Ana Kraš doesn’t like to overthink things. The Serbian designer, photographer and maker isn’t too concerned with how others receive her work. Yet it's been well received all the same.

Kraš’ lamp designs for Hay, her collaborations with fashion designer Maryam Nassir Zadeh and Danish brand Ganni, her photography and effortless style have earned her the title “It Girl” more than once. She models for fashion brands one day and then photographs Copenhagen Fashion Week the next. 

But it’s not titles or recognition Kraš is after. She just wants to keep playing.

“It might sound strange, but my work always felt so personal to me,” says Kraš. “It always feels like it exists for me to play with it, not for others to see it.”

Kraš was born in Belgrade, where she graduated from the University of Applied Arts. Since then, she’s worked for herself as a furniture designer, model, photographer, set designer and artist, among other things. It’s not necessarily by intention – Kraš has said before that she wishes she’d had the opportunity to do internships – but rather that she’s followed her curiosity and ideas and they lead her here. It’s a strategy, or non-strategy, that has defined her career.

“I'm very responsible and maybe even too serious in some ways, but when it comes to curiosity and play, I'm somehow almost the same as when I was a kid,” Kraš says. “It's just how I am naturally. I'm not trying to maintain this approach to life.”

Her photography, much of which she shares in a stream-of-consciousness style on Instagram, often seem raw and unedited, shot from a bike or across a dinner table. The Bonbon lamps she designed and creates for Hay, while requiring hours of detailed handiwork, vary in color and pattern depending on what strikes her in the moment.

"Being concerned about people's opinion makes no sense because there will always be different and opposing opinions. So it becomes useless to even think about it."

Kraš says rather than trying to control her work, she simply follows her instinct. When she does get stuck, it’s because she can be indecisive. She may like dozens of variations of an idea, and can get lost in subtle details like color.

“Then I try to remind myself that there's no perfect choice ever, and that each choice is just a reflection of that moment and will lead to something that comes next,” Kraš explains. “I like to look at projects as a part of a bigger conversation that's an ongoing practice. So each project is sort of like a sentence. And it leads to the next sentence. And it builds up to a story. So not all sentences are so crucial, and there can be some average or even bad ones. But they can still build up a good story. That takes some pressure off.”

Kraš’ advice for relaxing and not overcomplicating your work? Pursue what comes naturally.

“I think confidence comes with a feeling that you're being natural, a feeling of being yourself. With my work I feel like one, it's a part of me. When I have to do things that don't feel natural about, I don't feel confident at all,” she says. “I think it's important to do things that are natural to you, and then you feel like you're playing on stable ground, in your yard.”

Considering how unpredictable this year has been, it’s amusing that several of our top articles of 2020 are predictions. 

Our industry will never be the same, and that’s exciting. I won’t try to make any guesses about the future now, but I am optimistic. Some of the most beautiful movements in history came after a time of crisis. I can only hope this year inspires more creativity, more beauty, more ideas we've never seen before.

In the meantime, we will reflect on familiar ones: Skeuomorphism. Typefaces. UX design. Portfolio building. Of the 161 articles we published in 2020, these are the most-read:

1. The Kawaiization of product design

Claymation-style 3D hands imply our design tool is our friend. Circles and squiggles say our form-creation app is here to party. Muted colors and soft, rounded shapes signal safety. It is approachable. It is charming. It’s Kawaii.

Read article →

2. Skeuomorphism is making a comeback

Something is missing in these modern UIs. They're clean. They're streamlined. They're optimized for productivity and speed. But they’ve lost their soul. Our apps and interfaces have all started look the same and feel the same. Even the icons blend together on our screens. People feed off visual stimuli, and the visual world online has become less and less stimulating with each year. And so we’re gravitating toward something new.

Read article →

3. The best totally free webfonts and typefaces

Beautiful typefaces are usually an investment, but that doesn't mean you can't find affordable ones. Here we curated our top 12 picks, along with a few honorable mentions.

Read article →

4. Art deco will be the visual language of 2021

Every trend is an answer to the movement preceding it, and minimalism has just about had its run. We are emotional and sentimental beings; we survive on self-expression. We will forever return to what has colored society since humans first walked the earth: art. 

We have yet to see how this plays out but can only hope it’s true for the coming year.

Read article →

5. The most underrated page on your portfolio

There’s a page I don’t see on portfolios as often as I’d like. When I do, it feels like a treat. I go through all the other pages on the site first. I scan the homepage, usually click straight to the About page, followed by a few case studies. Finally, dessert: The Playground page.

Read article →

6. How to write UX copy that makes your product a joy to use

Good UX copy is like a good speaker. It makes its users feel lighter, encouraged and capable. So to write UX copy that moves your users, similar principles apply.

Read article →

7. The Carbonmade onboarding UX explained

A great onboarding experience can increase your conversion rate, engagement and brand recognition while lowering the barrier of entry – meaning, how fast someone can start using your product the way it's mean to be used. It's one of the most crucial elements of your entire product experience.

Read article →

8. 5 gorgeous portfolios from creative directors

If you're a branding or identity designer, you typically have an obsession with detail. You are, naturally, an expert in typography. You've learned how to distill a story to its most powerful parts and present it in a compelling way.  So it's no wonder branding portfolios are some of the best out there.

Read article →

9. Senior portfolios vs. junior portfolios

Does your portfolio change depending on your seniority? Of course, we know the work will evolve. But does the way you present it change too? Should it? Here are our thoughts on the subject.

Read article →

10. How to write concisely

The three hallmarks of good UX copy: Clear, concise and useful. Here we will discuss how to write concisely. We will keep it short.

Read article →

Thank you to everyone who read DESK this year. Like most of you, I'd guess, we look forward to what 2021 brings.

If you’ve been following me online, you know I love watches. I’m a designer, and watches are essentially what design is about. 

Watches are the perfect marriage of functional and beautiful. A watch is first and foremost a tool, but it can also become an intimate part of someone's life. Watches carry memories, and often the watch becomes a symbol for the experiences or people we cherish. A watch can be a new beginning or a window to the past life of someone else.

Because they are so personal, gifting a watch can be challenging – and navigating the world of watches even more so. But one thing is for sure: If you give someone a watch, you’re going to be with them every minute of the day, on their wrist. It’s a powerful gift.

In this short guide, I’d like to share some ideas for those considering a watch for their designer friend or family member. Most are fairly unisex, but you can decide for yourself no matter what the listing says. Also: These are not sponsored or affiliate recommendations. They're what I know to be good as a designer who appreciates watches and the art of watchmaking.

The beauty of watches is that you can get one for as little as $5 or as much as $500 – and way beyond. But in this article, we’re going to focus more on the affordable and in-between options. If you’re already thinking about gifting someone a Rolex or Patek Philipp, chances are you don’t need to read this article.

Let’s start:

Nr.1 — A classic: the Braun

Dieter Rams has been an icon in the design industry for decades now. His product designs have not only inspired a generation of industrial designers, but graphic designers as well.

This classic Braun Analogue is an affordable piece of design at roughly $130. It’s a quartz watch, so while it may not be as impressive on the inside (compared to a mechanically powered watch), it’s functional, accurate and simple. Exactly what your designer friend or significant other may value. 

Shop the Braun →

Nr.2 — The Numbers Watch by MoMA

Nothing says “I’m a graphic designer” more than a bold but minimalistic watch dial. If your friend is a graphic designer, they may already be aware of this watch. It was designed by Copenhague-based watch company LARSEN & ERIKSEN in collaboration with Mads Jakob Poulsen, who is a dear friend of mine.

Similar to the Braun watch with a quartz movement inside, this watch is $200 and simple, both on the inside and the outside. And one thing is guaranteed: people will comment on your watch when you’re wearing it. It’s a conversation piece. 

The watch comes in multiple versions, see images at this link:

Shop The Numbers watch → 

Nr.3 — The Casio G-Shock

You can’t go wrong with a Casio, and the G-Shock is a classic. Casio is famous for its hard plastic pieces, but this design offers a bit more. The G-Shock feels more premium (and it is, at $500), with metal cases in a range of nice colors. If your designer friend also loves the outdoors, this is the perfect gift for them. It’s practically indestructible. Get it in either black, silver or in a more fancy gold. 

Shop the Casio G-Shock → 

Nr.4 — The Mondaine SBB Swiss Railways watch

Still under $500, we have another graphic design- inspired piece: The Swiss Railways edition of the Mondaine SBB. The simplicity and ingenuity of Swiss design is celebrated by designers everywhere, and this watch encapsulates that. It was designed by Hans Hilfiker, a Swiss engineer and designer for the Federal Swiss Railways. It’s another iconic piece that your designer friend would wear proudly.

Shop The Mondaine SSB Swiss Railway →

Nr. 5 — The Braun Prestige Digital

Keeping with the digital watches for a second, next up is the Braun Digital at about $300. It’s a design statement, right on your wrist. If you’re a designer meeting other designers, they'll notice it immediately. As soon as they see the name Braun, they’ll know this watch is special.

Shop The Braun Prestige Digital →

Nr.6 — The Uniform M40 PreciDrive, a minimalist watch

For the more distinguished designer, there’s Uniform Wares. Still within the $500 price range, you’ll get elegant design and beautiful craftsmanship. While the watch is still powered by a quartz movement on the inside, you wouldn’t be able to tell from the outside. It’s simple and refined. If your friend is a minimalist, this is the watch for them.

Shop The Uniform →

Nr.7 — The Hamilton Field

Now, moving away from digital and quartz movements and entering mechanical engineering, we’re in the world of gears and screws. The Hamilton is iconic, beloved by even the most hardcore watch collectors who own watches 100x the price.

Inspired by military watches, the Hamilton is a more rugged piece but also beautifully designed with its bold hour markers and the 24h military time. Simple, functional and Swiss-made, this watch is pure graphic design. Nothing more and nothing less than it needs to be. Also, you can swap out the nato strap with something else and give the watch a completely different look. Get it at just over $500.

Shop The Hamilton →

Nr.8 — The Junghans

Next is the Junghans, at around $1,300. With an automatic and self-winding movement, it’s even more refined, more German, more elegant. Bonus points for your designer friend: This one's inspired by the famous Bauhaus design movement. Works for both for design meetings and date night. It’s the perfect watch for every day.

