design
insights on good design + anything else related to design
Jilber Najem and
design
The fork on your plate isn’t inevitable—it’s propaganda. Its design has been polished by centuries of iteration, yes, but also by centuries of forgetting. We stopped asking why a fork looks the way it does because it became too familiar to question. It’s not a tool anymore; it’s a dogma.
But supernormal isn’t about inevitability. It’s about normalization. When something becomes so ubiquitous, so embedded in daily life, it disappears from view. That’s not just true for objects—it’s true for the systems we live by. Markets, money, time.
Absolutely excellent piece.
Throughout history, new technologies have opened new fields of expression and expanded what's possible. Every time a new technology came in, at least half were left behind loving the old craft or worrying about the future. Those who embrace the discomfort, understand how the tool can be wielded will continue to create novel ideas and change culture, With the printing press, those who mastered textual literacy created profound societal impact. In those early days, this literacy was an essential differentiator.
Just as the printing press democratized knowledge creation, AI is commoditizing access to intelligence and with it redefining technical execution. This is now widely accepted. AI can generate endless ‘perfect’ outputs, and its reasoning capabilities will only expand. Design’s tools will change but design’s essence remains distinctly human: creation guided by feeling & relationships rather than pure logic, and the judgment to know what’s worth creating.
Design literacy—combining curiosity, studied curation, personal conviction, and craft—will become as vital as verbal literacy.
This way of seeing and thinking becomes a new differentiator. It’s a new type of intelligence and design that will separate those who thrive from those who fade into the noise. I see this type of design everywhere in my work with founders, engineers, salespeople, and investors—they are all designers in their own right. It is innate—it just needs to be unlocked.
The best founders already understand this. In a world where anyone can build, they know what to build, who it’s for, and why it must exist.
When I say “I don’t know where everyone went,” I know everyone’s out there surfing the web , of course, but it feels like it’s a different place now. When the algorithms are determining everything we should be seeing, it’s a much less personal internet. The “For You” pages of the world are right, I am interested in that content, but I’m not seeing... See more
I miss human curation
People talk about how AI is going to make design obsolete, and/or make pixel perfect designs not be a thing anymore. I don't think so.
Pixel-perfect design mostly existed in designers’ minds anyway. The mocks might perfect but the final product rarely was. Most of the time,
Karri Saarinenx.com
Design price list
The perils of designing for scale
“We are in the midst of a major social transformation — moving many of our day-to-day activities from physical places to information-based places that we experience on our phones and computers. The central question here is: How can we design these information environments so they serve our social needs in the long... See more
“We are in the midst of a major social transformation — moving many of our day-to-day activities from physical places to information-based places that we experience on our phones and computers. The central question here is: How can we design these information environments so they serve our social needs in the long... See more
