, including V0, now add controls after the chat: click the button, open a popover, and pick a color.

Framer is in the reverse position. A year of AI work is headed into the product in Q1, while the editing controls are already the base, from button color and forms to animation, breakpoints, and how a page looks, feels, and breathes. The plan is to put AI on top so people move faster and still keep the control to make a more premium site than a page from an LLM alone.

The mundane work is the target. Starting a site means navigation, a footer, and the layout template for different pages, work people now buy a template for or build from scratch. A screenshot or a picture can also become a visual direction someone can then move around.

Transcript

Koen & Jorn: Framer Reloaded ·

First of Kind

More from this episode

  1. How Do Designers Run Sites on Framer?Koen Bok and Jorn van Dijk call Framer a web design platform that design-forward companies use to produce their entire marketing sites.
  2. Why Did Phones Break Desktop Design Tools?Koen Bok and Jorn van Dijk say Sofa joined Facebook while Chris Cox and others were still choosing companies to acquire so Facebook could lead on design.
  3. Why Did Framer's Revenue Stall at Five Million?Koen Bok and Jorn van Dijk say early Framer revenue reached a million, then three, four, and five million, and then growth slowed, the opposite of what had to…
  4. Why Does Koen Bok Say Design Tools Will Look Like Notion?Koen Bok says he and Jorn van Dijk were wrong about high-fidelity tools. They started Framer convinced that design needed more of them.
  5. Why Did Framer Pivot Instead of Selling?Jorn van Dijk says the lunch came down to three options: quit and give the money back, try to sell what was left after expenses, or pivot.
  6. Why Do Startup Websites Look Better Than Seven Years Ago?Soleio credits Framer with a handprint on the aesthetic, the language, and the medium of the web.

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