Shop The Junghans →

Nr.9 — The Nomos Tangente

We’re leveling up! This watch, also Bauhaus-inspired, is for a special friend or family member with refined taste. Quartz won’t do at this point. If you’re looking in this price range for this person, it has to be a proper Swiss automatic movement in a German design. Welcome to the Nomos Tangente, perhaps one of the most beloved, more “accessible” watches (priced at $1,900, they get much more expensive than this). High-quality materials and craftsmanship meet some of the finest and minimalistic dial designs in the watch world.

Shop The Nomos Tangente →

Nr. 10 — The Tudor Pelagos

If you’re buying this $5,000 watch, your friend is a special one. So special in fact, you’re ready to scratch the surface of high-end watchmaking. That said, you’re not about to dive too deep into the world of Rolex & Co.

The Tudor Pelagos is a beautiful, classic steel sports watch. It’s the perfect all-rounder. And the best part is, you can dress it up and down as much as you like. Works as nicely for diving in the ocean as it does on your wrist wearing a suit (your friend is the James Bond type, right?). The Pelagos is a watch lover’s watch. As an alternative, you may also like the Tudor Blackbay. 

Shop The Tudor Pegagos →

Nr.11 — The Omega Speedmaster, for the friend you really really like

You don’t just want to give your friend a nice watch, you want to give them a piece of history. A watch they will have FOREVER and most likely pass down to their children or grandchildren. 

The Omega Speedmaster Moonwatch is iconic. And compared to other high-end watches with history and craftsmanship, it's somewhat "affordable" at $5,000 – which is all relative, I realize.

The Speedmaster was the first watch on the moon, worn by astronauts. That alone makes it one of the most unique gifts you can give someone. But this watch is also beautifully designed for someone with taste. It’s a watch people notice, whether they appreciate watches or not. And if they appreciate watches, they’ll know exactly what watch this is as soon as they see it. 

Shop The Omega Speedmaster → 

Video game design is still a young enough practice to feel mysterious and discoverable.  That's even more true for mobile games. Going behind the scenes of Headland, a new action-adventure game for mobile, we learn the field of game design is one designers are creating as they go.

Northplay, a Denmark-based game design studio, is currently putting the finishing touches on Headland with intentions to launch this December – after working on it for more than three years. As we learn in this interview with Michael Flarup, founder and designer at Northplay, it's been a long and winding journey. Here Flarup shows us how Headland came to be, and what he's learned about game design along the way.

Hey Michael, congrats on the official reveal of Headland! Can you tell us a bit about the game? What inspired this world and story?

Thanks for having me, it’s always exciting to share something we’ve been working on for so long. Headland is the product of a long and arduous creative process. A lot of different people have touched it throughout its production cycle with the core drivers today being Christian Laumark and Julian Abela, who work for me at Northplay. It’s their art and systems knowledge that are really making it all come together.

We’re calling it an action-adventure game, but really it sits at the intersection between a lot of different genres with both a narrative arc and action RPG elements, like combat and item upgrades.

It’s a story about a young boy, Nor, who has his imagination core shattered by a powerful force. You team up with your robot friends to find the fragments and fight to regain your limitless creativity.

"The price of not following in someone else’s footsteps is a high chance of getting lost and not having anyone to look to for guidance."

Tell us about the touch aspect of Headland. What makes this new or different for mobile?

What players will hopefully find is that this is a very different type of mobile game. It’s ambitious and it goes against the grain of the platform in many aspects.

At the heart of that experience lies the enormous amount of work we’ve spent rethinking how a game like this should be controlled. Action RPG’s on touch have historically had a lot of heavy-handed UI with on-screen buttons, digital D-pads and menus. They often feel like mini PC ports converted for fingers.

We threw all of our assumptions out the window and tried to build controls entirely around touch. You swipe and tap your way through combat, you hit in-game interaction points and you tap through dialogue. At every interaction, we’ve asked ourselves what the best way of doing this on touch would be, and tried to build that solution. The result is a lot of small and big innovations that all come together to create a very accessible and fast-paced experience. It really just feels like it was built for the devices we carry in our pockets.

Releasing a narrative, premium game on mobile that you can complete in 2020 is by itself also a rare thing. The game isn’t built around microtransactions and there are no retention mechanics. The game is free to download with the first 20 minutes playable, and the rest of the game unlocked through a single purchase. It’s a game with an ending. In a mobile game landscape of hyper-casual quick-fixes, we wanted to make an experience we wanted to play that felt more like the games we bought and cared for when we were kids.

In a Patreon announcement, you said, “Pursuing this vision has led us through some challenging designs, life-questioning obstacles and several reboots.” What were the challenges and life-questioning obstacles? What about the game made it so challenging?

It’s exciting to make something new. Something that’s different from what everyone else is doing. You get to ask hard questions and reimagine. You get to take ideas apart and look at the components. But new needlessly comes at the expense of familiarity. The price of not following in someone else’s footsteps is a high chance of getting lost and not having anyone to look to for guidance.

Game design has a lot of that and Headland in particular has faced a long history of setbacks and reboots. It originally started as a Viking action game called Norse (some of its roots still visible in the game today). The original intention was making an action and exploration game for touch that really peeled back all the inherent complexities of that genre, with gameplay that was fast-paced, accessible and fun. The controls came into its own in those early days and largely made it intact into the game today.

But it wasn’t without challenges.

We spent a lot of time building the tech to make swiping feel just right in the game. Believe it or not, that’s something humans have a fine-tuned sense of. We built auto-aim that made you seamlessly hit the right targets around you. We then built combat around these new paradigms of touch. Creating and rigorously testing dynamics that played to its strengths and limitations.

Standing still and tapping wasn’t fun. Evading and repositioning worked great. So we designed encounters that force the player to think about placement. Enemies with attack markers and slow-moving projectiles. Granular life systems that are not too punitive as to dissuade players to take chances. Carefully balanced difficulty and progression that wouldn’t turn a broader demographic away but above all, the right feel to it all.

We went to great lengths to avoid cumbersome UI and designed in-world interaction points for things like opening portals, purchasing and upgrading. You even buy the game from a physical in-world Northplay store by hitting an interaction point. We built as much of the UI as we could into the game world itself to make it all more seamless.

"Game design is such a multidimensional activity that large chunks of the discipline remain unknown territory, even after having shipped many games."

The story was another major challenge that’s echoed through the many different phases the game has been through.

Sometime after the Viking phase of this game (which was originally envisioned as more of a rogue-like game), I started yearning for a more linear progression. Not only because we were struggling with randomly generated content (rogue-likes are hard) but also because I had a long-standing desire to leave players with a feeling after having completed the game. I wanted to tell a meaningful story with an emotional payoff. I wanted the game to be more than a finely tuned combat and loot machine. I wanted it to have heart.

I saw the narrative angle as something that would help us with the blueprint of the scope itself AND give it that much-needed soul I was yearning for. How hard could narrative game design be, right?

Well pretty freaking hard in the best of circumstances. Game design is such a multidimensional activity that large chunks of the discipline remain unknown territory, even after having shipped many games. This might seem surprising, but you’d be amazed at how many such blindspots are clearly visible in big commercial projects made by large teams. I see them now more than I did five years ago.

Narrative design was foreign land to us and here’s why we struggled: We, as a studio, are obsessed with how something plays. When we make games, we iterate fast on prototypes. It’s all about mechanics and game-feel from the start. That’s something I’m chasing as a game designer, and that passion turns into products that in turn attract people and foster a culture of improvisational and iterative design. It’s a very visceral and rewarding way to create an entertainment product. It creates games that feel great; they’re literally built through play and constantly tested and tweaked. It’s the Darwinism of game design.

It’s also absolutely impossible to plan, and narrative design requires planning. It requires you to have a pretty good idea of what you want to say and where you want to end up. It’s the difference between improv comedy and putting on a classical theatre play.

It’s easy to spot my mistake now, at the end of this road. I thought a strong narrative would help galvanize a much-needed structure for the game, but what I was really doing was introducing the antithesis of how we’ve historically made our best work. I have later seen many others make the same mistake, walking into the narrative woods never to emerge with a finished game.

Luckily we got help from award-winning game author Morten Brunbjerg, who helped us frame the theme of what we wanted to say. A story about the loss of limitless imagination we all experience growing up and how you can only really hope to regain fragments of it as an adult if you fight really hard. It’s something that resonated really well with our profession.

From this framework our world builder and artist, Christian Laumark was able to apply another of his many talents: writing witty and creative dialogue. It took many long Slack calls, revisions and rewrites during the pandemic lockdown before our cast of quirky characters started to come together on the page.

Ultimately the story also had to be told in a way that worked with the many systems we had built. It had to align with our core designs built around game-feel. It had to merge our improv comedy with that classical play. It hasn’t been without compromise, but I’m very proud of the result.

Headland has no microtransactions, ads or retention mechanics. Can you share the reasoning and philosophy behind this? What sacrifices did you have to make in choosing this path?

Whether or not this is a smart move really remains to be seen, but after having watched the mobile gaming landscape degenerate into hyper-casual, metrics-driven dopamine slot-machines, I didn’t feel like adding to that development.

From a game design perspective, I’ve always been drawn to the accessibility of mobile. From a financial perspective, I’ve always been drawn to the distribution of mobile. Those two things helped us get our start with millions of players enjoying our games.

Our claim to fame on the App Store has been games like "Conduct THIS!" and "Fly THIS!" Which were once described to me by a mobile publisher as ‘Dinosaurs’ because we didn’t have the right metrics to support user acquisition. Maybe they’re right. Here I am, making another dinosaur and it might very well be the last one.

Can you take us behind the scenes of a specific level or section of the game?

Absolutely. I sat down with Christian Laumark, who has designed and built most of the game, and put together a little behind the scenes walkthrough.

We usually start by sketching out the concept of the level, to imagine what it's going to look like, and make changes if the design isn't holding up. It's a good way to ensure that you don't waste time trying to realize an impossible idea.

Then we proceed to tiling out the terrain of the level with landscape blocks, which can easily be fitted together into all sorts of different terrain. We then decorate the level with, grass, trees, rocks –  known in game development as "dressing."

