Evil Rabbit's first professional experience was a freelance gig for a niche, high-interest community in Argentina. This demonstrates that valuable career-building can happen anywhere, at any age, and well outside of conventional paths like internships or formal education.
Despite Evil Rabbit redesigning the app to be more user-friendly, the creator was unhappy with the community's preference for it. The new design was only adopted after overwhelming public pressure, showing how community validation can override a founder's initial vision.
The horizontal navigation system Evil Rabbit created for the movie streaming app Popcorn Time became a core part of Vercel's product dashboard for almost a decade. This shows how design patterns from side projects, even controversial ones, can influence major enterprise products.
Working daily with the CEO was a masterclass in operations, not just design. The most critical lesson was learning strategic focus: the discipline to reject even incredible product ideas to avoid distraction and maintain direction. This skill was foundational to his growth as a leader.
Early on, the founding designer consistently tweeted Vercel's triangle logo with various textures and treatments. This mysterious and repetitive social media tactic successfully built brand awareness and made the logo instantly recognizable, separate from the product itself.
Following CEO Guillermo Rauch's philosophy, Vercel's product design is deliberately minimal and neutral. The belief is that a tool that feels transparent and doesn't get in the user's way is the hallmark of great design; it helps users succeed without being noticed.
The team transitioned from a service desk for static assets (e.g., social media cards, videos) to a product team building internal tools. Now, other departments like marketing can generate their own on-brand assets, eliminating the creative team as a bottleneck and scaling their impact.
Vercel's hiring philosophy is to trust experts and "let them cook." When a motion designer from Pentagram noted the team's chaos, he was empowered to build the brand guidelines they lacked. The company hires talent to bring their own structure, not to conform to a broken one.
Despite his foundational role, Evil Rabbit rejects promotions to top executive titles. He prioritizes personal growth by hiring managers and leaders he can learn from, believing that having people "above" him is essential for continuous learning and collective creation.
The designer's greatest measure of success isn't a single project, but the cultural adoption of the brand's principles. When he sees non-designers like salespeople rejecting ideas because they don't "feel Vercel" or aren't "monochrome enough," he knows he has successfully scaled the brand's DNA.