Perplexity: The AI brand everyone can’t stop talking about

Designer Phi Hoang explains why & how the fast growing company doubled down on curiosity

How does a brand become the “talk of the town” without ever mentioning its tech? 

Perplexity has cracked the code by leaning into curiosity and creating a brand that feels more like a journey of discovery than a tech product. From securing a monster investment from Stanley Druckenmiller to inspiring everyday conversations, Perplexity's approach is anything but conventional. 

We sat down with Phi Hoang, Brand Experience Designer at Perplexity, to dive into the story of how a focus on trust, learning, and a pinch of nostalgia has built one of the hottest brands in tech.

Elan: It would be great to learn about your journey to Perplexity. How did you learn about it & what made you want to join the team? 

Phi: I joined Perplexity full-time almost a year ago. My background was in graphic design, but like many graphic designers 10 years ago, I eventually shifted to product design as it became more lucrative. Taking on a brand role wasn’t new, but it was something I had been wanting to explore more deeply.

When the opportunity to lead the brand at Perplexity came up, our Head of Design Henry, who I had met at a previous startup, invited me to help with marketing videos and other brand assets. For me, this was a chance to demonstrate the spectrum of what a brand designer could do. It was a necessity to show the value of the brand beyond making static images and how we can tell a compelling story, focusing on the benefits rather than highlighting features. Although my background wasn’t in video production, I was excited to be part of the growth. My first project involved taking screen recordings of the web app using off-the-cuff tools and putting them together via an iPad app called Riveo. Having seen so many of these videos, I figured I could try and learn how to produce a few myself.

That was my first interaction with the company. I was the guy who pulled these videos together. But there was also the rebrand that eventually happened. That was my foot in the door to Perplexity. At the time, there were maybe 15 to 20 people. It was cool to have conversations with the CEO and founders about investing seriously in the brand. Henry and I were focused on making our brand feel more polished, so we reached out to Mike Smith from Smith & Diction to help with the first version of our visual rebrand. It’s incredible to see how much it’s evolved

That’s how I ended up at Perplexity—through networking, conversations with Henry, and a genuine excitement about what they were building.

Elan: What does the role of a Brand Experience Designer look like? And what do you wish other founders knew about the role and value it brings to the table?

Phi: The role of a Brand Experience Designer is about bridging the gap between brand and product design. It’s about making sure the brand’s voice and look are consistent across all touchpoints—from marketing materials to the product experience. When I first heard of brand experience design, it was through a designer named Jon Howell who is at Dropbox now. It was the first time I saw a brand designer speak about the marriage between brand and product. What I mean by that is, in product design, the brand often gets siloed. Questions like "How do we sound?" and "What do we look like?" need to be consistent from marketing all the way through the product. These two worlds must speak to each other. It seems like common sense now, but a few years ago, marketing and brand had their own drum to beat, separate from product design.

On a typical day, I work closely with our business, growth, and product teams. I create assets and manage our social channels, help our growth team with design experiments, and produce our AI-generated podcast, Discover Daily. It’s a mix of creative work and planning. My work often involves aligning marketing strategies with our product teams to make sure we’re maintaining a cohesive brand message across all of our platforms.

For startup founders, understanding the difference between a brand designer and a brand experience designer is crucial. A brand experience designer understands the product development cycle and ensures the brand guidelines are utilized throughout a customers journey. It's not just about using logos, color palettes, and messaging, but about consistent execution and collaboration with the product team to tell a compelling story.

Brand experience design is key because it helps build strong emotional connections with people who use your product or service. When done right, this can lead to more brand loyalty, trust, and advocacy. Great brand experiences set a company apart from its competitors by focusing on creating positive and consistent interactions across all touchpoints both internally and externally. Companies can leave a lasting impression on customers and hopefully, they’ll spread your story like wildfire.

Elan: As you know, I'm a huge fan of the brand your team has built. I’m hoping you can break it down for me a bit. What’s Perplexity's high-level brand strategy and how were you able to shape it?

Phi: Yeah, so the brand strategy for Perplexity really centers around rooting ourselves in curiosity and ensuring the product feels like a tool for learning and gaining knowledge. The goal is to make knowledge more actionable because that's its true purpose. When we worked with Mike and his team on the visual identity, there was a key piece of copy written by Chara, who is an incredible copywriter who came up with: "Ask questions and trust the answers."

Asking questions is easy—many AI tools have that feature. But "trusting the answers" was our differentiator. We designed the product to highlight sources prominently. Initially, sources were at the bottom of the answers, but we moved them to the top to stand out. We even highlight sources inline through the answers. This emphasis on transparency helps build trust, especially in an era of AI hallucinations. We're not 100% accurate all the time, but we aim to foster a sense of understanding about where information comes from.