After layout is complete, we design all the battle encounters to fit the difficulty of the level and provide a satisfying progression.

In the end, we set up the functionality of the level. What is going to happen where and when — all the conversations with the characters, scripted encounters, and other special things that are happening in that level. We use a custom cinematic system we built for this exact purpose, so it's easy for the level designer to do all of this without having to write any code.

After the level has been all set up, we test it to make sure it's working as intended, and it's fun to play. Most levels have to fit into some larger progression in the game, so there’s also a few logistics to think about when it’s slotted into the overall arc of the story. We do a range of tests at the office with external testers who come in to play through parts of the game while we scribble down notes. Sometimes, feedback from those sessions leads us to make changes to specific levels where our ideas might not have translated into gameplay as well as we thought.

How much does a traditional background in design come into play as a game designer? What are the skills and knowledge that transfer over? Did you feel like you had to learn a lot entering this world?

I’ve always been interested in making games, and games have in turn influenced my visual design career a lot. When I was 10 I’d sit next to my friend a few houses over and make games in this old engine called Klick’n’Play. I was a geek and a gamer growing up in the nineties.

My career eventually turned to graphic design but I never forgot games and I never stopped playing— and while I’ve done a lot of work in the startup and app space, I think a lot of the visual design that I’ve produced over the years have a certain video-game quality. Icons have been a big passion of mine and I tell myself that you can see that in my work.

To be honest, I think quite a few different industries have skill-overlaps that are useful in the game design process. Game design is this multifaceted and expansive discipline that has more inroads than most other areas I have ever worked in. It makes the games industry a wonderfully diverse place filled with people from all sorts of backgrounds.

The traditional designer mindset can be both a blessing and a curse when you start designing games. On one hand, I feel like a big part of our jobs as designers is to design with empathy. To put ourselves in the user's place and try to create the best experience from that vantage point. I also think the best designers infuse those experiences with opinion, style and joy.

"The wonderful thing about game design is that literally anyone can start doing it right now."

Most designers also have a very keen sense of product. They’re working at the intersection between vision and reality. They’re used to translating between big ideas and small practicalities. Being empathetic toward users and being fluent in the language of products helps make strong game designers that understand what their players are looking for and how to give it to them.

On the other hand, designers are used to working in a world of rules. Whether it’s print or screen, website or app, poster or icon. A big part of being a good designer is knowing what’s possible and how to do it in the best way under a certain set of restrictions. That thinking can get you in trouble in game design. While there’s obviously a rich history of how to do things in games, it’s a lot less restricted and some of the best thinking comes from not relying on rules. The traditional designer will have to unlearn years of finding "the right way" to do something and will have to contend with the fact that there are many ways to achieve a result, and that those results are a lot more subjective.

Aesthetics is another area where I feel like more traditional designers can bring a lot to the table. Game design, with its depth, breadth and endless possibilities, can seem scary. One thing you can rely on is your taste in visual style. You can bring that taste to any medium and it’ll be an asset. Making something look good is a much bigger and more acceptable part of making games, and so while you might not at first have a good grip on how to create the right game-loop, you can sure as hell make it look nice.

In Headland I’ve been doing art direction but also simple things like color-grading and tweaking the post-processing stack to make it look just like I wanted. I have also worked on VFX in the game, which has been a new frontier for me. You might find that the tools are different, but your taste is very much applicable.

Say we’re interested in becoming a game designer. Where do you recommend we begin? What one piece of advice would you give us, based your own experience?

Game design is incredibly hard to learn in a vacuum. You can’t digest a lot of books or just watch a lot of YouTube videos (but those things can help you later on). Like a lot of other things in life, you have to go do it. And the wonderful thing about game design is that literally anyone can start doing it right now.

Remember when you were playing as a kid and you’d make up all sorts of rules for the fantasy playing out in front of you? That’s a form of unorganized game design.

As adults we might have a hard time channeling that if we don’t have a very special purpose in mind. So to get started with game design, you really want to design a game— preferably one that someone else can play. Designing games for yourself is incredibly hard and thinking about an audience is helpful.

"The key to game design is remembering how to play."

Games come in all shapes and sizes and if you can’t program or you’re not feeling like jumping in with a game engine, you can still make physical games. A simple board or card game is a really good place to start. Heck, throw dice in front of you and decide on a winning and losing condition and you’ve just made your first game. Playable game.

Game Jams have also traditionally been a great learning experience and once the world reopens, you’ll probably find a jam near you or you could join one of the many online ones that happen every year. Essentially you’ll make a game in a set amount of time, like 48 hours. At these events you’ll quickly see that most people have something to contribute to the game design process — even if they’re not seasoned game developers. Most people there don’t know how to code, many don’t know how to design but everyone remembers how to play.

The key to game design is remembering how to play.

Do you have an official launch date planned? When should we expect to see Headland available for download?

Headland will be out mid-December, come hell or high water. You can preorder Headland for iOS and Android here.

When I first started using mymind (already the pun potential is dangerous for a writer), I didn’t really use it. I dropped in a few screenshots for ad inspiration and forgot about them. 

A week or so later, someone complimented my writing in Slack. I screenshotted it and, afraid I’d swipe something so precious to my trash with all my other screenshots, stashed it away in mymind too. 

Then someone sent me a quote from Jerry Seinfield about how he proudly micromanaged the writing of Seinfeld. It resonated, so I highlighted the passage and saved it to mymind. 

Piece by piece, I found myself collecting the stuff that feeds my real mind – the inspiration, the validation, the motivation – into this external mind. A tweet thread about writing good headlines. A passage I enjoyed from a book. An article I appreciated online.

"After passively collecting for weeks, mymind has become a resource and home base for my work. It’s my own personal search engine." 

Before, I'd stash this stuff in various places depending on what felt “closer” at the time: usually Google Drive, my desktop or Pinterest. I still felt torn between those familiar tools and this new one, but with every click of the “Add to my mymind” button in my browser, it became more natural. 

*You should know, at this point, that I work with the team that creates mymind, so this is a biased review. But I've done my best to share my experience here, rather than persuade you one way or another.*

Soon I was taking notes in mymind. While I’d previously flounder about in a meeting, debating between Evernote, a Google Doc or TextEdit (and ultimately just emailing myself), I now have mymind open in a tab where I jot down my notes and hit Save. When I brainstorm with my team about a new article, I just copy and paste the conversation from Slack straight into mymind.

After passively collecting for weeks, mymind has become a resource and home base for my work. When I’m working on an article, I search a keyword to find my notes or research. When I’m brainstorming an ad, I search “inspo” or “ads” and instantly create a moodmoard. It's far beyond a writer's traditional swipe file. It’s my own personal search engine.

Eventually, I hope to use mymind for the actual writing, not just the inspiration. I happen to know mymind has new features in the works to make that process more natural and seamless. While I like the idea of something clean, focused and less scattered than my current tools and process, I don't have any expectations. So far, mymind seems to know what I need better than I do.

I'm still not quite over the awe of the internet. To think you can decide to create a new business or pursue a new career and establish a presence for it online the next day? It's magic.

When we first saw the Shy Studio website launched with Semplice, we were immediately fans. Come to find out, it's the new venture of our longtime Semplice family member, Misha Shyukin.

Shy Studio is an independent motion graphics studio focused on artistic exploration, 3D motion and still life videos. The studio already has clients like Jimmy Choo, Nike and Adidas in its portfolio, along with dozens of detailed, otherworldly self-initiated projects.

Once we realized Shyukin was behind Shy, we had to know about the vision of the studio, the philosophy behind its experimental approach and what it was like opening a new business in the middle of a pandemic.

"I still spent around a month at home with a 2-year-old typing on my keyboard and breaking Wacom pens."

Congratulations on the opening of Shy Studio! Can you tell us what inspired the studio and how it came to be? How many people are on your team and what is the vision for Shy Studio? 

Thank you! I've been thinking about the transition from freelance artist to studio for quite a while. While it's exciting, it was equally terrifying for me to be honest. I started by hiring a 3D artist part-time to help me out with ongoing projects, to see how it will work, who then became the first employee in early 2020. It's just the two of us at the moment, and we expand a little bit with other freelancers if there's a project that we can't handle by ourselves. 

The vision is to have a place where I would enjoy working myself as an employee, and having a nice balance between commercial projects and self-initiated experimental work, where we can try out new techniques without the pressure of a commercial project.

How was it launching a new studio in the midst of a pandemic? Based on projects like “Quarantine,” it seems like Shy came to life during this time.

We're very fortunate that not much changed for us during Covid-19. Our workflow is 100% digital and we don't have many local clients, so we're very familiar with Zoom and Slack. And since we're just two people, we didn't even have to close down the studio. 

However, I still spent around a month at home with a 2-year-old typing on my keyboard and breaking Wacom pens. We used "Quarantine" as one of those self-initiated experimental projects that I was mentioning earlier and at the same time, it was an opportunity to define our visual look a bit clearer for ourselves.

What is your philosophy behind the experimental work? How do you find clients like Jimmy Choo that trust you and support experimentation? 

The experimental aspect of our work is certainly something I actively am trying to push into every project. Over the years I spent freelancing, it turned out to be the approach that works best for me personally, and gives me and my clients the best results. Of course, we do work with briefs and guidelines as well, which you cannot avoid with larger, more established clients.

Can you tell us about any projects you’re working on right now? Any sneak peeks for the DESK audience?

We recently published a project called “Artificial Bloom," a collection of various digital flowers and plants we made over the duration of two months, whenever we had a little bit of downtime in between projects.

I quite enjoy the workflow, where we slowly work through a specific topic and publish little bits of the project as we go along. I can see us doing a new variation of that soon. 

What made you choose Semplice for your website and personal portfolio?

It was a quick decision to also use it for the studio website. The main thing for me was that Semplice just lets you design and layout your site, move things around, drag and drop images, without having to dive into the more technical aspects of web design. As well as the animation elements which can be triggered with various scroll and mouse movements, very cool stuff! The customer support is also super friendly and helpful.  

