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Fast Company
13 hours ago
- Business
- Fast Company
How Windsurf turned its AI coding brand into something cool enough to wear
Anshul Ramachandran knew they'd landed on something special when engineers started having opinions about color palettes. 'Probably one of my favorite moments was when we showed other people at the company the brand book for the first time and I heard the audible 'wows' and 'ahs,'' the cofounder and head of product and strategy at Windsurf says. 'If you can get a bunch of engineers in a room to do that about colors and lines, you probably did something that works.' Windsurf, formerly known as Codeium, is an AI-based development environment that was bought last month by Open AI for $3 billion —30 times its valuation. Ramachandran's clients are mainly engineers, and so any redesign needed to speak directly to them. So Windsurf enlisted Vancouver design agency Metalab to create a visual identity that looks more like athletic gear than business software. The result breaks every rule about how tech companies are supposed to look. Back to the human Windsurf builds AI tools for more than a million software engineers, helping them accelerate their coding workflows through what the company calls 'seamless AI collaboration.' But their previous brand identity—a black background with teal accents—felt limiting for a product that was expanding beyond basic code generation. 'There's sort of a very grayscale, kind of boring treatment to a lot of [technology] products,' says Allison Butula, marketing director at Metalab. The standard tech aesthetic had become a liability for a company positioning itself at the intersection of human creativity and machine intelligence. When machines seem to be taking over our world, it makes sense that a brand should work to make technology feel more human. The timing of the redesign aligned with broader changes at Windsurf. The company released the Windsurf Editor in November, which generated such momentum that users began identifying the company by its product name rather than its corporate name. The company officially renamed to Windsurf in April. 'It was a natural time as we were also changing the name of the company,' Ramachandran says. The big creative risk Yash Mittal, lead designer at Windsurf who oversaw the project internally, tells me the team was deliberate about taking creative risks. 'At the end of this process, where do we want to be? And we're like, we want to take this big risk. And even if it fails, we're okay with that because we don't want to end up with a brand that looks just like any other tech brand,' he says. Metalab has helped to turn technical products into emotionally resonant brands in the past (including Slack). Jordan Darbishire, brand director at Metalab, anchored the visual identity in a core emotional concept. 'It was the idea of feeling this unlimited potential. So it's all about flow state. It's all about doing your best work and the tool affording you time, which is obviously a very precious resource,' she says. The brand flows indeed. The flat white logomark is a stylized 'W' that makes it look like waves in the ocean. Its smooth thickness variations give it a hand-drawn quality, but at the same time it is precise, recalling an engineer's calligraphy on a blueprint. The variable width typography—how the 'W' letterform grows wider, then thinner, then wider again, creating visual rhythm that suggests energy and movement—'transmits a flow state,' Mittal says. The logomark also visually echoes the wordmark: The W's curves literally repeat the delicate thin ligatures of the brand's typeface, Tomato Grotesk, adding to the repetition and the flow Mittal speaks about. The design process required balancing seemingly contradictory elements, Darbishire says. 'We want to really meld the natural and the technical,' she says. To achieve that, the team created wavelike gradients that guide the eye through compositions while incorporating blueprint elements that communicate technical sophistication, which are at the same time a big contrast to the flat nature of the Windsurf brand and, at the same time, extend its human nature. Surfing UX AI These pretty gradients are a key part of the brand book. Metalab developed a comprehensive gradient system with dotted line language and dash patterns that Windsurf's designers could use to build new shapes and applications. The color palette drew inspiration from actual windsurfing sails. 'A lot of them utilize these bright neon colors so you can see them on the water. It's also sort of the design language of that sport,' Darbishire says. 'It looks like it could be a windsurf, like a windsurfing athletic company. And we really want to lean into that because it's just so unique.' It wasn't the most aggressively sporty option, however. The team explored directions that felt too fashion-forward, too technical, or too vibrant before finding the balance point. 'We arrived at the sweet spot where we were very creative and expressive, but also we communicated our product values extremely clearly,' Mittal notes. The gradients and colors will be an element that permeates the entire UX. Luke Des Cotes, CEO of Metalab, says his company has had 'a front row seat of these kinds of waves in technology—the big boom of crypto companies that all come forward. And now it's been AI companies that have kind of come forward.' Creating a unique brand is key during a gold rush, he adds. 'There is going to be like this real renaissance of value put towards brand as being a core differentiator,' he says. While Windsurf launched its new logo in mid-April, testing market reception before the full brand rollout, the complete rebranding across the site and all materials happens today (a day before International Surf Day). The logo has been a success so far, Ramachandran says. 'Almost all of our customers, especially on the enterprise side, they're like, okay, yeah, that's great. You see the W, I see the wave, I see the flow. It makes a lot of sense.'
