Designers Are Building Their Own Tools Now, Here's What I Made!

Designers don't need to wait for someone to build the perfect tool anymore. If it doesn't exist, you can describe it to AI and have a working version in minutes. In this video, I walk through the full process of how I built a custom isometric keyboard text generator for my podcast cover art — from finding a reference on Pinterest to iterating with Claude Code until it did exactly what I needed. No coding required. Chapters: 0:00 Designers are building their own tools now 0:24 The trend: Jenny Wen (Anthropic) on getting hands dirty 0:48 The old problem: designers waiting for engineers 1:10 Ziv's story: Figma plugin with Cursor, zero coding 1:46 My tool: isometric keyboard text generator (live demo) 3:04 How it started: Design Founders podcast cover art 3:51 The reference: isometric keyboard poster from Pinterest 4:14 Why image generation AI wasn't enough 4:45 Building in Figma first, then switching to code 5:05 Iterating with AI: layouts, angles, borders, colours 6:25 The final tool: export PNG/SVG, full customisation 7:11 Start small: solve your own problem first 8:17 The tool is live + what's next Tools & Resources: - Isometric keyboard text generator — key.bearliu.com - Claude Code — https://code.claude.com - Ziv Ariely: How I built a Figma plugin with zero coding — https://medium.com/@zivrele/how-i-built-a-figma-plugin-using-cursor-with-zero-coding-knowledge-d3d32f3f2918 - Jenny Wen on Lenny's Podcast — https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/the-design-process-is-dead 👋 Hi! I’m Bear, a Product Designer, 10-year+ podcaster, and author of two books. Passionate about design, tech, productivity, and learning AI at https://bearwith.AI Stay updated! Subscribe to my newsletter at newsletter.bearwith.ai. • Website: bearwith.ai • LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/bearliu • Twitter: twitter.com/bearbig