Back in 2005, I wrote my first book—and learned the hard way why traditional publishing isn’t for everyone. The book, one of the first on CSS design, was published with Apress and turned out well, but the experience of working with the publisher was anything but fun.
Martial arts often distinguish between “hard” and “soft” styles. Hard styles focus on direct, powerful strikes—punches and kicks designed to break through an opponent’s defences through sheer force. This is the approach many design leaders take when "battling" their organisations for greater influence, hoping to raise design's impact by pushing hard for recognition. While understandable, this forceful, head-on approach can be counterproductive, especially when designers face opponents with more authority or entrenched interests.
Peter Merholz recently published a thought-provoking article suggesting that “Product Management is UX Design.” While this may hold in certain contexts, I believe it’s largely meant to spark debate rather than capture a broad truth.
Designers often look to design maturity models as benchmarks, comparing their own companies to idealised industry standards and thinking, “We’re so behind!” This can spark a drive to “improve” the company’s design maturity, which often translates into attempts to “educate” leadership on what they’re doing “wrong” or how the organisation can “catch up.” But is maturity really the most useful framework here? Or might labelling a company as “immature” potentially miss the point? 🤔
When we think about designers, two main characteristics often come to mind: craft skills and taste. Craft skills are the technical abilities that allow designers to manipulate tools—whether physical, like pen and paper in the early days, or digital design software like Photoshop and Figma today—to create their desired output. Taste, on the other hand, is the ability to perceive and refine quality in design, guiding the look and feel of an output toward something that feels refined and cohesive.
Successful founders need to have a high degree of confidence in their chosen concept. As such, when founders fail to get investment, they’ll often walk away from a VC meeting thinking, “They just didn’t get my idea.” While this might be true, there are a whole host of other reasons why a VC might pass. Many first-time founders assume it's always about the idea—when often it’s much more about execution, the team, and the market. Understanding these reasons in advance can help you avoid the most common pitfalls and allow you to approach your next pitch with confidence.