Entering Ash Thorp’s world is like stepping into a kid’s comic book. There are robots and fast cars. Jiu Jitsu and outer space. Monster and machines.

Thorp has made a career of stuff as a motion, VFX and digital designer and director. Working on video games like "Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare," and films like "Ghost in the Shell" and "Assassin’s Creed," he’s become known for his ability to build transportive, futuristic worlds.

As it turns out, it’s a craft he’s been pursuing since childhood.

“I grew up in very humble surroundings, so I would use my imagination and mind to escape from reality quite often,” says Thorp. “The things that interested me growing up still influence me heavily today. I feel that I am continually trying to please my inner child when I create.”

One of Thorp's illustrations for "L'INTRUS BEYOND BATMAN."

As a self-proclaimed forever student, Thorp is constantly striving to hone that skill. How do you stir emotion in a viewer? What makes a character believable? How does light influence the tone of a scene? What makes for a real, immersive world? Lately, he's been studying films to find those answers.

"At the end of the day, my main goal is to convey emotion through all my art."

“I don't proclaim to be an expert on the requirements for what makes a film worthy to watch, but I do know what draws me to the films that I love, and that is always a great story,” says Thorp.

Thorp tries to break down how scenes in films work, searching for how and why they invoke emotion in a person. For him, it starts with knowing the subject matter to the point of authenticity. Making a believable world, he explains, requires knowing what motivates the characters to do the things they do and why.

Scenes from "Lost Boy," a sci-fi film Thorp designed and co-directed.

“I am continually experimenting and studying as I progress as an artist,” he says. “At the end of the day, my main goal is to convey emotion through all my art.”

Before creating his recent series of paintings for friend Vitaly Bulgarov's game, “Mortal Shell,” he first studied hours of gameplay and immersed himself in the game lore. He then pulled references of films and moments that he felt connected tonally with the game.

One of Thorp's recent paintings for the game "Mortal Shell."

He also studied Roger Deakins’ DOP work on "1917" and "Skyfall," particularly the end scenes at night. Since "Mortal Shell" is placed in a fantasy realm with no artificial lighting, Thorp looked for clever tricks Roger may have used to illuminate his cast during the night shoots.

A scene from the 2012 film, "Skyfall," which Thorp referenced while creating his paintings for "Mortal Shell."

Another film he paid close attention to was Francis Ford Coppola's “Dracula.”

"It's lit so incredibly well and has some very poetic visual moments," says Thorp.

After diving deep into those films, he focused on gaining a better understanding of the subject matter to figure out the best way to extract emotion.

“One method is to focus on the characters’ ambitions, and then create from that viewpoint,” he explains. “For example, if they are emotionally torn, I may choose to light the character in a high contrast form to reflect both their light and dark sides.”

Another recent painting for "Mortal Shell."

Thorp is currently teaching himself to use 3DS Max and Vray, after years of using C4D and Octane/Redshift for his work. He’s also working on his directing skills, and says he is learning to find patience with the process.

How he sees it? Every new tool or skill he learns unlocks a new list of opportunities.

“I am always trying to view the world as a student,” says Thorp. “I don’t ever want to settle on what I know or am comfortable with now, but I’d rather focus ahead on what I want to learn and who I want to become."

Bureau Oberhaeuser is a Hamburg-based studio focused on information and interface design. They've been doing UX/UI since 2011, long before most UX designers today entered the field. But the studio doesn't limit themselves by this popular term.

Bureau Oberhaeuser takes complex data and distills it into infographics, interfaces and digital experiences that make sense. While most digital designers today are focused on usability, Bureau Oberhaeuser believes UX design should also be beautiful.

The studio has been using our portfolio tool, Semplice, for their website since the beginning. So we finally decided to sit down with founder Martin Oberhäuser to understand what they do, how to present complex work in a compelling way, and what role beauty plays in UX and UI design.

Martin Oberhäuser, founder of Bureau Oberhaeuser

Bureau Oberhaeuser focuses on information and interface design. Can you tell us what that means, and how it differs from traditional UX/UI design?

We have a background in classic graphic and information design and creating print infographics, but we took this approach and transferred it to the digital age. In my mind, the thinking behind creating a good infographic and creating a great UI/UX design is very similar. In both cases, you really have to understand the problem you’re trying to solve and find unique visual ways to communicate your message in an understandable way.

In order to do that you have to dive really deep into the information you’re trying to communicate and become an expert on the topic you're dealing with. Only when you really understand the problem, can you simplify the information, narrow it down to the essentials and eventually communicate it back to others.

I don’t think the information design we’re doing differs that much from traditional UI/UX design. It's just a very complex version of UI/UX design with data and information as the main driver behind many of our design decisions.

You create concepts, which we don’t often see from established design studios. What motivates you to create and share these, when you’re certainly already booked with paid work?

The answer is pretty simple: for the fun of it. That's one of the main motivations, but it's not the only reason. These concepts often start because me or someone else in my team is frustrated with the available solutions to a certain problem or case. If we see a design solution anywhere in the digital world, that we believe isn’t satisfying and could be done better, we’ll just go out and do it.

One of my favorite quotes from James Murphy summarizes this approach pretty nicely: “The best way to complain is to make things”. (Fun side fact: I first heard this quote from Tobias van Schneider in Greece where we were both speaking at the same conference.)

Many of our self-initiated projects, which later became actual products, started off as a concept.

"Turning data into a visualization can really change the viewer's perspective. It’s almost like translating text into another language."

We see ourselves not only as designers but as creative entrepreneurs, and working on a self-initiated project (even if it's only a concept) is the first step of creating a new digital product. Obviously bringing a concept to life is much more complicated and time-consuming than just posting a case study on our website. But it's a first test to see how our concepts resonate with our audience and if it's worth pursuing.

Those concepts also get the attention of potential clients. If we don’t have a case study in our portfolio that deals with a certain topic, it’s very unlikely that clients will approach us with a similar challenge. You can also learn a lot by working on a project without any client involvement. You don’t have a briefing, a budget, a deadline or any of those things, so you have to learn to manage yourself. And this can only help your own project and your client projects to get better and more efficient in the future.

As designers, we’re taught to present everything in its most simple, beautiful form – but sometimes that tendency can lead us to misrepresent information and data. Our own biases can also get in the way, whether consciously or subconsciously. How do you avoid this with your work?

We have a saying in Germany that translates to “don’t trust a statistic you haven’t faked yourself." So this really is a big challenge, especially when you’re dealing with a lot of raw data, the way we do.

Turning data into a visualization can really change the viewer's perspective. It’s almost like translating text into another language. You have to read between the lines, interpret sayings, find different words, simplify certain phrases and while doing that, there is always a chance for misinterpretation. The good news is that raw data per se is unbiased and if you stick to the rules of “form follows function,” you’re less likely to distort this data. Whenever you ditch data or information in favor of a more beautiful layout you’re getting in dangerous territory.

Same is true for ignoring certain data points or simplifying data that doesn’t fit your narrative. I guess it comes down to a certain discipline to stick to the rules and make yourself aware of the responsibility you have as a storyteller. Creating an infographic can be similar to a journalists work; you are reporting about a topic and telling a story. So you should always try to stick to the same rules that apply to reliable journalism. A good way to do this is to involve as many people as possible, to double-check your work and make sure you’re not missing anything or mislead anyone.

Other than that I think it also comes down to experience. You learn from your mistakes and after creating hundreds of data visualizations, you get more cautious and are therefore less likely to remake those mistakes.

You’re working with complex problems every day. Do you ever get stuck or overwhelmed while trying to solve and visualize these projects? Any practical advice for designers for getting unstuck, avoiding overthink and simplifying complexities?

Again it comes down to experience. The more complex problems you dealt with in the past, the more likely you are to find good solutions for similar challenges in future projects. The problems that occur while visualizing data often have similar characteristics, so you get a good sense for what kind of visualization works for what kind of data. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t get stuck every now and then. The best way to avoid that though is to work with a great team.

If you have great creative people surrounding you like I do, you can always reach out and get a fresh perspective to help you get unstuck. My only other advice would be to question your layouts frequently and try to be very honest with yourself. Questions like “Does this visualization really help the viewer to understand the problem any better, or is it just visually pleasing?” or “Is the color of this button really sticking out and easy to find for the user, or do I just like the subtle color?” can really help yourself to be more aware of your designs and eventually get to a more satisfying solution.

I know it can be difficult for more “technical” designers to tell the story of their work in their portfolio in a beautiful, compelling way. How do you go about it, and what do you recommend for others in a similar field? How do we explain our process without boring our readers to tears?

I actually disagree with that. I think technical designers have a great repertoire of material that is worth showing. You just have to combine it in a logical and compelling way to tell your story.

To me, visualizing the thought process and highlighting why your design has a positive impact on the user experience is a much more compelling story, compared to just showing visually attractive artwork. It often just needs a few small tweaks to make your work look more exciting. That means putting a little more time into presenting your work and creating additional graphics or mockups to make your case more appealing. This extra work in my experience pays off in a big way.

The trick is to tease the viewer with some beautiful graphics, just enough so he’s pulled deeper into your case and starts to really read your case. You can’t scare the viewer away by starting with 30 lines of comprehensive text and then follow with a small image. People are visually driven, whether you’re presenting a redesign for tax filing software or artwork for a music album. But if you just present visually attractive work with no deeper story behind it, the viewer loses interest fast.

You’ve been with Semplice since the very beginning. Why did you choose Semplice for your site and continue using it all these years?

When we started using Semplice, we were just looking for a fast and easy way to set up our portfolio without the need to code. But what really made us stay on board over time was the ability to combine those great fundamentals that Semplice offers with some unique elements that we’ve coded ourselves. This way our website never looked like it was using one of those templates you can nowadays find everywhere.

And as time emerges we don’t even need to code these unique elements anymore, because Semplice got better and better and allowed us to create these components straight in the browser using the Semplice editor.

I’m very impressed by how Semplice managed to constantly improve their product over time. Looking at some other competitors it's actually shocking how little they evolved over the years in comparison. It's also great to know that the product we’re using was created by a small creative team that has a very similar mindset to ours.

Too often, I feel fired up about a subject and think: I’m going to do something about this. I sit down to write and find, 10 minutes later, hundreds of words on the page with barely a line break. 

