3 ms·

We are in a design bubble (we have been for a few years now). There are way more designers than there is meaningful design work to do, and they need to justify

by GuiA 8y ago

We are in a design bubble (we have been for a few years now). There are way more designers than there is meaningful design work to do, and they need to justify their existence and paycheck. Hence all your favorite companies doing complete, yet more often than not misguided, redesigns every other year. (I am currently employed as a designer)

losteric 8y ago
Some bad managers outright encourage unnecessary redesigns. It's a lot easier and often cheaper to change the product's skin than lead a dysfunctional dev team through fixing crippling tech debt or adding meaningful new features.
JumpCrisscross 8y ago
As a former Mozilla donor, I think this blog post communicates “we have more money than we know what to do with.”
- dralley 8y ago
  Donations to Mozilla don't (probably can't, legally) go to Firefox development. Mozilla Foundation is a charity, Mozilla Corporation is a for-profit enterprise. Money can flow from the Corp to the Foundation but not in reverse.
  - virtualized 8y ago
    So if you give money to the Foundation, the Corporation has to give less to the Foundation to keep it funded. You could as well have given money directly to the Corporation.
    - Fnoord 8y ago
      Depends on if the Foundation is tax deductible (501c in USA?).
NeedMoreTea 8y ago
I have a theory that we're almost always in a design bubble. Look back in the history of most major brands, icons and trademarks and the ones that most people would consider classic all seem to come from two or three distinct eras. The rest can be viewed as "what the hell were they thinking/smoking?", cargo culting the current fashion and much jumping on bandwagons.
- GuiA 8y ago
  Looking at tech, designers have held very little power historically. Examples are few and far between, with Apple being the most notable outlier. Old Apple did not change the status quo much - it was a golden child for less than a decade after all - the 80s and 90s saw very little tech companies where designers were calling the shots. Only when New Apple rose from the ashes did tech start to deeply prioritize value design. Nowadays, many startups have design cofounders, major companies like Airbnb or Dropbox regularly and prominently show the influence of their design teams, and so on. It definitely feels like an overcorrection right now - many designers will surely be amongst the first to go in the next recession. (As far as fields other than tech, they’re all completely different stories regarding their relationship to visual design)
  - ksec 8y ago
    Design it how it works, not how it looks. That is the biggest problem with the current "designer" bubble.

by GuiA 8y ago

losteric 8y ago

Some bad managers outright encourage unnecessary redesigns. It's a lot easier and often cheaper to change the product's skin than lead a dysfunctional dev team through fixing crippling tech debt or adding meaningful new features.

JumpCrisscross 8y ago

As a former Mozilla donor, I think this blog post communicates “we have more money than we know what to do with.”

dralley 8y ago
Donations to Mozilla don't (probably can't, legally) go to Firefox development. Mozilla Foundation is a charity, Mozilla Corporation is a for-profit enterprise. Money can flow from the Corp to the Foundation but not in reverse.
- virtualized 8y ago
  So if you give money to the Foundation, the Corporation has to give less to the Foundation to keep it funded. You could as well have given money directly to the Corporation.
  - Fnoord 8y ago
    Depends on if the Foundation is tax deductible (501c in USA?).

NeedMoreTea 8y ago

I have a theory that we're almost always in a design bubble. Look back in the history of most major brands, icons and trademarks and the ones that most people would consider classic all seem to come from two or three distinct eras. The rest can be viewed as "what the hell were they thinking/smoking?", cargo culting the current fashion and much jumping on bandwagons.

GuiA 8y ago
Looking at tech, designers have held very little power historically. Examples are few and far between, with Apple being the most notable outlier. Old Apple did not change the status quo much - it was a golden child for less than a decade after all - the 80s and 90s saw very little tech companies where designers were calling the shots. Only when New Apple rose from the ashes did tech start to deeply prioritize value design. Nowadays, many startups have design cofounders, major companies like Airbnb or Dropbox regularly and prominently show the influence of their design teams, and so on. It definitely feels like an overcorrection right now - many designers will surely be amongst the first to go in the next recession. (As far as fields other than tech, they’re all completely different stories regarding their relationship to visual design)
- ksec 8y ago
  Design it how it works, not how it looks. That is the biggest problem with the current "designer" bubble.