Apr 17, 2026
In this Conversion Monthly, Danny McMillan
is joined by Dorian and Matt Kostan (no Sim this episode — he's on
holiday) for a live, practical session on building brand-quality
design systems fast and for free.
Dorian opens with a tight crash course in
the three design fundamentals that separate professional Amazon
listings from amateur ones: font pairing, grid and layout, and
colour theory. He then demos Google Stitch live, building a full
design system from a wooden utensil listing in real time. Danny
shows a more automated route — using Perplexity to control Stitch
autonomously and generate a complete brand kit from just a product
title, bullet points, and a reference image. Matt rounds it off
with a live Product Pinion split test of the new designs against
the original listing — and the results deliver the session's
sharpest lesson.
The big takeaway: pretty is not enough.
Information + design working together is what converts.
Key Topics
- Google Stitch for brand
design — Free AI design tool that generates full
brand guidelines, font pairings, and mockups from reference images
and prompts
- 3 design fundamentals every
seller should know — Font pairing, grid and layout,
colour theory with a contrasting action colour
- Perplexity + Stitch autonomous
workflow — Danny demos letting Perplexity control
Stitch end-to-end with zero manual input to generate a full brand
kit
- Coolers.co — Free colour
palette tool with a visualiser and AI colour bot (Matt)
- UX and design laws applied to
Amazon — Miller's Law, Fitts' Law, Jacob's Law,
Occam's Razor translated into listing and brand site decisions
- Product Pinion live split
test — New designed variants vs the original listing,
with real shopper results in under 10 minutes
- Live test result —
The original information-heavy image outperformed the prettier
redesigns early on; lesson: strip information at your peril
Timestamps
- [00:00] Intro — Danny opens, Sim is out,
format overview
- [00:48] Dorian: Why most Amazon listings
lack design consistency
- [02:00] The 3 design principles: font
pairing, grid/layout, colour theory
- [04:30] Font pairing explained — serif vs
sans-serif, how world-class brands use them
- [07:00] Colour theory — complementary
colours plus one contrasting action colour
- [08:30] Live Google Stitch demo — wooden
utensil set, design system generated from brand brief + images
- [10:00] Stitch output: colour palette,
font pairings, layout mockups
- [12:17] Matt: brand guidelines used to
cost $1,000+ — now free in Stitch
- [13:00] Dorian: live Figma iteration —
cleaning up the infographic using new design system fonts
- [17:00] Matt: information hierarchy
lesson — measurements vs benefits on infographics
- [19:30] Dorian: "mouse text" and
anchoring — what to leave in, what to strip out
- [20:33] Matt: Coolers.co overview — free colour
palette generator and visualiser
- [22:00] Matt: UX/UI design principles
applied to Product Pinion and Amazon listings
- [25:12] Danny: Perplexity + Stitch
autonomous brand kit demo — Z Kitchen brand from scratch
- [27:00] Z Kitchen outputs: design system,
A+ content, infographic, lifestyle mockups, packaging concepts
- [31:00] How to iterate inside Stitch —
refine vs reimagine, varying only specific elements, up to 5
variants
- [36:00] Danny: UX design laws — Miller's
Law, Fitts' Law, Jacob's Law, Occam's Razor
- [40:00] Danny: Typography slides —
spacing systems, layout balance, font families
- [43:32] Dorian: reveals three redesigned
variants ready for split test
- [44:35] Matt: launches live Product
Pinion test — 50 shoppers, cooking category targeting
- [47:33] Live results coming in — original
listing leading over new designs
- [48:00] Dorian: "pretty is one thing but
the information has to be there"
- [49:00] Danny: design and information are
two separate layers — both are required
- [51:30] Product Pinion API + Claude
integration teaser
- [52:36] Final results and wrap-up — test
completed in ~10 minutes with 50 real shoppers
- [53:44] Closing thoughts and Seller
Sessions Live preview (26 days out)
Key Takeaways
- Three principles separate
professional listings from amateur ones — font
pairing (serif + sans-serif), grid and layout (hierarchy: 1, 2, 3),
and colour (complementary base + one contrasting action
colour).
- Google Stitch is the best free
tool right now for design mockups — unlike image
generators (Gemini, GPT), Stitch understands design principles and
generates layout-aware mockups you can iterate on.
- Pretty does not convert on its
own — the live test showed the original,
information-heavy image outperforming the cleaner redesigns early.
Design is a layer on top of strong product information, not a
replacement for it.
- Perplexity can run Stitch
autonomously — paste a product title, bullet points,
and a reference image; let it loop through Stitch without touching
anything; come back to a full brand kit.
- You can test design variations
with 50 real shoppers in under 10 minutes — Product
Pinion lets you run image split tests with category-targeted
shoppers, get qualitative feedback, and iterate the same day.
- Nano Banana outputs in Stitch
cannot be regenerated — switch to one of the standard
models if you need variation or refinement controls.
- AI gets you to the concept stage
fast — use Stitch to generate the direction, then
hand to a designer for finishing. Revision cycles and meetings
shrink dramatically.
Notable Quotes
"If everything is important, nothing
really is."
— Dorian
"The hardest thing is to make something
simple, elegant, and something that people get instantly."
— Dorian
"Pretty is one thing, but the information
has to be there. I didn't put the information there — and it's not
doing well."
— Dorian (on live split test results)
"Most people don't necessarily know good
design, but they know what they like. It's more of a feel — they
go, that looks a bit cheap, or that looks really good."
— Danny McMillan
"It's never been easier and faster to
become a world-class brand on design. Plug in your details, get a
design guide going, and you can really up your brand in a very
short period of time."
— Matt Kostan
"The breakout brands from the Amazon
community — we haven't had enough of them crossing over. Now that
gap's closed."
— Danny McMillan
Resources
Mentioned
- Google Stitch —
Free AI design tool; generates brand guidelines, font pairings,
mockups, A+ content concepts, and layout variations. Up to 3,000
generations per day (free)
- Figma — Design
tool used by Dorian to pull Stitch outputs and refine layouts
manually
- Adobe
Color (color.adobe.com) — Colour palette
exploration and complementary colour tool; used in the live demo
for the wood/blue beach-forest palette
- Coolers.co — Free colour
palette generator with AI colour bot and real-world visualiser
- Pinterest —
Recommended for browsing font pairing inspiration
- Nano Banana 2 —
Image generation model available inside Stitch; note:
regeneration/variation controls don't work on Nano Banana
outputs
- Perplexity — Used
to autonomously control Google Stitch via browser automation,
building a full brand kit end-to-end from a single prompt
- Product Pinion —
Consumer research and split testing tool by Matt Kostan; image
tests with real shoppers, category targeting, results in minutes.
Product Pinion API + Claude integration in development.
Guest Info
Dorian — Design and
conversion specialist, Seller Sessions Conversion Monthly
co-host
Matt Kostan — Founder of
Product Pinion, consumer research and split testing for Amazon
sellers