I’ve done it, I think. I really cracked the case on this one. 

I come back later and realize what I wrote reads like a fever dream: Wild, baseless claims. Tenuous or nonexistent threads of thought. Rambling ideas that lead nowhere. 

Or maybe the writing’s fine. Maybe I’ve really driven my point home, illuminated the issue, but offered zero solution. I’ve essentially just complained, thrown a wet blanket on my readers and walked away. 

Criticism is easy. It’s not hard to see flaws, point out oversights, call someone out, find errors, denounce trends or dismiss the value of something. Any idiot can do it – just look at Twitter. It’s not so easy to rant and provide coherent, thoughtful reasoning for your criticism. It’s even more difficult to offer a solution.

Rants have their place, and I take pleasure in writing them when it seems fitting. But when I do so, I try to ask myself these questions to see if I’m actually offering any value to the people who may read it. 

Am I qualified to criticize this?

A food critic makes a career of understanding the nuances of flavor or the history of regional cuisine. They’ve studied the subject intensively, maybe even practiced it, and exposed themselves to the best and the worst in order to provide an educated opinion. They are qualified to criticize, and they provide a service to their readers in doing so. 

If you’ve experienced the thing you’re ranting about first-hand or have some sort of authority in the space, perhaps your rant is warranted. Maybe you can offer constructive criticism that stirs your community to action.

Or maybe not. As a designer, I may feel qualified to critique another designer’s work, or some design trend, or some product that doesn’t live up to my standards. That doesn’t necessarily mean I should. Read on. 

Am I offering any kind of solution?

If I’m fed up enough with something to go on a tirade about it, it’s likely I feel (rather self-righteously) that I have a better idea for how to do it. After all, if I don’t see the potential for things to be better, why am I so upset about it?

If I’m going to complain about something, I aim to propose a better way. Otherwise, I’m just annoying.

"I wrote mostly positive reviews. I don't write about places that don't interest me." Jonathan Gold

Have I done my research? 

If I make an impassioned stand about something, only for someone else to immediately point out the obvious holes in my argument, it’s going to be pretty embarrassing. It also discredits any authority or trust I might have had before.

It’s assumed you didn’t contribute to the system you’re ranting about, or work on the project you’re criticizing, or attend the meeting where a decision was made. Which means you don’t have context. It’s possible the thing that makes no sense to you only seems senseless because you don’t have all the information. Before you complain about it, find all the information you can. Only then can you reason your stance thoughtfully and productively.

Is my opinion adding anything new or helpful?

Nothing is more tired than Twitter pile-ons in which designers criticize some brand’s new logo or redesign. For one, what is your critique going to do? It’s already done. Second, you’re one of 1,000 other people saying the same thing. That can be useful to enact change, but there are plenty more important causes to pile onto than some company’s logo. 

Think about what result you expect from this rant. Are you offering a new perspective or shedding light on the subject? Or are you just going to fire people up for no useful reason?

Am I just being mean, spiteful or negative for no reason?

Negativity is the last thing we need more of in the world. If you’re just writing out of pure anger or spite, or just because you can, or because it feels good to hate on someone from behind the protection of your laptop screen, reconsider.

If you’ve ever done freelance work, you’ve experienced it. When briefing you on the project, the client seems open and relaxed. “We trust you,” they say, “go wild.” 

You dive into the project excited. Finally, you have full creative freedom, a client who gets it. You do the work, confident in your direction and taking every creative liberty you were offered. 

Then you deliver your work and the client hates it.

What happened?
Were you misaligned on the direction?
Did the client change their minds?
Did you just miss the mark?

While all of the above may be true to an extent, it's likely not that simple.

"Constraints are necessary for creative work. Without them, nothing happens."

Full creative freedom doesn't exist.

If you haven’t defined in clear terms what the client needs or wants, you’ll be taking shots in the dark with your work and hoping something hits the mark. Usually it won’t, because the client has nothing to judge it against besides their current mood and subjective taste.

Always start a project with some sort of discovery and briefing. And, whenever possible, write your own briefs – even if the client has already provided one. This allows you to define the terms of the project in your own words, and make sure your understanding of the project aligns with your client’s. It’s also an opportunity to set a tone and energize your client at the beginning, affirming their choice to bring you on board.

The client may say you have full freedom on this project, but you don’t. More likely, they aren't communicating or aware of what those limitations are. So you can help define them, and you should charge for this process. Include a discovery phase in your estimates so you get paid for it, the client knows to prepare for it and it’s accounted for in your timeline. 

Once you’ve defined the measures of success clearly, you can find creative freedom within them. And you’ll have something to point back to when you present your work. Since you’ve set the objectives and limitations beforehand, you can better justify your decisions, find a clear solution or bill them for a new one. The client may disagree with your solution, but they can’t disagree with the terms you agreed upon together. 

Constraints are necessary for creative work. Without them, nothing happens. Our minds spiral into dozens of directions and we eventually despair. Full “creative freedom” doesn’t exist unless you’re doing a personal art project – and even then, constraints are usually helpful. 

Ask questions early and often

If you’re unclear about anything, even a seemingly small detail, ask. Don’t soften or bury your question with phrases like “Just to confirm” or “I was wondering if you could clarify” or “just making sure." Don’t worry about sounding amateur. Just ask the question. 

When you ask simple, immediate questions, you get clear, helpful answers. Every question you ask reduces the chance of misunderstandings down the road.

"Never assume you and your client are on the same page."

Break up the process

If you sense you and your client might be misaligned, or it’s happened in the past, then you may need to break up your process. Don’t disappear for two weeks while you go into design mode. Add more phases to your process to keep your client in the loop and keep you headed in the right direction.

Build a workshop into your discovery phase. Add more layers of review and approval. Schedule a weekly, 20-minute check-in call. These are your tools to close the gap between you and your client. You won’t always need them, but if it seems like you do, you should use them.

Communicate every step of the way

Never assume you and your client are on the same page. Take notes, send follow up emails and reiterate takeaways at the end of your phone calls. This is not to make a legal case out of your project (although if your client relationship is to that point, read this). It’s to make sure you’re on the same page and agreed on the deliverables. 

Every time you share a brief update about where you are and where you’re headed, it will make your client feel more involved and invested in the final result. The more involved your client, the more they’ll feel they did the work, and the more they’ll like the final result. Make them feel like your work is their own, and you’ll be more likely to succeed.

Keep your communication clear and concise. Nobody wants to receive a long email recalling a meeting verbatim. If you overwhelm your client with long, “let me know your thoughts” emails, you likely won’t get a reply. Most people will ignore those emails and eventually grow impatient as you pester them or stall the project waiting for an answer.

Keep it short and snappy, and give your client an easy way out. Let them pick between two options or set them up to give you a one-word answer: yes or no. If you have multiple questions, don’t send them all at once. If you must send more than one question or action item at a time, number the list so they can reply in an orderly manner. 

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Designers must also be project managers, even if you already have one on your team, and especially if you're working alone. If a client says "the sky is the limit," it's your job to bring that limit back down to earth. It may seem appealing at first, but a loose, poorly defined project won't do you any favors. To feel free within a design project, you need boundaries.

The design industry is a fairly accessible place to build your career. By this, I mean you don’t have to go to art school to become a successful designer.

My introduction to design began with reading many DESK articles about UX design and finally enrolling in a four-month UX bootcamp.

I think about design bootcamps the same way I think about online dating. When dating apps first came out, some found it embarrassing to admit they used those apps. There was a stigma around “resorting” to online dating. Likewise, I used to be embarrassed about the fact that I was a graduate of a UX bootcamp – maybe because it exposed the fact that I didn’t “start” my career until my mid-20s. But these days, everyone seems to be a graduate of an accelerated program, and online dating seems to be the most common way young adults meet.

I now realize how valuable it is to embrace your background in our industry. In fact, I believe those who first worked outside of design have their own unique advantages over art school graduates.

Your non-design work experience is relevant

A friend of mine worked in the service industry for a decade before switching over to design. In interviews, he used to skip over that period because he thought it was irrelevant, but soon came to realize that it was exactly that experience that set him apart from other candidates.

His time as a server gave him the important skill of conversing with people and making them feel comfortable. In design, 80% of the work is presenting and persuading, and the other 20% is the actual pixel pushing. This soft skill he cultivated over 10 years working in the restaurant suddenly became something he would highlight during his interviews, instead of skipping over.

I have a similar story: Before design, I worked in customer support. It’s not a glamorous job; every day I had to talk with customers and hear why they’re feeling frustrated, confused or angry with a product or service. As a product designer, I’m an advocate for the user, and my time as a support specialist, albeit unknowingly, helped prepare me for this career. I use the communication skills I picked up in customer support every day in my design career when working with teammates, collaborating with product partners and presenting to stakeholders.

Even when I got my first design internship with House of van Schneider, I spent a portion of my time working as part of Semplice’s support team, which helped me learn the product quickly while interacting on a daily basis with our users.

We all pick up soft skills in our jobs like time management, critical thinking and the ability to collaborate. These skills are transferable from job to job, and we should view them as the hidden gems that have the potential to differentiate us from others.

Leverage your interests as inspiration

As designers, we’re called to be creative with our solutions, and one way we can do this is by drawing from our personal interests and hobbies — even if those experiences don’t seem immediately relevant to the task at hand.

For example, if you like to collect sneakers as a hobby, that online sneaker shop you browse every day might have an excellent purchase flow that inspires a design solution for your current project. Or you might get inspiration from a particular sneaker colorway when deciding on a color palette for that brand guideline.

It takes practice to recognize and remember these details, interactions and patterns as inspiration, but those ideas are the ones that bring real value to projects. In my experience, creativity stems from taking an idea or piece of knowledge and repurposing it in a new way, almost like recycling an idea.

Your personal perspective is valuable

I saw a tweet today that read, “If you’re only hiring people who think like you, you’re creating an army of robots.” It’s important, especially during these times, to have diversity in your workplace. One reason why a diverse team is more effective is it brings more unique perspectives to the table.

I’ll take an example from a past project of mine where my team was designing a product page for a car model. We were discussing what content to highlight and were going around in circles about what was more important – the number of seats, the in-car technology, the color options?