Yahoo
7 days ago
- Yahoo
Apple's Visual Intelligence Is Getting Smarter—But It's Still Missing the Feature I Really Want
PCMag editors select and review products independently. If you buy through affiliate links, we may earn commissions, which help support our testing. When Apple's senior vice president of software engineering, Craig Federighi, started talking about the Visual Intelligence feature in iOS 26 at WWDC 2025, I hoped for significant changes beyond its existing ability to tell you information about the places and objects you point your camera at on recent iPhones. Instead, we got the somewhat underwhelming news that Visual Intelligence options would soon be available directly in the iOS screenshot interface. I can't deny that these capabilities are practical (if a bit unexciting). But Visual Intelligence still falls short of Google's Gemini Live and Microsoft's Copilot Vision in that it can't converse with you out loud about what you see. This sort of live interactivity isn't necessarily vital, but it does feel exciting and natural to use. The foundation of Visual Intelligence is solid, but I still want Apple to push things forward in a way that aligns with its measured approach to AI. Like many of iOS's best features, Visual Intelligence is a core part of the OS and works seamlessly with its default apps. That means you don't need to open a separate app and upload an image to have the AI analyze it. And the new ability to access the tool whenever you snap a screenshot certainly extends its usefulness. Related options appear on the screenshot interface along the bottom: Ask, which sends the image out to ChatGPT for analysis, or Search, which keeps scans on-device. With the latter, Visual Intelligence can, for example, look for information about an event and create a calendar entry with all the important details. You can also draw over a part of the image to identify it, such as an article of clothing that catches your eye. Visual Intelligence can recognize it and either search it on Google or take you directly to its product page on a shopping app, such as Etsy. Apple is making an API available to app developers so Visual Intelligence can open dedicated apps when it detects relevant content or products. All that said, I still feel like Visual Intelligence is missing a level of interactivity I can get with other tools. On either my Android phone or iPhone, I can converse back and forth with Copilot Vision or Gemini Live about what I'm looking at via the camera app. When I pointed my phone's camera out a motel window recently, for example, Gemini Live identified the tree in the courtyard as an olive tree. I could then continue to ask related questions, such as where the tree species was native. This ability to point my camera at something and simply chat with an AI about it feels orders of magnitude cooler than anything Visual Intelligence currently does. And more importantly, it feels like something I expect an AI assistant to be able to do. I understand that Apple is prioritizing on-device AI, which isn't yet capable of such feats, but it seems like it should be able to develop a similar feature given how much emphasis it puts on the Private Cloud Compute tech. We can only hope the company catches up with its competitors before their AI tools take an even greater leap ahead.
Bloomberg
10-06-2025
- Business
- Bloomberg
The Highest-Paying US Summer Internships of 2025, by Industry
As artificial intelligence shakes up the job market, few career paths have been forecast to be in greater peril than software engineering. But employers are still investing top dollar in nascent software-engineering talent, offering among the most lucrative US summer internships of 2025. Software engineering interns can expect to earn between $20 and almost $29 an hour, according to research from the job site ZipRecruiter. Other high-paying industries include architecture and financial advising.
Geek Wire
03-06-2025
- Business
- Geek Wire
Latest Microsoft layoffs target engineering, product and legal roles, records show
(GeekWire Photo / Todd Bishop) Software engineers, product managers, technical program managers, product marketers, and legal staff were most impacted by Microsoft's latest round of layoffs. New data from the Washington state Employment Security Department, obtained by GeekWire, reveals how Microsoft is trimming its workforce — and provides a window into how tech companies are looking to streamline headcount amid the AI boom. Microsoft is laying off 305 people in Redmond, Wash., as part of a new round of cuts that follow a separate layoff last month impacting nearly 3% of its global workforce, or about 6,000 employees. Of those 305 positions, software engineering roles were hit hardest, making up about 22% of impacted employees, or 67 workers. Other top affected disciplines include: Product management : 39 employees : 39 employees Technical program management : 35 : 35 Product marketing : 30 : 30 Business program management : 22 : 22 Legal counsel: 22 The data mirrors similar trends in Microsoft's layoff last month, per Bloomberg, citing data from Washington state. It shows that software engineering roles are not immune to the impact from generative AI tools, which are already having a big effect on coding. Speaking at LlamaCon 2025 on April 30, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said that up to 30% of Microsoft's code is now AI-generated. GeekWire Chart; data from Washington state Employment Security Department. Microsoft has not said whether AI efficiencies played a direct role in the recent layoffs. However, the company said, in general, it's seeking to help workers use new technologies to focus on the most meaningful and important tasks. Microsoft has also signaled a move to strip management layers, a strategy also touted by other tech giants including Amazon. The latest cuts in Washington state impacted a mix of individual contributor and management levels. 'IC4' roles, or mid-level individual contributors, were the most affected. On Microsoft's April 30 earnings call, CFO Amy Hood said the company was focused 'on building high-performing teams and increasing our agility by reducing layers with fewer managers.' The new cuts also impacted 22 legal counsel positions and five paralegal roles in Washington state. Legal positions were not impacted in the layoffs last month. The latest round of cuts brings the company's total reported layoffs in its home state to nearly 2,300 in recent weeks. 'We continue to implement organizational changes necessary to best position the company for success in a dynamic marketplace,' the spokesperson said in an emailed statement Monday.
