✍️ Mapping Designer Tools
If you look at every technological shift or platform shift so far, it’s resulted in more things to design. You got the printing press, and then you have to figure out what you put on a page. More recently, mobile. You would think, “Okay. Less pixels, less designers.” But no, that’s when we saw the biggest explosion of designers.
—Dylan Field, Figma
—Dylan Field, Figma
Sarah Wang • What Builders Talk About When They Talk About AI | Andreessen Horowitz
Designing in an AI World
AI will reduce today’s design jobs. This I feel strongly.
The value of many design jobs today is in visual translation. Someone has a picture in mind of what they want and hires a designer to make that picture real.
If that person can instead feed in a text file into an AI tool and say: Show me a bunch of webpage option
... See moreJulie Zhuo • The Looking Glass: Prioritize until it hurts
I love the horizontality of the tool because people are using it for use cases you will never have thought of and can customize the tool to their image.
Alexandre Dewez • Roam Research - Let me Introduce you to my Second Brain 🧠
As smart as you are about design (and you are! Go read from the beginning if you don’t yet believe it), sometimes the goals you’re trying to achieve need the services of someone who designs solutions for a living. People trained to solve problems. The difference between being design savvy, which many people are—including yourself—and having design
... See moreMike Monteiro • You're My Favorite Client
While Adobe has positioned itself as a leader in building software for professional designers, Canva set out to position its product as the go-to solution for everybody else.
Contrary Research • Canva
The image above is a sketch I drew in Photoshop with a Wacom Cintiq (a display and stylus that lets you directly draw on the screen). For a few months I was obsessed with this magical device and abandoned my sketchbooks. Over time, I found that clients reacted differently to these more finalized looking designs—they scrutinized them more intensely,
... See moreJessica Hische • In Progress: See Inside a Lettering Artist's Sketchbook and Process, from Pencil to Vector
By providing a framework for working together, designers elevate themselves in the hierarchy of teams and organizations, and become valued strategic partners.
David Holston • The Strategic Designer
With tools getting better, pattern libraries and a systematic approach to design will continue affecting designers and developers deeply.