When we landed on the tagline "Where knowledge begins," it was a moment of clarity. Using Perplexity, we found quotes around knowledge to deepen our understanding. One quote, from a philosopher, said, "Perplexity is where knowledge begins," which perfectly encapsulated our vision.

The name "Perplexity" itself is technical and complex. When I joined, there was even talk of changing it. However, we realized that we had built significant brand equity around the name. Changing it now would lose some of that value.

We wanted Perplexity to go beyond just being a search tool. While search was the easiest feature to position ourselves with, we envisioned more. You can upload images, ask questions about them, and even have Perplexity write outlines for you. This functionality extends beyond search. We don’t focus on specific AI models in our messaging because the end consumer doesn’t care about that—they just want the best answer.

To tie it all together, our path is about simplifying our language and making our brand approachable. Our name and logo might be technical and complex, but there's beauty in that. Digging deeper into our brand and product reveals the depth and thoughtfulness behind Perplexity.

Elan: So this idea of serving the world's curiosity...at what point in the process did you formalize this mission? How did this become the North Star?

Phi: The focus on transparency ties into our broader mission. Initially, we leaned into knowledge because we were targeting knowledge workers. But as we continued to grow, I started to notice how people described Perplexity and what it was solving for them. The word “curiosity” started showing up more and more.

Aravind, our CEO, mentioned curiosity in an interview, and it was serendipitous because I was already seeing similar feedback from our social accounts. We realized we should build on what people were already saying about us. It was about amplifying the perception and experience users were already having.

The beauty of our brand today is its flexibility. We're not tied to a specific aesthetic or rigid definition. For example, our bio a couple of weeks ago was "the world's first conversational answer engine," which was very functional. We realized we needed to be more aspirational, aligning more with the curiosity aspect you mentioned. 

This shift didn't come from a formal workshop with the executives. It was more about recognizing a trend and running with it to see if it resonated. And it has, which is why you're seeing a lot more focus on curiosity in our brand now.

Elan: Perplexity’s design aesthetic and posters have really been able to break through the noise. How has your brand's point of view fueled this look and feel? Tell me more about how you approach asset creation. 

Phi: Our aesthetic came from conversations around the visual identity. When we worked with Smith & Diction, even in our brand guides, none of the posters you're seeing today were in there. We kept things flexible. It really kicked off with a conversation between Henry and me. We asked, "What if we lean into aspirational hopes for a non-dystopian future?" We drew inspiration from vintage Apple ads from the 80s and 90s, which had a lot of grit and texture. The stories that emerged from just looking at those posters could evoke an emotion, which is why we design the way we do today. We aim to evoke that emotion without coming across as corny because that’s the last thing we want.

We want our posters to feel like something you can hang in your house, like a piece of artwork. For execution, we leverage tools like Midjourney to develop these aesthetics. The process involves finding a series of references and describing them in a way that Midjourney can iterate and find the aesthetic we're trying to create. Before Perplexity, I hadn't used Photoshop or Illustrator this much in a long time since we were always using UI tools like Figma or Sketch. Going back to my graphic design roots with these tools has unlocked a million possibilities for us to dig into the aesthetics we've developed.

My hope is that our aesthetic will continue to evolve as more people use us and get to know our brand. The theme of curiosity today will evolve and push our design team to new things. The current aesthetic is inspired by the World's Fair and the aesthetics of the 60s, 70s, and 80s, bringing nostalgia into a modern take on how it's executed and how we compose our posters.

Elan: It really captures a feeling, and that's one of those things that always sounds great in theory, but to see it and feel it is a whole different ballgame. 

I saw you posted a sneak peek of some of the merch you're working on, on X. One thing that caught my attention was that instead of putting Perplexity’s name and logo everywhere, you're playing around with different copy, like “Know it all.” What’s your merch strategy?

Phi: The merch part was something Henry and I talked about at the beginning of Perplexity. My background includes working at Drop Party, a startup that helped influencers and brands with a large following but no merch strategy to start selling products. Fast forward to Perplexity, we initially had around 25,000 followers on Twitter, and now we're at almost 140,000, plus millions of daily users. It was a golden opportunity to think about merch because many people love our product and want to showcase that love.

Our strategy is to design things that people would want to wear every day or every week. We all have that one shirt we love and wear frequently because it feels good. We want our merch to evoke that feeling. Additionally, we wanted to create a "if you know, you know" vibe, making our merchandise feel like collector’s items.

We see two paths for our merch: evergreen items with subtle designs featuring the Perplexity logo for those who prefer understated looks, and more experimental pieces where we collaborate with artists to express their feelings about knowledge and curiosity. This way, we tap into their fanbase, introducing Perplexity to new audiences.

