Every great design has one organizing detail that unlocks everything else, and the best design leaders never stop looking for it. Every good piece of design has at least one detail that is the “key” to unlocking an understanding of how it works. Good designers will notice that detail right away, while most people will respond to it subconsciously, sometimes never recognizing it for what it is or what it does. These key details are the organizing principles that make everything else possible. They’re rarely the most obvious elements — not the largest headline or the brightest color — but rather the subtle choices that create hierarchy, guide attention, and establish the invisible structure that holds a design together. Sometimes those key details fall into place right away; they may be essential components of how an idea takes its form, or how function shapes a thing. But just as often, these keys are discovered as a designer works through iterations with extremely subtle differences. Sometimes moving elements around in a layout, perhaps even by a matter of pixels, enables a key to do its work, if not reveal itself entirely. Without these organizing details, even technically proficient design falls flat. Elements feel arbitrary rather than purposeful. Visual hierarchy becomes muddy. The viewer’s eye wanders without direction. What separates good design from mediocre design is often nothing more than recognizing which detail needs to be the key — and having the skill to execute it properly and the discipline to clear its path. Seeing the Key in Action Recently, a designer on my team and I reviewed layouts for a series of advertisements in a digital campaign. We’ve enjoyed working with this particular client — an industrial design firm specializing in audio equipment — because their design team is sophisticated and their high standards not only challenge us, but inspire us. (It may seem counter-intuitive, but it’s easier to produce good design for good designers. When your client understands what you do, they may push you harder, but they’ll also know what you need in order to deliver what they want.) The designer had produced a set of ads that visually articulated the idea of choice — an essential psychological element for the customer profile of high-end audio technology — in a simple and elegant way. Two arrows ran in parallel until they diverged, curving in different directions. They bisected the ad space asymmetrically, with one arrow rendered in color veering off toward the left and the other, rendered in white, passing it before turning toward the right. This white arrow was the key. It overpowered the bold, colored arrow by pushing further into the ad space, while creating a clear arc that drew the eye down toward the ad’s copy and call to action. It’s a perfect example of old-school graphic design; it will do its work without being understood by most viewers, but its function is unmistakable once you see it. In reviewing this piece, I saw the key right away. I saw how it worked — what it unlocked. And I also recognized that the designer who made it saw it, too. I could tell based upon his choices of color, the way he positioned the arrows — the only shapes, other than text, in the entire ad — and even the way he had used the curve radius to subtly reference the distinct, skewed and rotated “o” in the brand’s logotype. This kind of sophisticated thinking, where every element serves multiple purposes and connects to larger brand systems, separates competent design from exceptional design. The white arrow wasn’t just directing attention; it was reinforcing brand identity and creating a sense of forward momentum that aligned with the client’s messaging about innovation and choice. The Maturity Trap I’ve often heard it said that as a designer’s career matures, the distance between their responsibility and functional details grows — that design leadership is wielded in service of the “big picture,” unencumbered by the travails of implementation so that it can maintain a purity of service to ideas and strategy. I couldn’t disagree with this more. While it’s true that senior designers must think strategically and guide teams rather than execute every detail personally, this doesn’t mean they should lose touch with the craft itself. The ability to recognize and create key details doesn’t become less important as careers advance — it becomes more crucial for developing teams and ensuring quality across projects. A design director who can’t spot the organizing principle in a layout, or who dismisses pixel-level adjustments as beneath their concern, has lost touch with the foundation of what makes design work. They may be able to talk about brand strategy and user experience in broad strokes, but they can’t guide their teams toward the specific choices that will make those strategies successful. No Big Picture Without Details My perspective is that no idea can be meaningful without being synchronized with reality — as informed by it as it is influential upon it. There is no “big picture” without detail. The grandest strategic vision fails when it’s not supported by countless small decisions made with precision and purpose. No matter how one’s career matures, a designer must at least retain access to the details, if not a regular, direct experience of them. This doesn’t mean micromanaging or doing work that others should be doing. It means maintaining the ability to see how abstract concepts become concrete solutions, to recognize when something is working and when it isn’t, and to guide others toward the key details that will make their work succeed. Without that connection to craft, we become blind to the keys at work — we lock ourselves out of an understanding of the work that could help us develop our teams or ourselves. We lose the ability to distinguish between design that looks impressive and design that actually functions. We can no longer teach what we once knew. The best design leaders I’ve known maintain a hand in the craft throughout their careers. They may delegate execution, but they never lose their eye for the detail that makes everything else work. They understand that leadership in design isn’t about rising above the details — it’s about seeing them more clearly and helping others see them too. Great design has always been about the details. The only thing that changes as we advance in our careers is our responsibility for ensuring those details exist in the work of others. That’s a responsibility we can only fulfill if we never stop looking for the keys ourselves.