My teammate made the point that when he was looking for a new car, the first thing he checked for was how much cargo space the car had and if it’d be able to fit his children’s strollers. This colleague was one of few on our design team who actually fit the target demographic we were designing for, and his perspective allowed us to design for a common use case we hadn’t considered. Ultimately, his perspective led to a better experience for our user.

Thankfully accessibility considerations are becoming more of the norm, but it’s still easy for us to prioritize visual aesthetics over visual impairments. Several of my colleagues have some degree of color blindness, and while there are plug-ins and other tools we can use to check accessibility, it’s always useful to get their eyes on a design.

We would be doing ourselves a disservice by ignoring or diminishing the different experiences and circumstances that brought us to where we are today. The more we embrace our backgrounds, the better designers we can be, and the more inclusive we can make our industry.

You can't help but believe in Arrival when you see its philosophy for sustainable transportation. The UK-based company is set to redefine what electric vehicles mean to cities, and hopefully accelerate the future of this important industry.

Arrival designs human-centered solutions for public transport, including electric vehicles that cost the same as fossil fuel equivalents. Everything in the Arrival "ecosystem" is built in the company's micro-factories using a modular system, making production more efficient and fueling local economies at the same time.

But what first draws you to Arrival (at least, as a designer) is the beautiful, futuristic vehicle design. In most cities, mass transportation is not exactly a pleasant or preferred experience. With Arrival's bus designs, they've re-thought every detail of this dinosaur system, from the driver's space to seat design to touchless interactions.

Here I talk to Jeremy Offer, chief design officer at Arrival, about Arrival's design approach and the company's vision for the future of public transport.

Jeremy Offer, CDO at Arrival

Beauty is an important part of function. After reading about the design of Arrival’s products, I take it you agree. Why?

Allowing the function of a product to inform the aesthetics is a big part of our design philosophy. We strip away all adornments and unnecessary detail to allow the function of the product to clearly speak to the user through the language of its form.

It seems like Arrival’s new bus designs were prepared for a post-pandemic world already – or you just moved incredibly fast to adapt. Which was it?

Creating a sense of calm through the use of space, color, materials and light was at the heart of the brief we set ourselves when starting the project. Using sound and smell is also important to create a sense of wellbeing. These are all techniques used in the hospitality industry for a while now (think of the welcoming feel of a well-designed hotel lobby, or your favorite coffee shop), but unheard of in public transport. 

The modular nature of the design means we can adapt quickly – for example, to create alternative seating layouts, providing more personal space for passengers.

Touch-free interactions were also part of the challenge we set ourselves; capacitive proximity sensors on our bell-push, for example, means no one needs to physically touch it.

"The beauty of starting with a blank sheet of paper means we have no legacy."

Having a connected digital product to allow remote activation of certain features also helps us avoid unnecessary touch-points.

The simple, unobstructed nature of the interior means it’s easier to keep clean. All of our seating cantilevers from the wall, which not only gives the interior a visual lightness, but makes it easier for cleaning crews to operate quickly and efficiently.

The things that will help our passengers feel motivated to travel on public transport again, are the very same things we were striving for from the outset.

A big part of Arrival’s approach is its microfactories, allowing you to build efficiently with a modular system, customize vehicles for the market and support regional economies. This is so simple and makes so much sense – why does it feel so revolutionary?

The beauty of starting with a blank sheet of paper means we have no legacy. Vehicles have been produced on linear production lines that are only ever set up to make one thing – cars run on fossil fuels – since Henry Ford’s era. Using a micro-factory model that requires less space and capital investment means we can build vehicles local to each market, and to the volumes required for any specific model. We have the flexibility to manufacture many different variants of body on the same platform. The same micro-factory cell can produce a van one day and a different vehicle the next. By using our proprietary components, materials and manufacturing methods, we can raise the quality of our products, while reducing costs. 

We sat down at the formation of Arrival and asked ourselves fundamental questions: How should a vehicle be manufactured in the 21st century? What should the body be made from? How can we become more vertically integrated and less reliant on tier-one suppliers? How can we design for rapidly changing technology? All of these have led us to create a complete paradigm shift for the industry in the way a vehicle is conceived, designed and manufactured.

"Most of the roadblocks until now have been these long-held beliefs that there is only one way to design, engineer and build a vehicle."

Public transportation hasn’t changed much over the years. Many efforts (with exceptions) to overhaul public transport in the States are slowly killed through politics, budget cuts and technical limitations. Were you met with any regulations and roadblocks at the beginning of Arrival? What about now?

Pretty much all of the companies and transport authorities we speak to are super excited about what we are doing and are willing us to succeed. I think everyone is now on the same page, especially in the wake of Covid… things need to change. Whether it's the air pollution in the cities we live in or the broken service and infrastructure of the public transport systems we currently use, there has to be a better way.

Public transport and buses in particular, sometimes feel like they are only one step removed from the horse and cart: noisy, smelly and dirty. A beautifully designed, clean, electric future is what we are offering. I may be naive, but why would anyone object to that? We are having some promising conversations with cities and see real potential in building infrastructure solutions and seamless mobility services for local communities across the world.

America as a whole, compared to the UK and Europe, is a car culture – not a public transit one. Do you plan to expand to the U.S., and if so, how do you plan on tackling a system so deeply engraved in our culture?

We are already working with a number of partners, including UPS, which are headquartered in the U.S. It’s an important market for us, and we’re currently looking at a few sites for our first micro-factories.

America sure does love its cars, but we’re excited about the huge potential market in the U.S. for commercial vehicles – for example, the U.S. electric bus market is projected to reach $71.9 billion by 2024. More and more states are also committing to sustainable transport options; California recently mandated that all EV trucks sold must be zero-emission by 2045. Last year, we welcomed long-time GM exec Mike Abelson to lead our U.S. team and he’s doing a fantastic job at scoping out our potential growth there.

Public transit is the perfect example of the “we’ve always done it that way” phenomenon, in which outdated, unnecessary conventions and systems are carried down simply for tradition’s sake, or because nobody questions them.

When assessing traditional bus designs (or any other vehicles) did you discover a lot of confusing or unnecessary design decisions that no longer made sense? And on the other hand, were there any traditional design choices that still DO make sense, where there’s a legitimate reason for “always doing it that way?”

You’re right, we were often faced with the same responses to what we are doing: “It can’t be done” or “That’s not how you design a vehicle” etc etc. It may surprise you, but a lot of the dissent came from some of our own engineers in the first year or so. These were people so entrenched in the industry that they couldn’t think laterally about new ways of creating vehicles and systems. Most of the roadblocks until now have been these long-held beliefs that there is only one way to design, engineer and build a vehicle.   

The people that stayed around and have thrived at Arrival are the people who were frustrated by the red-tape and politics of traditional automotive.

We are a technology company at our heart, not an automotive company. We employ talent with a very wide set of differing skills, both from within the automotive sector and beyond – for example, we have over 400 software engineers working on our proprietary end-to-end technology solutions. This enables a cross-fertilization of ideas and allows different patterns for creating products, services and systems to emerge.

We have given our employees the space to think differently and to not feel afraid of failure. I’m proud to say that there are a lot of designers working throughout the company, not just in design. There is something of the questioning nature of a design-trained mind that is particularly suited to our culture.

Right now you’re focused on commercial vehicles. What about personal vehicles? Do you see the low-cost and high efficiency of Arrival’s system eventually translating to that arena?

As you say, we’re currently focused on commercial vehicles – and that’s because we see the most opportunity in this market, particularly with the recent growth of ecommerce. Traditionally, this has been an underserved market that’s dominated by legacy manufacturers. We’re lucky enough to have already signed significant supply agreements with UPS and other partners, so are confident in the unique appeal of our products.

We currently see more consistent demand in the commercial segment than the overall consumer EV market, but our model means we can scale quickly and flexibly to reach new markets. We have a fairly unique blend of industrial designers from some of the world's best consultancies, coupled with automotive designers from more traditional OEM backgrounds, so the design team is well versed in designing technology with the consumer’s end experience in mind. We are well-positioned to design and manufacture personal vehicles in the future.

"Until the industry adopts a ground-up design philosophy to represent the new technology, we will always have one foot in the past."

One limitation I see in our current mass-produced EVs is charging. When buying an electric vehicle you have to purchase/install an expensive charging station, potentially wait hours to charge, hope you’ll find charging stations where you need them on a road trip and, in many cases, have a membership/app for that specific station. The same is true for public transit. To adopt EVs as a city, you need to buy into an entire electric system, not just the vehicles themselves. And a system of charging stations – not to mention the electricity to power a fleet of buses – is expensive.

This is just one example of how our efforts for sustainability and efficiency can only go so far when the larger population isn’t participating.

Public transit is a huge step, but EVs still needs to be more convenient, more affordable, more appealing for everyone. How do you think we get there? And how soon?

Charging infrastructure has been part of the discussions we’re having with national and regional authorities, as well as organizations and customers. One of the reasons that public transport and the logistics industry have been a focus for us, is that they operate in a closed circle. By that, I mean vehicles generally operate the same routes and return to base, to a controlled environment, where the vehicles can be charged, cleaned and maintained before going out the next day. Their mileage is generally known, so doesn't tax the current range limitations, and new legislation adopted by many cities now means that fleets are required to become electric if they want to continue operating.

Costs to operate EV-powered transportation networks will become dramatically cheaper, cleaner and more efficient than their fossil fuel alternatives. Think of the time lost to servicing a fleet of diesel buses!

We need to re-evaluate the manufacturing systems, design and user experience. Most EVs you can buy today still share the same design and manufacturing methods as their diesel and petrol counterparts, I suspect mainly because they are essentially the same vehicles with the engines removed and electric drive-trains shoehorned in. Until the industry adopts a ground-up design philosophy to represent the new technology, we will always have one foot in the past and will never achieve cost parity with existing ICE (internal combustion engine) vehicles.

How soon depends on the speed with which companies – used to producing what are fast-becoming obsolete products – can pivot to a new way of thinking and creating.

Arrival also plans to tackle ride-sharing. What will that look like?

