I remember a time when design was real magic. A time when you could feel that someone with passion, vision, and unbridled creativity was behind a product, and you as a designer were the one with the creativity and skills to create something distinctive. Something no one else could think of, that gave you a feeling of excitement and made real impact. Think of the first iPhone, the early Apple computers, or those moments when you visited a website and thought: “Wow, how did they come up with this?”
But somewhere along the way, we lost that magic. Design changed from an art form into factory work. From custom craftsmanship into mass production. And it’s time we have that conversation.
Has Design Become Assembly Line Work?
Let’s be honest: when was the last time you saw a website that really made you stop and think, or when was the last time you used an app where you thought: “This is different, this is special, this is authentic”?
The answer might well be: too long ago. And it’s not because there’s less talent. It’s because we’ve traded creativity for predictability.
A good example of this is design systems — you see them everywhere. And yes, I understand why. They’re efficient, they ensure consistency, they make teams’ lives easier. But somewhere in that pursuit of efficiency, we forgot why we started designing in the first place.
Why did I ever start with design? To solve problems. To touch people. To create experiences that people remember.
Design systems have taught us to color within the lines, that consistency is important, and that this way we can collaborate well and efficiently with developers. But the most beautiful products and solutions emerge precisely when we dare to go outside those lines. When we dare to experiment, to fail, and to start over, to challenge each other and have the will to create something unique and distinctive.
The MVP myth
And then we haven’t even talked about the biggest culprit: the abused MVP concept. MVP — Minimum Viable Product — was once intended as a way to learn and iterate quickly. But it has devolved into an excuse for minimum effort, maximum corners cut.
“It’s just an MVP,” we hear more and more often. As if that’s a free pass to deliver half work. As if it’s an excuse not to pay attention to details, to feeling, to those small things that lift a product from good to great.
But here’s the thing: a real MVP isn’t less design — it’s more focused design. It’s about packaging the essence of your idea as purely as possible. Steve Jobs understood this like no other. The first iPhone was in many ways an MVP — no copy-paste, no multitasking, no app store. But what was there was so perfectly executed that it turned the entire industry upside down.
Cost vs. Quality: The False Dilemma
We live in a time when everything revolves around ROI, conversion rates, and budget optimization. At the same time, companies do expect top results, conversion, and happy customers. And I get that. Companies need to make profit. Projects have budgets. Deadlines exist. But somewhere we decided that quality and cost are inherently opposed to each other. That you can’t invest time and money in design because it’s ‘not measurable’.
This mindset isn’t just wrong — it’s destructive. I’m always reminded of Simon Sinek’s quote: “People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it.”
When you see design as a cost factor, you completely miss the point. Design isn’t a cost item — it’s an investment in the soul of your product. It’s what ensures that people don’t just use your product, but also love it.
A few years ago I watched the making-of Frozen 2, and one moment has always stayed with me. The team had worked for months on an explanation for the mysterious voice that Elsa hears. After endless brainstorms and compromises, they finally had a scene that ‘worked’ — rational, logical, making sense on paper.
But when they showed it to the test audience? The result was ‘meh’… But completely void of emotion, connection and magic.
At that moment, Disney faced a choice that many companies would avoid: accepting that ‘good enough’ isn’t good enough. Despite millions in production costs and a tight deadline, they threw away a quarter of their storyline and started over.
Why? Because they knew their audience deserved more than a technically correct but emotionally empty solution. They didn’t ask: “Is this cost-effective?” They asked: “Does this hit the right chord? Does this create the emotion we want to convey? Does this make the story better?”
Design isn’t the sum of functionalities
In today’s design world, we’ve developed a dangerous habit to see design as a collection of features and then think that’s what the end user should be satisfied with. A checklist of functionalities that we need to check off.
But design isn’t mathematics. You can’t just do function A + function B + function C and expect to get something magical. Design is alchemy. It’s about how all those elements come together, how they interact with each other, how they feel in the overall picture.
Steve Jobs talked about this constantly. He spoke about the “soul” of a product. About how all the parts together create something that’s greater than the sum of the parts. That’s what we’ve lost in our obsession with components and design tokens.
An iPhone is more than a phone with a touchscreen. A Tesla is more than a car with an electric motor. A good website is more than a collection of pages with content. It’s about the experience. About how it feels. About what it does to you and represents. That’s how loyalty and appreciation for brands is created among your visitors and customers.
Back to the essence of design
I want to get back to the magic, but how do we get there? How do we make design an art form again instead of factory work? It starts with courage. Courage to say no to the easy solution. Courage to invest in quality, even when the ROI isn’t immediately measurable. Courage to experiment, to fail, and to start over.
It starts with understanding that design isn’t about how something looks — it’s about how it works, how it feels, and what it does to people. We need to stop seeing design as a cost item and start seeing it as what it really is: the soul of your product.
Design like Disney
What if we approached design the way Disney makes films. Every decision based on one question: “Does this make the experience better?”
Not: “Is this cost-effective?”
Not: “Does this fit our design system?”
Not: “Can we implement this technically?”
But: “Does this make the experience better?”
Of course we need to consider costs and technical limitations — no one has endless budgets and that’s not necessary either. But this can’t be the driving force behind our design decisions. They should be constraints within which we seek the best possible solution.
Every client and end user deserves a piece of magic
Design must once again be about creating experiences that move people. About solving real problems in a way that inspires people. About creating magic and authenticity instead of checking boxes.
It’s time we make design design again. No factory work, no mass production, no compromises for the wrong reasons. As designers, it’s our responsibility to choose courage again, vision, the difficult questions, and the conviction that quality is non-negotiable and design is the key to great products.
Because ultimately, it’s not about the tools we use or the systems we build. It’s about the people on the other side of the screen. And they deserve better than standard and okay-ish. They deserve magic.
Let’s bring that magic back. Let’s make design design again.
~ Born from passion for real design ~
Also published on Medium