Dan Alves turned lawsuits and controversies into a $250k raise for Comunal

Dan Alves has been sued by Adobe, accused of blasphemy and might have designed one of the most debated logos of the decade. The Los Angeles-based designer has built a career on provocation and total creative control – from selling over 25,000 mockups through his $5 marketplace Mokk, to opening Comunal, a members’ dining experience in New York City. His philosophy emerged from years of designing merch graphics that got bottlenecked by poor client decisions: ugly blanks, bad printing, low-conversion websites. Comunal represents that thinking at its most ambitious: a physical space designed to feel like an artificial legacy brand, 100 years old from day one. The concierge team has been trained to hang up on callers mid-conversation – a deliberate friction point designed to give guests something to bond over. In our chat, Alves discusses why accessibility can be a luxury, how designers manipulate perception, and what he learned renovating his apartment as a test run. TBI: Dan, how are you doing? DA: Awesome.