A big part of what we do is software. This is the enabler of fully connected, joined up eco-systems. The hardware we produce is the gateway to these software-enabled services. This is particularly relevant in an end-to-end service like ride-sharing where the user experience is paramount. Connecting hardware platforms with software-enabled services seamlessly is at the heart of a successful ridesharing service.

What is the roadmap (pun intended) for Arrival vehicles and public transit rolling out? How many Arrival vehicles are already on the road and what can we expect in the next five years?

Over the last two years, we’ve been working with the likes of Royal Mail, UPS and DHL to validate our technologies. We are truly vertically integrated having developed all of the layers – from software to production platforms – in house, which is no small feat!

We are now in a position where the pieces are in place, we’ve built up manufacturing capabilities, we have a product that everyone is incredibly excited about, and a strong order book from established companies. We’re confident that we can meet our current production targets over the next five years, and are also in conversations around some public transit opportunities. I don’t have many more details to share on upcoming product announcements at the moment, but stay tuned!

In honor of DESK’s fourth birthday, we’re sharing the top articles of the last year, and our goals for the next one.

Every year when the DESK birthday rolls around, we say “didn’t we just celebrate this a few months ago?” And while the sudden awareness of passed time will shake any human, there’s something great about it too. Because it means up to that point, you were blissfully unaware of it. You were focused on living in it – thinking and doing and being and working.

And this year, our little DESK team did a whole lot of that:

For the first time, we brought on guest writers who explored topics like therapy through design, the art of pricing freelance projects and the concept of designing your life. (If you’re curious about writing for DESK, read our submission guidelines here.)

We continued our partnerships for the second year, working with Adobe to write more useful 3D design tutorials, with Nike to introduce its digital design team, with Instacart to help designers get a job at this rapidly growing company. And we have more partnerships lined up, coming soon. (Want to be one of them? Read here.)

We did interviews with great minds and talents, including this one with Gerald Ghislain about the romance of perfume design, and this one about the beauty of imperfection with Italian sculptor, Massimiliano Pelletti, another featuring the dazzling, immersive art exhibits by teamLab, and several insightful interviews in our Design Around the World series.

We started writing a book about writing – specifically, UX copywriting. Read the series with excerpts from the book so far.

We’ve been working hard on making the DESK website and newsletter an even better experience for you, and for us behind the scenes. More on that soon.

And we published 222 articles. Here are a few of our readers’ favorites from the last year:

1. The Kawaiization of product design

The word "Kawaii” is a prominent part of Japanese culture. In English, it most closely translates to "cute.” In the last year or two, I’ve noticed Kawaii being used as a function in design. And it’s quite fascinating to unpack its benefits and potential repercussions.

Read the article →

2. A love letter to my website

This is a declaration of love for personal websites, written from years of thinking on the subject, reviewing thousands of portfolios, building websites for friends and bookmarking those of strangers. It’s a subject I’m so passionate about, I built my business on it. And recently, it’s become a matter of principle.

This one seemed to resonate with people, even more than we expected.

Read the article →

3. Skeuomorphism is making a comeback

Love it or hate it, Skeuomorphism has returned. Here we dive into the circular nature of trends and where they come from.

Read the article →

4. Your first 3D design tutorial with Adobe Dimension

We’re always happy to see a partner article in our top-read list, because it means the partners we’re choosing resonate with you. This beginner’s 3D design tutorial certainly did this year.

Read the article →

5. The best totally free web fonts & typefaces

Beautiful typefaces are usually an investment, but that doesn't mean you can't find affordable ones. Here we curated 12 lovely typefaces that are completely free to download and use for your projects.

Read the article →

6. Art deco will be the visual language of 2021

Every trend is an answer to the movement preceding it, and minimalism has just about had its run. We are emotional and sentimental beings; we survive on self-expression. We will forever return to what has colored society since humans first walked the earth: art. 

Read the article →

7. My new secret company

Last year, I announced a new venture: Joining Carbonmade.com as partner and co-CEO. We’ve come a long way since this announcement, but it’s still a nice introduction to Carbonmade if you’re curious about using it for your portfolio.

Read the article →

8. The books that changed your life

It started with a tweet asking for books that changed your life or had a massive impact on the way you think. It became a list of 76 books that were mentioned again and again. I’ve read several of these, added many to my queue and revisit this list anytime I need a new read.

Read the article →

9. How to write UX copy that makes your product a joy to use

As part of our UX copywriting series, we show how copywriting can make a product people love using. 

Read the article →

10. The future is here: Our 2020 design trend predictions

It’s interesting to look back on this largely satirical piece and see which “predictions” proved to be accurate. 

Read the article →

___

What happens from here? As always, we want to make DESK even better. And that means writing better: More essays and articles that feel relevant and resonate with you. More thoughtful, honest insights on design that challenge you and us. More celebration of talent, more opening of doors that are typically closed, more curiosity. We want to focus on quality over quantity this year, instead of contributing more noise to your day. We want more guest writers that bring fresh perspectives to DESK, more partners whose products excite us, more interviews that open our minds and challenge our preconceived notions.

We want to do a whole lot more of the stuff that makes us look back a year from now and say “It’s already been another year?” Because, as they say, time flies when you’re having fun.

Our life is an endless feed of opportunities. In search of them, we swipe by them.

We swipe right to find love. We match, and keep swiping. Something slightly better might be just another swipe away.

We save articles and books for later. We never come back to them. A new headline catches our attention first.

We continue swiping, in search of something new and fresh. Something to entertain and surprise us. Only we're not sure what, because as soon as we get it, we realize that wasn't it. There must be something better around the corner, just one more swipe away.

And because there is always more at our fingertips, we keep swiping.

If you read modern fiction, you’ve probably seen one of Adalis Martinez’s book cover designs, or have one your shelf.

Martinez designed covers for bestselling books like Michael Chabon’s “Moonglow” and Lauren Groff’s “Fates and Furies,” among many others. 

While planning an interview with Martinez, we were saddened to learn she recently passed away. Those who knew her describe her as adventurous, generous and hardworking. Even to those of us who didn't know her personally, it's clear she loved what she did.

As readers, we form emotional connections to covers. They can draw us to a book we wouldn’t otherwise read, bring a story to life in a single image and become imprinted on our minds. 

As designers, creating a cover is a dream opportunity. A chance to design something that is printed, held in the hands of countless others, interwoven through pop culture, displayed proudly on a bookshelf or table, wrapped lovingly as a gift. Something that lasts. 

And Adalis Martinez's work will.

A few weeks ago, I posted a tweet, based on another tweet. It wasn't *that* controversial, but enough to get the attention of a couple UX designers (frankly, UX designers are easy to bait). Think of this as an extension of my tweet.

In the tweet I quoted, you can see a person building a little tool based on the GPT-3 AI model (never heard of GPT-3? Start here), which then proceeds to automatically "design" an Instagram looking-app based on his "natural language" description.

Let's not fool ourselves. It's a quick experiment. A proof of concept, nothing more. This plugin alone could hardly replace anything or anyone. But we have to look a bit further than that. AI is still progressing, but it is happening fast enough for us to ask some serious questions.

A big one being: Can AI replace the work of a UX designer?

When I talk to other UX designers about the subject (I'm one myself, just not so religiously attached to the title) I'm met with unwavering confidence that nobody will ever replace their profession.

But I wouldn't be so sure about it. If I can guess, about 80% of what UX designers do today will be automated in the coming 5-10 years. Some designers will be able to adapt just fine, and some will struggle. It's the same thing in most industries, whether we like it or not. We chose the race against technology.

Let’s look at some of the arguments posed in these conversations:

"UX designers can't be automated because the work is creative by nature, and only humans can do it."

Let's be honest here for a second. Yes, this is true for *some* design, but the majority of work that is put out these days is mediocre at best. And I'm not trying to be negative here. Mediocre is what's being asked for.

For example: The majority of apps you see these days work pretty much like any other app. They're all based on Apple's or Google's "Human Interface Guidelines.” They all follow the same best practice UX flows. They all follow the same UI patterns and UX paradigms.

Both UX and UI designers have been working hard to standardize not only patterns and systems, but also libraries and guidelines. In a way, we've been automating ourselves out of our jobs for the last couple years already. It's why you can take a 3-month online course and become a certified UX designer. There's barely any other profession *that* easy to enter.

Giving all these pieces to an AI and letting it figure out the rest seems to be a trivial exercise. There's no question about it.

Of course, true creativity for an AI might be some time away. But true creativity isn't really what's needed for the *majority* of apps or websites these days, at least by the look of it. Most look and work the same anyway. Who are we kidding?

"Yes, but UX design is so much more. It's about user research, empathy and data – only humans can analyze it in a meaningful or effective way."

This is the argument I find the most entertaining because, if there is *anything* that can beat humans with research, pattern recognition and analyzing data, then it is most definitely a machine.

In fact, I'd even argue that an AI can know *a lot* more about human nature than we know about ourselves. If you think about it, we’ve taken this for granted since the advent of computers. Most of our design decisions these days are data-driven. They're rarely "human" driven (although I am still very much a believer in that). But the tech industry has made it a habit to drive every single decision on hard data.

If the data says to do it this way, we do it this way. I would even argue, at most large companies, UX designers do nothing else but designing A/B tests. Throw them against the machine, let the machine decide, and then implement it. UX designers have become glorified servants of the data.

But you know who could design even more A/B tests, and do so even faster and more efficiently? Artificial Intelligence.

"OK Tobias, why are you trying to ruin UX designers?"

I'm not. Nor am I trying to ruin part of my own profession. But I have to look beyond the pretense and be honest with myself. I like to ask questions and see where the answers lead me.

We still don't know exactly what tools we will build to leverage AI in a way that can become "dangerous" for us. Right now, AI is just a thing. It's a playground that can do a lot of things, but nothing really well. But give it five to 10 years and things will look quite different.

I don't expect to have the same job I have now in five years. Things will change, most likely in a direction I least expected. Asking myself uncomfortable questions prepares me to some degree. I expect nothing and everything. I do expect uncertainty.

But what I ask myself is: 

Are we doing ourselves a disservice by settling for mediocre design, just because it seems to "work better?"

Do we really benefit by automating our craft with systems, best practices and guidelines?

