To be a designer in the age of AI

I'm a designer. I've designed my whole life. I made signatures in forums when I was 12 years old, and coded a Dragon Ball themed fan website in Notepad.

I've always cared a lot about how things work, and made sure to coordinate with engineers about implementation, to make sure the final product aligns as closely to the vision as possible.

Before I designed software, I was an architect. The same ethos applies — design, coordinate with engineers, pray the clients don't cut what makes the building special, and that the final output represents the vision.

Suddenly, it's 2026, and I've woken up in a world that seems like before, but where the gap between what I can imagine and what I can make is evaporating.

This website was entirely vibe-coded. I didn't look at a single line of code — yet it's performant, built to modern NextJS standards with Tailwind, has a Postgres database and custom CMS.

It is the fifth project I've vibe-coded. Each is faster, more reliable in its exactitude.

What has become possible with Claude 4.5 Opus is nothing short of a revolution, the first model where I actually feel like consistent progress with minor or no regressions is possible.

I'm not a hype-man, I don't buy into trends easily although I do explore them deeply. The democratisation and ubiquity of being able to craft, with few limits, anything that can be imagined, in the digital frontier, is going to fundamentally alter our society.

It will give anyone with an idea absolutely every opportunity to actually build it, from their phone if need be. The only thing that will matter is the idea and holistic execution.

I'll be writing, building and sharing a lot more as time goes on. I'll probably set up a newsletter so readers can follow my design engineering tribulations.

I don't think the title designer is quite accurate anymore, since the vision and execution is being relentlessly merged. I have begun and will not stop shipping software.