For example, the “Know it all” slogan was Henry’s idea, playing on words to tie back to Perplexity’s essence. It’s a conversation starter, something that makes people curious. We want our merch to start conversations or feel timeless, like something you could buy today and it would still hold up 30 years later.

Beyond apparel, we aim to expand our merchandise to items people want in their homes, inspired by how A24 sells merch for their movies. We don’t call it swag because that term feels stale and corporate. We want our merchandise to reflect our brand's unique identity.

Elan: I love that! What’s it like working with a legendary design partner like Smith & Diction? What were some of your favorite parts of the process, and what advice would you give to other founders working with agency partners?

Phi: Working with Smith & Diction was pretty casual. I was in a Slack channel with some top designers and had a direct line to Mike and I reached out. Henry had been in talks with other branding legends, but we felt that Smith and Diction’s work with smaller brands brought a unique flavor and perspective to brand design that felt refreshing and timeless.

They were a perfect fit because we wanted a brand identity that stood out. From the beginning, it felt like they were part of our team, not just an agency. They asked simple, first-principles questions about what we wanted. We wanted Perplexity to evoke utility and aspiration.

The process included mood boarding and exploring different aesthetics. One mood board, with a clean, Swiss aesthetic, resonated with us. It matched the precision and accuracy our founders valued but with warmer tones and a hint of green, different from the typical stark white UIs. My favorite part of the process was being able to collaborate with their team in Figma. There was no secrecy to anything they were doing. They truly made it feel like we were on their team and vice versa. It was a shared space that gave us the ability to make decisions quickly without a grand reveal.

Smith and Diction’s approach felt natural, and they were down to explore and have fun. The boundless book logo they created felt perfect immediately. Their narrative behind the mark and its animation just clicked with us.

For startups looking to hire agencies or freelancers, it’s always worth it to find collaborators whose storytelling and differentiation align with your company's vision. Marty Neumeier’s T-shirt test is a great way to check if the branding is truly yours. The idea is to imagine printing your brand’s positioning statement on a T-shirt. If the statement is concise, memorable, and meaningful enough to be worn proudly, it passes the test.

Elan: From the outside looking in, Perplexity's culture seems unique and special. What's different about Perplexity compared to other places you've worked at in terms of culture and design? And what is it like working with the engineering and technical teams to create an aspirational brand rather than focusing solely on features?

Phi: Yeah, I feel incredibly lucky to be part of this team. There's a shared sense of urgency here, like we're building a rocket ship that's about to take off. This urgency drives us to ship products quickly, which is something I haven't experienced elsewhere.

Unlike traditional setups with many stakeholders, Perplexity operates with a leaner structure. We currently only have two product managers, soon to be a third. Our Chief Strategy Officer, Johnny, and our CTO, Denis, are deeply involved in the trenches with our engineers. Even Henry, our Head of Design contributes to code. 

This mutual respect and shared language between designers and engineers allow us to ship features and projects quickly. We don't have to wait for someone to review the code or the work. While we have steps in place for quality control, design is at the heart of shipping features, making the process smooth and efficient.

In previous companies, there was often a disconnect between design and engineering. Designers would create something, and then we'd have to bring in a front-end engineer to review it, which usually resulted in going back to the drawing board. Here, our designers understand the technical limitations and possibilities, making it easier to make significant strides and ship new things daily.

Being in the middle of this process is exciting. I often feel like a hype man for our technical team, sharing feedback from our social channels about our brand and reminding everyone what we're working towards. This builds a sense of pride and motivation, reinforcing how impactful our work is on people's daily lives and their perception of our company. The culture here is all driven by a collective urgency to maintain the pace and standards we've set for ourselves and each other.

Elan: How cool. Well, thank you so much for this conversation. I love unpacking brand and going into the specifics because I think those are the kinds of details that really resonate with people.

Phi: Yeah, 100%. I think sometimes there’s a misconception that branding is all about creating visuals or catchy slogans, but there's a much bigger, long-term strategy behind it. Brand isn't a short-term investment; it's about being repetitive and consistent until people recognize, "Oh, yeah, that's what they're known for."

I see our brand as the experience from the front porch all the way through the house, making sure every detail from the scent in the air to the arrangement of furniture, even down to the choice of artwork on the walls. It’s about curating an environment that evokes a specific feeling, where every aspect contributes to a narrative. My hope is that by creating this type of environment, people will feel a sense of connection and clarity about our direction.

About Phi Hoang

Phi Hoang is a multi-disciplinary designer who heads up Brand Experience at Perplexity. He combines his product design background with an empathetic approach to craft brands that are both functional and emotionally engaging. Phi has worked with a diverse range of clients, including startups and Fortune 500 companies like Oura, Toyota Connected, Outdoorsy, and VRBO

If you’d like to connect with Phi, DM on Twitter or LinkedIn.