If all of our work is only focused on "improving the metrics,” then how could we possibly compete with an AI?

I don't know, but we will find out.

P.S. On a slightly different note, here's a little snippet from a chat I had with the GPT-3 AI. I found it interesting and quite beautiful, in a way. It even made a typo, cute.

Social media has always taught us the more followers we have, the better. The size of our audience defines our perceived importance.

Our platforms and their algorithms have trained us, even cornered us, into this way of thinking. Our measure of success is our continual growth. An unfollow means failure.

And so we've forgotten what is timelessly true: That quality can be more valuable than quantity.

You measure the health of an email list not by how many people are subscribed, but by how many of those people actually open your emails, read them and click through. And social media is no different.

I'd rather have 1,000 engaged followers than 10,000 who ignore, mute or scroll past my writing, even though they're still technically "following" me. That little number at the top of my profile means nothing if my posts fall on deaf ears.

Brands are starting to figure this out, experimenting with "micro-influencers" who have a higher impact on marketing partnerships and sponsored content than those with 3x their followers.

Meanwhile, we individually agonize over our ratio of following to followers, and give our attention to those with a large audience who have nothing meaningful to say to us.

Picture 500 people in a room. It's a laughably small number on social media. But a live audience of 500? It'd be pretty cramped in that room. And what if those 500 people were people who believed in what you do and say, who cared enough to share it with others, who proudly made their association with you known? What if those 500 people had a small but engaged audience of their own, who felt the same way about them as they do about you?

Give just a few people something to believe in, write something that resonates with them, activate them, and they'll be more powerful than ten times that many.

Six years ago, two German designers had an idea. One based in Munich and the other in New York City. And because an idea wasn’t enough for us, we got to work.

Months later, we pressed the launch button. Semplice.com was officially live, ready for business.

That day, our first customer purchased Semplice. He was from France.

Six years later and five versions of Semplice, we’re still here. Still independent. Still doing what we love.

But it’s not just two people anymore, it’s an entire team, spread around the globe. What started as a remote company is to this day a remote company.

“Build with pride” has been our slogan from day one. And while we hope this stands true for every website built with Semplice, today it is even more true for Semplice as a company. 

We’re proud to be able to build Semplice for you, and with you.

On to the next six years!

Tons of advice is shared on the internet every day, yet the best advice is not usually found there.

The pervasiveness of self-help literature proves there is a market for advice. People are eager to know how to do things in the smartest and most efficient way possible, with as few regrets as possible. Makes sense. We only have so long to get it right and humans are, by nature, terribly insecure.

Yet we often waste time seeking advice in the wrong places. We read articles and books that only skim the surface or repeat oversimplified truths we already know. We take a stranger’s contextless Tweet to heart. We search for deeper meaning in Instagram captions. 

While we can still benefit from that approach (clichés and platitudes are perpetuated for a reason), we gain more when we dig deeper:

1. The best advice is usually kept in small circles and not shared broadly. 

Easily accessible advice is likely information you already know. That doesn't mean it's bad advice. But if you're looking for something that changes your perspective or expands your worldview, you'll need to work harder to unlock it.

This type of advice is found within small circles, where trust is established, honesty is assumed and the floor is open. It's here the people with the experience and wisdom you seek feel safe to share it.

2. The best advice is so simple we don't understand its significance yet.

The most spectacular advice is often dressed in plain clothes. At the time, it seems too simple or insignificant to get our attention.  It's the things our parents said to us over and over again, yet we only understand it 30 years later.

3. The best advice is so offensive to you, you don't want to believe it.

The best advice is insulting, uncomfortable and often offensive to our existing belief system. This makes us prone to ignore advice that could benefit us, and it also reinforces point #1.

The best advice remains unshared and limited to small circles of trust. The potential consequences of sharing them widely keeps the best advice within smaller circles.

Designers notoriously don’t know what they want. On one hand, we want everyone to understand, appreciate and practice design. On the other, we’re masters in gatekeeping and protecting our trade.

Over the past ten years, design, as an industry and a craft, has gained the recognition it has always been asking for.

Graphic designers have leveled up from "digital artisans" to leaders of successful tech companies. Design, with a capital D, is about more than how it looks, but how it works.

Companies like Apple put Design on the map by embedding it deeply into their product and marketing strategy. "Designing" a business and product experience was once the differentiator. Now it’s expected.

As more companies adopted this approach, the design industry struggled with its newfound attention.

Design-driven became a hip keyword. It was plastered all over our Keynote presentations, meetings and marketing slogans. But it didn't mean anything. Designers vyed for a seat at the table, but didn’t know what to do when we got it. When we finally had the spotlight on us, we forgot our lines, froze on stage.

Over time, though, we got better. We learned to speak the language of business. We infiltrated the largest companies and started many of our own. We navigated the politics and found that seat at the table – at the head of the table, no less.

In our new world, we have both Design, as a philosophy, and design, the execution. We're both thinkers and creators. Design thinking brought a thoughtful process into every aspect of a business, while design as the craft supported it with the technical implementation.

We finally got what we wanted: The democratization of design. But it hasn't quite looked the way we imagined it to.

The democratization of design came in two phases:

1. Design thinking became the new standard. Today, good design is the expectation. We no longer argue the benefits of design, because they’re a given. Many companies might not understand exactly what design is, or what exactly they need, but they still rush to bring designers to the table as early as possible.

2. The demand for design as a service has grown more than ever. Perhaps this came from a deeper understanding of "design thinking,” or simply because we raised our base standard for aesthetics.

"When we can get someone on Fiverr to design our branding for a hundred bucks, why pay thousands of dollars for an expert to spend five weeks doing it?"

Design is now everywhere. We design systems to make design more approachable and affordable for non-designers. We’ve standardized the “craft” of design with new systems, and a new creative class was born on the groundwork we've been laying for years. We’ve worked to educate everyone in our company, from the engineers, the office manager to the salesperson, to become designers themselves. (Because the whole thing with "design thinking" is that it’s supposed to be everybody's business, right?) Both Design and design are now embraced by everyone – not just designers.

But this is where it gets tricky. Because when everyone's a designer, who's a designer?

Our modern design tools signal this new reality:

Canva is one of the largest graphic design platforms, yet most traditional graphic designers haven't heard about it.

Fiverr (perhaps the truest form of design's democratization) is one of the largest creative market places in existence, but anyone with respect for design doesn't approve of it.

Figma is a free design tool in the browser that enables everyone on every computer in any country to start designing, all barriers removed.

Design Pickle (a regrettable name) is similar to Fiverr but helps you find more dedicated designers at a low monthly cost. It's another way of making design more approachable, more affordable for those who may have considered it a luxury before.

Carbonmade (my own company) is a portfolio platform that makes it dead easy for any creative person to design their own website. It's for people who enjoy and appreciate design, but aren't necessarily designers themselves.

And it’s here we see how the democratization of design is a double-edged sword.

The more people with access to design, the more opportunities for everyone. Yet if everybody has access to design, we're making ourselves obsolete as designers. And while the bar has been raised for good design, we’ve simultaneously lowered the value of it.

When we can get someone on Fiverr to design our branding for a hundred bucks, why pay thousands of dollars for an expert to spend five weeks doing it? Why invest the time, money and effort in becoming the best at your craft?

Yet herein lies the beauty as well.

Before we had a 1,000 companies that wanted design, and only 100 who could afford it. Now we have 1 million companies that want design, and 800,000 who can afford it. And there are hordes of designers who want the job.

As we've found a seat at the table, the table has grown. There's still room for everyone; the client who hires on Fiverr or uses Canva isn't going to hire you anyway. And that Fiverr project is their entry point to design. Ultimately they will level up and hire you, but they never would have done it without getting a taste of it somewhere else first.

The democratization of design is threatening only to those who stand still. But it is beautiful for the rest of us who keep pushing forward.

I never thought I’d say this, but lately I’ve been enjoying LinkedIn.

Designers have historically scoffed at LinkedIn. I steered clear of it for the same reason I avoid conferences and networking events: I figured anyone there was the stuffy corporate type, trading business cards and buzzwords in ill-fitting suits.

And maybe that was true for a time. But recently, it’s changed.

Just look at the comments sections on LinkedIn posts, where most conversations take place. Compared to every other social network, I see fewer pile-ons or one-upping. I see less posturing and performing. A refreshing absence of long, rabid rants. Zero trolls or bots. It is, somehow, pure.

With exceptions, LinkedIn is starting to feel like Twitter did ten years ago. People aren’t trying so hard. They seem less jaded, more positive. They’re surprisingly engaged.

In 2020, LinkedIn has become the most wholesome social network.

In the early days of Twitter, we didn’t take ourselves so seriously. We were curious, we tried to be funny, and we didn’t worry so much about how we’d be perceived. We just shared what was on our minds, however trivial it may have been.

Scroll deep to someone’s timeline from say, 2009, and you’ll find one-liners like, “Just made some bomb tacos.” Now we’ve gotta have a punchline and get 30k retweets, or we’ve failed. We’d better make our stance known on political issues, or we’re doing it wrong. If I see two people on Twitter today having a positive, genuine one-on-one conversation, it feels almost embarrassing. Twitter’s not the place for sincerity. It’s a place to loudly state your opinion or promote your brand.

LinkedIn today has the innocence I miss from the early days of social media. Perhaps it’s because the platform is still fairly limited. It’s not as easy to jump into a conversation you have no place jumping into. Most of us are “connected” with a relatively small circle of people within a fairly closed-in network. I don’t sense an overreaching algorithm fucking with my sense of time and reality, or intrusive ads disrupting my feed.

Which is not to say it’s perfect. The UI is dismal, and I completely ignore notifications and “recent” posts, which read like spam whether they are or not. I often post my articles and peace out, engaging only when someone chooses to engage with me. Yet I keep coming back.

Maybe we’re all looking for an escape from the negativity of Twitter and the mindlessness of Instagram. Maybe LinkedIn HQ will catch on and learn how to take advantage of its users’ information, maximize engagement and become another platform we hate ourselves for using. Maybe the trolls will discover this little hidden gem and destroy it. We’ll see, and probably soon.

Until then, I look forward to connecting with you.