Hi. 👋 Like I said on the home page, I’m David Demaree, a product manager, web developer, designer, and writer.
Work
I’m the founder and CEO of Bits&Letters, a modern, human-centered web dev agency. It’s just me so far, but we’ve just started, and I have big plans for this small business.
Before starting B&L, I was a product manager at a string of Big Tech companies and scaleups:
- 2022-2024: Principal Product Manager at Webflow responsible for the core Designer tools/surfaces. We shipped some big CSS updates at 2023’s Webflow Conf, including support for variables and custom CSS properties.
- 2021-2022: Staff Product Manager at Stripe supporting the Design Systems / UI Platform team, where our team worked on the initial rollout of Stripe Apps, and I helped shape and ship DocuSign’s app integration in partnership with their team.
- 2018–2021: Product Manager at Google working on Material Design and Google Fonts. Among lots of other things, I worked on the initial rollout of Material 3 (aka Material You) as part of the big Android 12 redesign, launched Material (2)’s dark theme at Google I/O 2019, and shipped Google Fonts Icons and Google Fonts Knowledge (not to mention an update to Google Fonts’ logo).
- 2011–2018: Staff Engineer and, later, Principal Product Manager for Typekit at Adobe. I joined while Typekit was still a tiny startup (employee #16), and when I left we’d grown to about 50 people spread across three continents. At Adobe I led the launches of visual font search, desktop multi-sync, Typekit Marketplace, a major responsive update to Typekit’s UI (about which I talked to Ethan Marcotte & Karen McGrane on their podcast), and lots more.
Before Big Tech, I worked on Metromix, a hyperlocal listings and entertainment property owned by Gannett & Tribune Company, before that I ran Practical Creative & Code, an independent consultancy where I worked on projects for Apple, MTV/VH1, ABC Networks, and others.
Writing
In 2016, I wrote a book about version control, Git for Humans, originally published by A Book Apart. The rights to the book were returned to me in 2024, and a revised edition is coming from Bits&Letters Press very, very soon.
You can read a sample chapter about making Git commits, “The Art of the Commit”, on A List Apart.
Speaking
I’ve spoken at a few conferences about product development and web design. Most recently, I gave the opening keynote at Web Directions Product 2019 in Melbourne, Australia, about how we define the shape of the product management role (video requires a subscription; the transcript is free).
I’ve also spoken at design events in Sydney, Berlin, Chicago, and San Francisco.
Interested in having me speak at your event? Hit me up at [email protected].
Hobbies
I’ve been an avid digital photographer since the ’00s. Over the years, I’ve shot with DSLRs from Nikon and Sony, but these days, my go-to cameras are the Leica Q, Fuji X100V, and, of course, my iPhone.
I love building and assembling things. My office is full of large LEGO builds, like Spider-Man’s Daily Bugle building and the Disney Cinderella Castle.
I also have far too many mechanical keyboards for one person to use. The nerds on Reddit would roast me for this, but my all-time favorite key-switches are Cherry MX Browns, and I’ve never lubed a switch or stabilizer in my life. I’m proud of my one really good themed build, with The Life Aquatic keycaps paired with a housing and cable in a nice Zissou-esque colorway.