INDUSTRIAL DESIGN: twenty years in and I still believe the work matters

Not in the abstract way. In a specific way. The way a product feels in someone's hand at 2am when they need it to work and it does. The way a well-designed experience makes a person feel competent instead of confused. The way a founder's original vision survives the process intact and ships looking like the thing everyone signed off on believing in.

For two decades I have watched design get talked about more and practiced less. I have watched companies say they are design-led while quietly treating it as the last thing that gets funded and the first thing that gets cut. I have watched brilliant designers compromise their best work into something unrecognizable and then die inside when it underperforms.

I started posting here because I needed somewhere to say the things about this work that do not usually get said out loud. Last week over 10,000 of you decided to follow along. That is not lost on me. And I’m grateful for every one of you.

If you are a designer who has ever felt like the room stopped listening before you finished the sentence, I am talking for you. If you are building something and you are starting to feel the gap between what you imagined and what the process is turning it into, this is for you too.

The work still matters. Let's keep talking about it.

To bold ideas and well-crafted things, Blair Hasty