Say Hello to Zain Ali, Brand Design Manager

What do you do?

I’m currently the Consumer/Growth Design Manager and Brand/Marketing Design Manager. The teams I help lead are responsible for Instacart’s customer app, growth function, and the brand and marketing design as well.

How did you get into design?

I had always been an aspiring artist at a young age, I love drawing and painting which eventually crossed the chasm into digital early on. For design specifically, my earliest memories are from when I was 12 years old, I made AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) Buddy Icons in MS Paint. These were essentially your profile avatar but no one used pictures of themselves, instead, AOL had designed their own set of icons which sparked a huge cultural movement of animated buddy icons and pixel art.

I then got my hands on Photoshop 7.1 (legally, duh) to make graphics for games and websites; in particular, I made graphics for a game called Counter-Strike when I was 14. After that, I started a skater/surfer clothing line called Orga, with a friend of mine in high school. It lasted a few months and I like to think that was my first foray into startups. I remember my Mom found a similar logo to ours in the Reader’s Digest at the doctor’s office and asked me if I copied it. That was my first introduction to trademark law 😂.

I designed the cover of a book in high school as well, which I remember being a vivid moment of realization that… I could actually spend the rest of my life making art for a living 🤑. Seeing my name in local news articles painted a worldly picture that through design I can have an impact.

My first full-time design job was for a gaming startup called GotGame in 2007 (this article describes us as the Netflix&Chill of the time, no big deal). That experience changed my perspective around designing and creating products and experiences, forever.

What makes everything worth it?

Seeing people commuting on BART/Muni trains shopping on the Instacart app. Seeing Instacart Shoppers delivering groceries when I’m traveling in different cities. Seeing Instacart in huge grocery stores like Costco or Publix, nationally. Seeing our branded grocery bags in different cities across the country. But it’s more than the spectacle. It’s the nourishment and aid that we provide as well. Having friends/family text me photos of their groceries, or sending care packages of fresh groceries to their loved ones. Hearing customers on social media talking about how Instacart came to the rescue when they were sick. It’s all very surreal and makes me extremely proud of the work we’re doing.

I’ve been really fortunate to have spoken with a lot of customers over the last 5 years and the stories they’ve shared how Instacart came to the rescue on numerous occasions will be something that sticks with me for life. To know that a mom in Tennessee can count on something that I worked on to help them live their life a little more effortlessly brings me a joy I didn’t know I could expect.

What’s the greatest piece of career advice you’ve ever received?

“A rising tide raises all ships” — How can I as an individual be a rising tide? How can my team, how can our entire org help elevate the rest of the industry and the world?

“Calm seas don’t make great captains” — Sometimes you gotta weather the storm. I mean, let’s be real, if it were easy, would it even be fun?

I gave you two and they’re both ocean related. ⛴

Where do you find inspiration?

It’s cliche to say everywhere, but inspiration can be found all around us. I take mental and physical notes of everything from color usage in fashion, infrastructure in the city, the trees and flowers in our neighborhoods, the experience a retail store brings me, the sound and light design of spaces, to standing behind the lens of a camera. I love being in nature and once it hits you that the world is alive and constantly working, never taking a break, it can really inform you about the homeostasis that you can bring to whatever experience you want to design.

Working on various projects at Instacart, which one was the most challenging and exciting for you?

All of it 🙂

Besides the fun product stuff, one that stands out in my mind is designing the brand and experience for our annual Instacart retreat– an all-hands meet-up for the entire company where team members from offices around the country join the local team at the San Francisco headquarters to talk vision and strategy as well as hear from customers, shoppers, partners, and industry leaders.

I produced a video of a few Instacart customers, focusing on mothers. They shared the impact of their food and their cultural upbringing, and how it has shaped their family’s own eating habits.

Sharing this with everyone at the company was important to me as it showed the intimate side of the work we do, and how food is deeply intertwined in our everyday lives.

The branding of the event went beyond just the presentation deck, swag and name badges but environmental design, sequencing of the events, implementation and so much more. I started growing the Brand team only a couple months prior, Anabelle and Sara were producing the assets and it was Tiffany’s first week 😂, good times! The reception of the design and vision for the company was well received and it was our best retreat to date!

Where did you grow up and what made it special?

I was born in LA, grew up in Southern California for a bit, hanging out with kids that weren’t afraid to do anything whether it be sports or video games, we tried anything that had wheels or buttons. I eventually moved to Northern California and that exposed me to what felt like a different world. I got to hone my skills and find something I was passionate about that combined my favorite things. Design was the catalyst that deepened my passion for art, skateboarding, storytelling, computers, music, video games and so much more. The places that raised me had a huge impact on shaping my love for design.

What was the first thing you ever designed?

Back in 1998 it was either a buddy icon for AIM, or a spray for Counter-Strike which was a friendly way of tagging your territory. The same game that kids these days get paid millions to play. The first thing I designed at Instacart in 2013 was our customer app 🙂

What is something you’re most proud of in your life/career?

Probably my career itself. Both the longevity of putting in work as a Product Designer and the arc that I’ve had of constantly learning and building new skills. There were things in my career that I stayed away from for a long time. I’m proud I overcame those fears with the help of great coaches, peers and mentors. I’m proud that I still love to learn new tools (Figma 😍). I’m proud of my patience, going through the craziness of a hyper-growth startup. It’s really hard not to say “Instacart” as the answer to this question, so instead I’ll give you some more fun stuff. I’m proud of producing an awesome music video with my best friend that aired on MTV and got a lot of love. I’m proud I was able to work with one of my idols in my high school days, Chamillionaire, on his app Convoz. I’m proud to have helped my friends design Meadow in the early days. And I’m proud to have helped design the PeopleProtected project and helped get miles and miles of protected bike lanes built in San Francisco.

I have a lot of gratitude for all of these experiences and people that I’ve been able to work with 🙂

What is something that your team does differently than other design teams?

We design for a multi-sided marketplace, which means we have to account for a ridiculous number of edge cases and unique scenarios, along with real-world limitations all happening in real-time. This is a very unique challenge and has you question your design process constantly as you uncover many unknowns that are not normally present in a digital-only landscape.

We have customers ordering across the country all day, everyday, with Instacart Shoppers on the other end fulfilling the orders, retailers providing their storefronts that provide the products and CPG companies offering customers deals they can’t find anywhere else. It’s an amazing puzzle that in the end it all comes together on a customer’s dining table in the form of a beautiful meal.

(We also have an in-house photo studio where we shoot these awesome photos 😍)

Come build with Zain.

If you’re excited about defining the future of a one trillion dollar industry, building an ad-serving network for groceries, scaling the world’s most extensive grocery catalog, perfecting a real-time on-demand logistics chain, all while simultaneously designing the future of food for millions of people, you should take a look at the available opportunities or reach out to someone from the team.

Instacart

Instacart is the leading grocery technology company in North America, partnering with more than 1,400 national, regional, and local retail banners to deliver from more than 80,000 stores across more than 14,000 cities in North America. To read more Instacart posts, you can browse the company blog or search by keyword using the search bar at the top of the page.