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Bob Baxley

Published podcast speaker

Claims
20
Episodes
1
Shows
1
Named items
3

Books, apps, and tools

The evidenced stack.

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book / recommends

The Elements of Typographic Style

“So the three books I'm going to recommend, the first one's a beautiful poetic book about typography called The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst. Robert was the poet laureate of Canada. And the first 80 pages will change how you think about typography. It will open you up to the wonderful world of typography that we all live in. You'll think differently about every sign you look at, about every movie credit you see, and it will give you an insight into the designer mindset. When you understand typography, I think you understand where designers come from and the best designers I know are just total type nerds. So highly recommend Elements of Typographic Style. Second book, Zen and the Motorcycle Maintenance. Many people may know ultimately a philosophy book, but it's about the concept of quality, which I think is a very important topic. So it talks about quality and the importance of how things integrate into cohesive whole, which I believe is the main challenge facing most software teams. They create something that's highly fragmented instead of a single hole. So, Zen in the Motorcycle Maintenance. And then the last one is a book called Time in the Art of Living by Robert Gruden. It's just a very interesting collection of impressionistic views of time and how time passes and what time means. So that's very different from the others and it's not something probably gets recommended on your show too often, but I think it'll help people in their lives in a powerful way.”

Lenny's Podcast · 12 Jun 2025

Evidence receipt · Source ↗

book / recommends

Zen and the Motorcycle Maintenance

“So the three books I'm going to recommend, the first one's a beautiful poetic book about typography called The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst. Robert was the poet laureate of Canada. And the first 80 pages will change how you think about typography. It will open you up to the wonderful world of typography that we all live in. You'll think differently about every sign you look at, about every movie credit you see, and it will give you an insight into the designer mindset. When you understand typography, I think you understand where designers come from and the best designers I know are just total type nerds. So highly recommend Elements of Typographic Style. Second book, Zen and the Motorcycle Maintenance. Many people may know ultimately a philosophy book, but it's about the concept of quality, which I think is a very important topic. So it talks about quality and the importance of how things integrate into cohesive whole, which I believe is the main challenge facing most software teams. They create something that's highly fragmented instead of a single hole. So, Zen in the Motorcycle Maintenance. And then the last one is a book called Time in the Art of Living by Robert Gruden. It's just a very interesting collection of impressionistic views of time and how time passes and what time means. So that's very different from the others and it's not something probably gets recommended on your show too often, but I think it'll help people in their lives in a powerful way.”

Lenny's Podcast · 12 Jun 2025

Evidence receipt · Source ↗

book / recommends

Time in the Art of Living

“So the three books I'm going to recommend, the first one's a beautiful poetic book about typography called The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst. Robert was the poet laureate of Canada. And the first 80 pages will change how you think about typography. It will open you up to the wonderful world of typography that we all live in. You'll think differently about every sign you look at, about every movie credit you see, and it will give you an insight into the designer mindset. When you understand typography, I think you understand where designers come from and the best designers I know are just total type nerds. So highly recommend Elements of Typographic Style. Second book, Zen and the Motorcycle Maintenance. Many people may know ultimately a philosophy book, but it's about the concept of quality, which I think is a very important topic. So it talks about quality and the importance of how things integrate into cohesive whole, which I believe is the main challenge facing most software teams. They create something that's highly fragmented instead of a single hole. So, Zen in the Motorcycle Maintenance. And then the last one is a book called Time in the Art of Living by Robert Gruden. It's just a very interesting collection of impressionistic views of time and how time passes and what time means. So that's very different from the others and it's not something probably gets recommended on your show too often, but I think it'll help people in their lives in a powerful way.”

Lenny's Podcast · 12 Jun 2025

Evidence receipt · Source ↗

Claim ledger

What Bob said.

8 transcript-backed records

01 / belief

The more context you can give it, the more specificity you can give it, the more this is what I'm about and what we're trying to get to, the more the designer's going to be able to figure out which swim lane they're supposed to be in to produce something. So I think if you're going into it feeling like the design process is going to take a lot of time, it's because you haven't been clear in your creative brief, so to speak, which often means you're not really clear in your own head.

“The more context you can give it, the more specificity you can give it, the more this is what I'm about and what we're trying to get to, the more the designer's going to be able to figure out which swim lane they're supposed to be in to produce something. So I think if you're going into it feeling like the design process is going to take a lot of time, it's because you haven't been clear in your creative brief, so to speak, which often means you're not really clear in your own head.”
Speaker
Bob Baxley
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

03 / belief

I think we're living in a time where people don't do so many usability studies, so a lot of folks get pretty far into their careers without ever having watched mere mortals actually use software.

“I think we're living in a time where people don't do so many usability studies, so a lot of folks get pretty far into their careers without ever having watched mere mortals actually use software.”
Speaker
Bob Baxley
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

04 / belief

I think people need to understand that they're advocating for ideas and not for themselves. And when I talk to a lot of designers that may be true for PMS, I hear a lot of people say that they're reluctant to post on social media or on LinkedIn or something because like, "Well, I don't want to be self-promoting.

“I think people need to understand that they're advocating for ideas and not for themselves. And when I talk to a lot of designers that may be true for PMS, I hear a lot of people say that they're reluctant to post on social media or on LinkedIn or something because like, "Well, I don't want to be self-promoting.”
Speaker
Bob Baxley
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

07 / belief

What I've seen happen over and over in my experience, a ThoughtSpot, Pinterest, other places when you're working directly with product, it's easy to leave engineering out of the loop and product and design can go cook up stuff that doesn't quite make sense technically or is really hard to implement or is just a bridge too far.

“What I've seen happen over and over in my experience, a ThoughtSpot, Pinterest, other places when you're working directly with product, it's easy to leave engineering out of the loop and product and design can go cook up stuff that doesn't quite make sense technically or is really hard to implement or is just a bridge too far.”
Speaker
Bob Baxley
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

08 / belief

I think Slack, honestly, both Slack and Pinterest I think are examples of products that became companies, but neither one of those places really knew what to do next, because they didn't have a bigger vision of the change they were trying to see in the world.

“I think Slack, honestly, both Slack and Pinterest I think are examples of products that became companies, but neither one of those places really knew what to do next, because they didn't have a bigger vision of the change they were trying to see in the world.”
Speaker
Bob Baxley
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast
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