What we lost when everything became a phone, and when the phone became everything. In 2001, I took a train from Providence to Detroit. What should have been a 12-hour journey stretched into 34 when we got caught in a Buffalo blizzard. As the train sat buried in rapidly accumulating snow, bathrooms failed, food ran out, and passengers struggled to cope with their containment. I had taken along my minidisc player and just three discs, assuming I’d spend most of the trip sleeping. With nothing else to do but stay put in my seat, I got to know those three albums very, very well. I’ve maintained a relationship with them with format fluidity. Over the course of my life, I’ve had copies of them on cassette tape, originals on compact disc, more copies on MiniDisc, purchased (and pirated) .mp3, .wav, and .flac files, and access through a dozen different streaming services. Regardless of how I listen to them, I am still transported back to that snow-bound train. After nearly twenty-five years, I have come to assume that this effect would be permanent. But I never expected it to intensify — in a sudden feeling of full return to the body of my youth — like it did when I dug out my old MiniDisc player, recharged its battery, and pressed play on the very same discs I held back in 2001. The momentary flash of being back on that train, of the raw exhilaration of the cold and of being alone in it, of reinhabiting a young mind still reeling from what was formative, culture-wide shock on September 11th — it all came back. This was truly a blast from the past. In some ways, I am simply describing true nostalgia. I had a sense of return, and a mix of pleasure and pain. But unlike other times, when simply replaying some music would trigger recall, this was as if the physical objects — the player and discs themselves — contained the original moment, and turning it on and pressing play released it back into my mind. To the Everything Machine and back When Steve Jobs unveiled the first iPhone, he presented it as three essential devices in one: “an iPod, a phone, and an internet communicator.” The audience cheered at each revelation. Of course they did — who wouldn’t want to carry one device instead of three? For a citizen of the early aughts, a single, “everything machine” was the dream. The consolidation seemed like an obvious win for convenience, for progress, for the future itself. Nearly twenty years later, we can see that this convergence did more than just empty our pockets of multiple devices. It fundamentally transformed our relationship with technology and information. Today’s iPhone isn’t just a unified tool for known purposes; it has become Marshall McLuhan’s medium-as-message, reshaping not just how we do things but what we choose to do and think about, what we know and want to know, what we believe and are. I doubt even Steve Jobs, a man capable of grandiosity to the extreme, could have imagined the epistemological and ontological effects of the iPhone. This realization has been progressive. Books, films, music, and a near constant conversation have been the public reckoning with the everything machine. We grapple with our newly acquired digital addiction in as many ways as it manifests. We do everything we can to counter the everything machine. One thing I have done, mostly out of curiosity, is to go back to the single-function devices I have accumulated over the years. Some of them have been put away, turned-off for longer than they were ever out an don. Simply turning them back on has been illuminating. Each one has reactivated a memory. Each one has reminded me of what it was like to use it for the first time, back at the time at which it was the latest and greatest — when it hinted at a world to come as much as it achieved something its present required. What started as a backward-looking survey of sorts — sifting through a catalog of dusty devices and once-murky memories — revealed something unexpected: Not only did these older, limited devices create a different kind of relationship with technology, catalyzing imagination rather than just consuming attention, there is still a place for them today. For context, here’s a list of the more interesting devices I have in what is a small, personal museum of technology: A partial catalog of my personal device library Device Media Year Nintendo GameBoy Video Game Console 1989 Qualcomm QCP-860 Mobile Phone 1999 Sony CMT CP11 Desktop Audio System 2000 Sony MXD-D40 CD/MiniDisc Deck 2001 Apple iPod 1st Generation mp3 Player 2001 Handspring Visor PDA 2001 Cybiko Classic PDA 2001 Tascam MD-350 MiniDisc Player/Recorder 2001 Sony MZ-B10 Portable MiniDisc Player/Recorder 2002 Siemens C55 Mobile Phone 2002 Sony CLIÉ PEG-SJ22 PDA 2003 BlackBerry Quark Smartphone 2003 Canon PowerShot A70 Digital Camera 2003 Sony Net MD Walkman MZ-N920 Portable MiniDisc Player/Recorder 2004 Sony DCR-HC36 MiniDV Camcorder 2006 OLPC XO Laptop Computer 2007 Sony NWZ-S615F Digital Media Player 2007 Sony NWZ-A815 Digital Media Player 2007 Sony NWZ-A726 Digital Media Player 2008 Cambridge Audio CXC Compact Disc Transport 2015 Sony NW-E394 Digital Media Player 2016 Sony NW-A105 Digital Media Player 2019 Yoto Player 1st Generation Audio Player 2020 Yoto Mini Audio Player 2021 Cambridge Audio CXA81 Integrated Amplifier 2020 easier to use. But if it is a better experience for the writer, who can argue with that? After all, in a world of as many options as we have, ease is not the only measure of value; there are as many measures as there are choices. Subjective experience might as well take the lead. There is also a common worry that returning to single-purpose devices is risky — that their media is somehow more fragile than cloud-hosted digital content. But I’ve found the opposite to be true. I returned to Blu-Ray