In this episode of the beyond tellerrand podcast, Marc sits down with Andy Bell, the founder of Piccalilli and the design and development agency Set Studio. The two caught up live in Berlin back in November 2025 and this time they go deep into what it actually takes to build something independent and principled in an industry that feels increasingly uncertain.
Andy explains how Piccalilli grew from his personal blog into a small, four-person team (alongside Leanne, Jason and Vicky) producing high-quality, pragmatic education that’s rooted in real client work at Set Studio. He talks about spotting a gap in the education space – somewhere between framework crash-courses and genuine, transferable craft – and why his courses teach things like planning and communicating with designers, not just syntax. There’s a lot here on the philosophy behind the courses: keeping them affordable (the £249 ceiling, “anything above that and the boss has to buy it for you”), building their own publishing platform to give each author their own space, and the editorial process behind working with guest authors like Scott Riley and Mat Marquis.
The conversation then turns to AI, where Andy doesn’t hold back. He lays out why he’s been against the technology from the start – models trained on stolen content, the environmental cost, the harmful material it can produce, and the more-than-a-trillion-dollars of investment chasing a product whose output he considers poor. He makes a financial case for why he believes a bubble deflation is coming, why he turned down a wave of AI-startup branding work over brand risk, and offers some blunt advice: if your employer is mandating AI use, “unionise — they’re not mandating you to use AI for fun”. He and Marc also reflect on what this means for web standards, why taking progressive enhancement and accessibility seriously has always meant swimming against the current, and why keeping standards high matters more than ever.
To close, things get more personal: Andy’s record collection and his goal to be off streaming services entirely by year’s end, his heavier-and-hip-hop leanings, his background as a drummer who “wanted to be in music, not tech” and fell into the industry by accident and his open, in-progress rebuild of his own website. A reminder that owning your own corner of the web is one of the best things you can do for yourself.
A different viewpoint, honestly shared and well worth a listen.
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