Associated Press
03-06-2025
- Business
- Associated Press
DataArt Commits $100 Million to Advance Data and AI Capabilities
NEW YORK, NY, UNITED STATES, June 3, 2025 / / -- DataArt, a global software engineering firm specializing in data, analytics, and AI, today announced a $100 million commitment to strengthen its data and AI capabilities, responding to increased client demand while maintaining its focus on technology-driven business results. 'We are making a deliberate financial commitment to the technologies shaping the future of our clients and our company,' said Eugene Goland, CEO and Founder of DataArt. 'This isn't about changing course — it's about doubling down on the areas we've been building and delivering on for years.' The financial commitment will strengthen DataArt's core data and AI services, which are already key drivers of client demand and revenue growth. Focus areas include: • Data Strategy: Helping clients define roadmaps that transform data into a valuable business asset. • Data Platform Engineering: Building scalable platforms for real-time, trusted data. • Data Value Realization: Delivering measurable results from data initiatives. • Generative AI: Turning advanced AI capabilities into real business solutions through strategic consulting, custom development, and accelerators. • AI-Accelerated Engineering: Injecting AI into every stage of the SDLC to boost speed and improve quality. These services are foundational to enterprise AI adoption, especially in data-intensive sectors where demand is rising sharply. A core part of DataArt's strategy is a pragmatic and thoughtful approach to AI. The company uses AI by default where it drives clear value but remains measured in areas where impact is limited or uncertain. DataArt continuously monitors advancements in third-party tools and models to ensure clients benefit from meaningful innovation — not just trends. Internally, the company is scaling AI adoption across all functions. By the end of 2025, 100% of employees will have access to corporate AI tools, and up to 60% of engineering roles will actively use AI. As part of this strategy, DataArt is actively pursuing AI-driven optimization across the software development lifecycle (SDLC), with significant improvements already emerging in areas such as product management, code generation, and quality engineering — where AI is proving to be a strong accelerator of both speed and precision. These changes are supported by new training programs, updated skill matrices, and practical internal resources to guide responsible AI use. The $100 million commitment also supports hiring senior talent, expanding learning programs via DataArt's proprietary LMS platform, EDU, and advancing R&D through Innovation Labs. The commitment also supports the continued development of proprietary solutions, including the DataArt Connect AI Platform — a secure, scalable platform for AI automation, productivity, and governance — and dozens of data and AI accelerators already driving value for clients. To support delivery at scale, DataArt is deepening strategic partnerships with AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, Snowflake, and Databricks. The company is also reserving part of the financial commitment for co-innovation with select clients, including support for early-stage R&D and business case development. Additionally, DataArt is evolving its commercial models to reflect compressed timelines and rising value expectations around data and AI. While T&M, fixed-price, and managed services remain core, outcomes-based pricing is expanding where aligned with client goals. Read the position paper, published today alongside this announcement, to learn more about the strategy behind DataArt's $100M commitment. About DataArt DataArt is a global software engineering firm that delivers breakthrough data, analytics, and AI platforms for the world's most demanding organizations. As the partner for progress in the digital age, our world-class teams artfully design and engineer data-driven, cloud-native solutions that generate immediate and enduring business value. We combine global scale, deep technical expertise, and progressive vision with advanced R&D Labs, frameworks, and accelerators to solve our clients' toughest challenges. Since our founding in New York City in 1997, DataArt has grown to bring together 5,000+ experts across 40+ locations in the US, Europe, Latin America, India, and the Middle East, with clients including major global brands like Priceline, Ocado Technology, Legal & General, and Flutter Entertainment. Recognized as a 2023 Newsweek Most Loved Global Workplace and 13 times as an Inc. 5000 Fastest Growing Private Company, we are proud of our reputation as a great place to work and partner with. For more information, please visit Anni Tabagua DataArt email us here Visit us on social media: LinkedIn YouTube Legal Disclaimer: EIN Presswire provides this news content 'as is' without warranty of any kind. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, images, videos, licenses, completeness, legality, or reliability of the information contained in this article. If you have any complaints or copyright issues related to this article, kindly contact the author above.