when favorite shows vanished from streaming services. I started recording voices and broadcasts to MiniDisc when I realized how many digital files I’d lost between phone upgrades. My old MiniDiscs still work perfectly, my miniDV tapes still play, my GameBoy cartridges still save games. It’s not the media that’s fragile, it’s the platform. And sometimes, the platform wasn’t fragile, the market was. MiniDisc is, again, a great example of this. The discs were more portable, robust, and more easily recordable than larger Compact Discs and the players were smaller and more fully-featured. But they ran right into mp3 players in the marketplace. The average consumer valued high capacity and convenience over audio quality and recording features. But guess which devices still work just as they did back then with less effort? The MiniDisc players. Most mp3 players that aren’t also phones require a much greater effort to use today because of their dependence upon another computer and software that hasn’t been maintained. And, unlike most devices made today, older devices are much more easily repaired and modified. Of my list above, not a single device failed to do what it was created to do. Besides comprising a museum of personal choices, these devices are a fascinating timeline of interface design. Each one represents a unique experiment in human-computer interaction, often feeling alien compared to today’s homogeneous landscape of austere, glass-fronted rectangles. Re-exploring them reminds me that just because an idea was left behind doesn’t mean it wasn’t valuable. Their diversity of approaches to simple problems suggests paths not taken, possibilities still worth considering. That the interface is physical, and in some cases, also graphical, makes for a unique combination of efficiency and sensory pleasure. Analog enthusiasts, particularly in the high-fi space, will opine on things like “knob-feel,” and they have a point. When a button, switch, or knob has been created to meet our hands and afford us fine-tuning control over something buried within a circuitboard, it creates an experience totally unlike tapping a symbol projected onto glass. It’s not that one is objectively better than another — and context obviously matters here - but no haptic engine has replicated what a switch wired with intention can do for a fingertip. Today’s smartphone reviewer’s will mention button “clickiness,” but if that’s what gets you excited, I encourage you to flip a GameBoy’s switch again and feel the click that precedes the Nintendo chime; eject a MiniDisc and feel the spring-loaded mechanisms vibration agains the palm of your hand; drag the first iPod’s clickwheel with your thumb in a way that turned a low-fi text list of titles into something with weight. Physicality is what makes a device an extension of a body. Function is what makes a device an extension of a mind. And single-function devices, I believe, do this better. By doing less, of course, they can only be so distracting. Compared to an everything machine and the permanent state of cognitive fracture they’ve created, this is something we should look back upon with more than a bit of nostalgia. We still have something to learn from a device that is intentionally limited and can fully embody that limitation. But the single-function device doesn’t just do less; it creates a different kind of mental space. A GameBoy can only play games, but this limitation means you’re fully present with what you’re doing. A miniDV camcorder might be less convenient than a smartphone for capturing video, but its dedicated purpose makes you think more intentionally about what you’re recording and why. For many contemporary enthusiasts, the limitations of old media create artifacts and effects that are now aesthetically desirable: they want the lower resolution, the glitchiness, and the blurring of old camcorders in the same way that modern digital camera users apply software-driven film emulation recipes to synthesize the effects once produced by developing physical film. The limitation heightens the creation. Each device a doorway These devices remind us that technological progress isn’t always linear. Sometimes what we gain in convenience, we lose in engagement. The friction of switching between different devices might have been — and remains — inefficient, but it created natural boundaries between different modes of activity. Each device was a doorway to a specific kind of experience, rather than a portal to endless possibility. Modern devices have their place. When it comes to remaining in communication, I wouldn’t trade my current smartphone for the phone I used twenty years ago. As critical as I am of the everything machine, I’m inclined to work on building better personal use habits than I am to replace it with a worse experience of the features I use. But there is also room for rediscovering old devices and maintaining relationships with technologies that do less. I actually prefer playing movies and music on physical media than through a streaming interface; I would jump at the chance to reimagine my smartphone with fewer features and a more analog interface. Limitations expand our experience by engaging our imagination. Unlimited options arrest our imagination by capturing us in the experience of choice. One, I firmly believe, is necessary for creativity, while the other is its opiate. Generally speaking, we don’t need more features. We need more focus. Anyone working in interaction and product design can learn from rediscovering how older devices engaged the mind and body to create an experience far more expansive than their function. The future of computing, I hope, is one that will integrate the concept of intentional limitation. I think our minds and memories will depend upon it.

