Did I Lose My Identity? // What Survives E04
Notas do episódio
Somebody tells me the thing we shipped is amazing, and a voice in my head says I didn’t make it. In episode four, I take on Chris’s question: did I lose my identity as a designer? I dig into the craft I lost, the career unease it exposed, and where I’ve landed for now.
If AI builds what you describe and everybody calls it amazing, who actually designed it?
A while back, Chris sent me a DM that kicked off this entire season: did I lose my identity as a designer? I’ve been putting off a real answer for three episodes, and this one is where I finally stop dodging. I start with what I was most proud of, which for me was prototypes. I’m talking Axure-level, way-more-than-the-project-needed prototypes, and later, Figma files pushed so far past their limits that I’d burn days on them. That skill didn’t fade. The place it lived just doesn’t exist anymore. And with it goes the design file itself, the one artifact that held our uncompromised vision, which raises a question I don’t have a clean answer to yet: what does a portfolio even look like now?
The question also hit harder than I expected, and in this episode I get honest about why. Losing Figma pulled the covers off something that was already sore: years of low-grade career unease, two layoffs, a cross-country move, and a household where both incomes ride the same tech cycles. That’s how my buddy Kevin the plumber, a little New Orleans-style beignet window, and Peter Gibbons from Office Space all end up in this conversation.
Then I go back to that hollow compliment and put the bigger question on the table. Is a designer the hand that makes the thing, or the person who directs it? If the robot draws now and I direct, I might be sitting in the art director’s chair that designers spent whole careers complaining about. I’ll tell you where I’ve landed for now, and why it sets up a harder question for the rest of the season. If Chris’s question has been rattling around in your head too, give this one a listen.
Topics:
- 00:00 - When a compliment on your work feels hollow
- 03:00 - Why Axure prototypes felt like a superpower
- 04:15 - The skill didn’t fade, its home disappeared
- 05:15 - Why the design file felt more like ours
- 06:25 - What does a portfolio look like now?
- 07:15 - Layoffs and the mark they leave
- 08:50 - What Kevin the plumber has that designers don’t
- 10:05 - The beignet window fantasy
- 10:40 - Why Peter Gibbons had it figured out
- 12:55 - Same tool, different outcomes
- 13:15 - Is a designer the hand or the direction?
- 13:45 - Designers in the art director’s seat
- 15:05 - Did I lose my identity? My truest answer
- 16:10 - The market doesn’t care about identity
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