Many wild events have happened in Draft’s history, and you could conceivably pick a few to qualify as the wildest. My consistent pick for the wildest happened in 2023, when design began the deepest winter in the industry’s whole history while we also had our second-best year ever.
Four things happened all at once:
- We came to a global consciousness that design is a form of leveraged power, and those in power took it from us.
- People in power wanted everything to happen faster, and since design frequently slows things down, design got cut.
- Other tools appeared that appeared to make design more efficient to those in power. Whether or not this is true remains an open debate, but I think nobody is debating that people in power think the tools make design more efficient.
- Global fascism, which has caused numerous tech workers to go on strike from the industry.
None of which are great! But again, we also had our second-best year ever – because prospective clients recognized the value of our work, and decided to take a chance on us.
So let’s assume you’re a designer, and you want your career to survive. What is happening in response?
- More designers are embracing value-based work. Through the direct creation of economic value, and through connecting one’s job to the fair measurement of that value, more people are surviving.
- More designers are embracing generalist work. Since design is a question of power dynamics above all other concerns, designers now need to expand their practices to embrace a holistic plan of value creation. Put another way, designers are not only coding. They are also measuring, experimenting, and working on the messy human questions of strategy & governance.
- And finally, more designers are shifting into operational work. The growth of “product” as a discipline shows this, as product managers are largely making design decisions. The same with design systems, which are largely matters of governance & prioritization.
We’ve chosen to omit any irrelevant discussion of change in job titles, since it’s all just design at the end of the day.
Anyway, as a result of all of this, today we’re offering some focusing questions for you to consider as we get through the current design winter:
- Why do people buy design now that everything can look sort of good?
- In what specific ways will my work create economic value?
- What else can I do that is not design work that will help my work become understood and shipped?
- What is the minimum level of power that I am willing to accept in my job?
My strong suspicion is that the current winter is not “permanent,” but it will create transformations that are lasting enough to render our industry unrecognizable in the long term. Put another way, demand for design may recover over time, but that will come only because designers themselves adapted, and not because the industry came back to meet us.