Scott Savarie is a designer, engineer, and partner at Logic + Rhythm. He's also a day 1 supporter of Read.cv and good friend of ours. Today we sat down to ask him a few questions about his background in design, how L+R came about, and the exciting launch of their new tool for keeping design teams in sync, Current.
Hey Scott, who are you and where are you in the world right now?
Yo! I’m a designer and recently moved from Berlin to San Francisco (oddly enough for the second time in my life).
Can you tell us a bit about how you got into design?
I feel like this is a cliché by now, but it was through playing in bands and being involved in the music scene when I was growing up. We’d make our own posters for shows, album art for tapes, CDs, 7 inches, and LPs, and graphics for t-shirts. Myspace was huge back then, and you could theme your profile—that was kind of my introduction to HTML and CSS. I also got really into photography during that time and took a ton of concert photos. I remember in high school I figured out how to make a website using Adobe Flash to show off my photographs.
You recently moved back to San Francisco after working in Berlin for several years. Have you noticed a cultural shift in the way work is approached in the two cities?
Honestly, not really.
I think I would’ve had a different answer in my first year or two of living there, but after 10ish years you notice there are actually way more similarities than differences. Maybe one thing is I feel like Americans tend to glorify “hustle culture”, whereas ideas like a 4 day work week don’t even sound “radical” in many European countries. I’ve heard raising money is way harder in Berlin (or other big EU cities) than here, but I’ve never done it myself.
You’ve worked in house at both large design agencies, software companies, and now run your own product design studio, Logic + Rhythm. L+R dabbles in both client design work, in-house projects like Current, and even venture capital. Can you tell us a bit about what type of work you’re most drawn to, and how L+R manages so many different streams of work?
I think the variety I got in my first few years from working at a bunch of different types of places informed what kind of company I wanted L+R to be (which luckily lined up with how Vlad—my business partner—was thinking about things as well).
Agency work can sometime be thrashy, but the variety is nice. Working in-house at a growing startup is super exciting, but a few wrong decisions can make it fall apart very fast. Big places (like Meta, where we worked together) are awesome for getting to work along side super talented people and go very deep on problem, but the trade-off there is the surface area you work on is super narrow.
Personally my favorite environment was always something smaller, with a tight group of people. Working on side projects with friends, the first few years in a startup (before the like…“hyper-growth” phase), or a secret project at a huge company where you’re left alone for a few months. When we started L+R we decided to focus exclusively on early-stage companies. We set up our pricing to reflect working with a team of people over a longer period of time rather than putting a price tag on a specific deliverable. What we like about this model is we’re usually working directly with founders, it’s early enough that everyone is excited and energized about what we’re building, and we don’t commit ourselves upfront to some project definition that we can’t pivot away from. It’s basically a blend of working in-house and agency style.
In terms of how we manage the three different verticals of the company—Vlad and one of our designers, Payam, have taken over more of the day-to-day on the studio side. The VC side is all Vlad, but doesn’t take up a huge amount of his time, especially not this year (fun fact: Read.cv was our first investment). And I, along with a few engineers, am mostly focused on Current. We also hired someone last year (s/o Rachel!) to help us with all things operations—that’s been huge for allowing us to focus on these three different areas.
What advice would you give aspiring product designers in choosing where to work and what to work on?
I think it’s good to have variety in the first few years in your career.
Find a smaller team where you might have to do stuff that’s not only product design. Try to work on stuff that doesn’t have a design system in place. Learn other tools that make you stand out. Prioritize improving your visual design skills. I’ve seen it a number of times where product designers join a huge company for their first job and never get the chance to actually ‘design’ anything. There’s already a super comprehensive design system in place, they’re working on very specific feature area, and they never need to leave their comfort zone because there’s a brand designer, or a motion designer, or a sound designer, or a UX writer for that specific task.
I’m not saying you should aspire to be a generalist, but it’s useful to have a broad set of skills before going deep in a specific area!
How did the idea for Current come about and when did you decide to start work on it?
When Vlad and I (and you 😉) worked at Facebook‚ there was an internal tool called Pixelcloud where designers would share images and videos of what they were working on. I loved it because you could go find these crazy ideas that other super talented designers worked on, some which never made it out of a concept phase. You’d also see people working on similar ideas, which you could bring into what you were working on, or discover whole new initiatives that were being worked on which you didn’t know about. I think everyone who’s worked there misses that tool after they leave. Wake was around for bit which basically replicated it, but ended up shutting down a few years ago.
Vlad and I always wanted to diversify L+R by doing our own products, and in January 2022 it felt like the right time. There were no other apps doing something similar at the time and the tooling landscape had shifted dramatically to the browser, which unlocked a lot of cool new workflows.
After about a year and a half, Current is resembling Pixelcloud less and less and starting to evolve into its own thing, which is cool.
What have been the biggest challenges with Current that you’ve overcome?
There’ve been a few!
One big challenge is when you’re building software for other companies to use, there’s a ton of compliance you need to do before anyone at the company can even try your app. It’s almost like a pay-to-play thing. You might need SOC 2, GDPR, HIPPA, ISO-27001, etc. Whatever it is, it’s a journey to get those certifications, and quite expensive! Last August we decided to just put all our effort into becoming SOC 2 Type 2 compliant, which has opened a lot of doors for us. The other is marketing.
Neither Vlad or I have ever been super active on social media, nor have personalities where posting all the time feels authentic. Getting over that has been a big challenge. Something about tweeting from behind the Current account makes me a little less self-conscious though. I’ve been making quick little videos whenever we have a new cool feature to show off and that’s been helping us grow our audience.
Lastly—and this is true for anyone doing a startup I guess—is just being the person for every different role. I’m coding, designing, planning marketing launches, getting on sales calls, filling out security questionnaires, making support content, doing user research calls… The context switching is real!