Jake Morrison

Whenever a new design to code tool comes around, people get excited. It’s considered the holy grail of design. You can now design with code. This is the final evolution. But I don’t agree. It’s only the holy grail if you value output higher than the process of design. Whenever a designer becomes more of a builder, some idealism and creativity dies. Not because building is bad, but because you start out including constraints earlier in the process than they should. I’m one that very much thinks design is ultimately what is shipped. But before it shipped, there is a lot of stages that don’t benefit from code or some implementation constraints. In architecture, a lot of the best work is started with sketches and some of the best architects still draw by hand. People forget that the creative process is not about tools. It’s about forming a vision, and then translating that vision into some form. You can use various tools as part of the process, but designers job is really communicating that vision. Once you become the architect and the builder, or the designer and the developer, you start making more conservative bets. You gravitate to what you already know is feasible or supported. You make smaller iterations. You stop dreaming something big. This is not design. Designers, don’t do that. Your job is to imagine the future, and sometimes code and convention gets in the way. Use tools. Understand the domain. Get close to the medium. But don’t lose your greatest strength ability to dream. Work with engineers to realize those dreams. Designing in code is just a path to local maxima and ruin.