Why we never hired a designer

Part 1: A lone design generalist

A brief history of design generalists

A few decades ago, every visual designer’s dream job was in advertising — a field where creativity and a good salary converged. However, by the late 2000s, it started to feel like everything possible in 2D design had already been explored. The work often became nothing more than a rehash of previous ads or at best recycled concepts borrowed from old graphic design school projects.

It almost felt like the end of creativity.

Of course, it wasn’t quite that dramatic — creativity was still thriving; it just required a more focused and specialised approach. Hence for many of us designer-generalists, it was time to leave print and advertising to the graphic design specialists and move on to younger, less explored fields of web and digital product design, where we could once again feel like pioneers.

Fast-forward to the present day, and the story seems to be repeating itself. Just as the standardisation of brands through corporate brand guidelines once signalled the end of exploration in advertising agencies, the standardisation of user interfaces through unified patterns and design systems now marks a similar trend in digital product design.

And there’s nothing inherently wrong with standardisation — it’s a natural progression in any emerging field, moving from chaos to order. After all, people like order.

Why we never hired another designer

After hiring our first designer — who, of course, was a generalist — we found ourselves in a curious position:

Some days, it felt like we needed more designers, but on other days, we couldn’t quite justify why.

I like to believe that being a designer is, above all, an explorative calling. We thrive on discovering new, unmarked challenges and constantly seek out “unknown unknowns.” But once all those previously unknown questions are answered and solutions are in place, the role of the designer often loses its soul. It becomes more about following the patterns and standards we worked so…