Why designers are more important than ever.

2026 Day 165. #TechDays. #BusinessDays.

Good Design has never been easier. The definition of good design has suddenly changed for people. Prototyping, asset generation, etc. have become so much easier and quicker that everyone has more access to more design elements. LLMs have gotten much better at generation and design so developing front-ends that would have required weeks has come to days if not hours.

Working with AI has a lot of advantages for everyone. Software engineering and development remained almost something magical for most people. It was easy to get started but hard to build something real.

Tools like Figma gave creative people who had little knowledge of coding, but were excellent designers. They could now create beautiful designs and it was up to capabilities of a the developer to make it a reality. With Figma plugins, it is almost a single click process in translating design into code.

With LLMs the iterative process of designing and refinement has gotten so much quicker and easier that the majority of people think they can now do it themselves.

It is following the path of AI based writing, everyone is writing and the AI slop is incorrigible. It has definitely gotten a little less obvious than before but there are still signs you can look out for.

The idea with good design has reached the same limits. AI by itself can create beautiful layouts, combining two or more fonts, the brand colour palette, and some basic animations.

You can get a slightly less generic design if you are able to prompt better and smarter. I have written multiple blogs about prompt engineering and how to get the most out of your LLM. These will help set apart your vibe-coded designs but there will still be the hidden element of AI generated design.

Take a look at two websites that I have recently worked on.

https://apnatva.dev — designed by me, generated by me and Codex. I have meticulously planned every detail on here for mobiles, tablets, and desktops, to make sure that the experience is seamless and smooth. The colours were chosen after much deliberation and with inputs from ChatGPT. The animation play out as you scroll and you can find that while this website is not the greatest for conversions (I did not intend it to be), it is something different. People can argue over the subjectiveness of the design, but nevertheless, it is something different and dare I say original.

https://brownsmithdynamics.com — designed and generated almost entirely by Codex. I set the premise of what I wanted, what I wanted the service sections to look like, the hero and contact sections were left mostly up to Good Design principles popularised by various conversion gurus. As you scroll through this, you will see the difference in animations, overall design, the frequency of CTA buttons, and the overall simpleness of the animations.

My personal take on the whole situation is very simple. Good design is obviously one that converts and gets results. There is nothing more important than web pages doing the one thing that they were built for — whether it was generating sales, getting inquiries, or anything else.

Hence we need people who understand the ideas of clicks, easy navigation, placements of buttons and CTAs, responsive design, to inculcate these on the basic designs that AI do generate. They are fairly attractive, and if they can be adjusted to be facilitate conversion, it can be extremely useful.

Web design is also a medium of art itself. LLMs have given designer the ease of freedom to try things out. The more successful ones get duplicated but that is the way of life. AI is supporting the good design ideas by making them easier to be replicated.

At the same time AI is eating into the business of web developers. They now must compete with designers turned developers while justifying the costs that they currently charge. It has become a difficult game because of the disruptive change AI has brought in. This will however, settle down once people adopt AI and learn to make the best use of it.

Until then, good designers can outpace good developers. To stand out, you do not need a responsive website, but one that stays in people’s mind. Designers are up to the task, but not all developers can.

Choose your website designer carefully.

See you tomorrow.