Why compensation, edification, and recognition aren’t equally important—and getting the order wrong can derail your career. Success is subjective. It means many things to many different people. But I think there is a general model that anyone can use to build a design career. I believe that success in a design career should be evaluated against three criteria: compensation, edification, and recognition. But contrary to how the design industry operates — and the advice typically given to emerging designers — these aren’t equally important. They form a hierarchy, and getting the order wrong can derail a career before it even begins. Compensation Comes First Compensation is the most important first signal of a successful design career, because it is the thing that enables the continuation of work. If you’re not being paid adequately, your ability to keep working is directly limited. This is directly in opposition to the advice I got time and again at the start of my career, which essentially boiled down to: do what you love and the money and recognition will come. This is almost never true. There have been rare cases where it has been true for people who, ultimately, happened to be in the right place at the right time with the right relationships already in place. The post-hoc narrative of their lottery-like success leaves out all the luck and privilege and focuses entirely on the passion. These stories are intoxicating. They feel good, blur our vision, and result in a working hangover that can waylay someone for years if not the entirety of their increasingly despiriting career. What does adequate compensation look like? It’s not about getting rich — it’s about reaching a threshold where money anxiety doesn’t dominate your decision-making. Can you pay rent without stress? Buy groceries without calculating every purchase? Take a sick day without losing income? Have a modest emergency fund? If you can answer yes to these basics, you’ve achieved the compensation foundation that makes everything else possible. This might mean taking a corporate design job instead of the “cool” startup that pays in equity and promises. It might mean freelancing for boring clients instead of passion projects. It might mean saying no to unpaid opportunities, even when they seem prestigious. The key insight is that financial stability creates the mental space and time horizon necessary for meaningful career development. This is not glamorous. It sounds boring. It may even be boring, but it doesn’t need to last that long. It’s easier to make money once you’ve made money. Then Focus on Edification Once compensation has been taken care of, the majority of a designer’s effort should be put toward edification. I choose this word very intentionally. There is nothing wrong with passion, but passion is the fossil fuel of the soul. It’s not an intrinsic expression of humanity; it is inspired by experience, nurtured by love, commitment, and work, and focused by discipline, labor, and feedback. Passion gets all the credit for inspiration and none of the blame for pain, but it’s worth pointing out that the ancient application of this word had more to do with suffering than success. Edification, on the other hand, covers the full, necessary cycle that keeps us working as designers: interest, information, instruction, improvement. You couldn’t ask for a more profound measure of success than maintaining the cycle of edification for an entire career. If you feel intimidated by a project, it is an opportunity to learn. Focus your interest toward gathering new information. If you feel uncomfortable during a project, you are probably growing. Seek instruction from those who you know that make the kind of work you admire in a way you can respect. If you feel like the work could have been better, you’re probably right. You’re ready to work toward improvement. This process doesn’t just happen once; a successful career is the repetition of this cycle again and again. What does edification look like in practice? It’s choosing projects that teach you something new, even if they’re not the most glamorous. It’s working with people who challenge your thinking. It’s seeking feedback that makes you uncomfortable. It’s reading, experimenting, and building things outside of work requirements. It’s the difference between collecting paychecks and building expertise. Considering the cycle of edification should help you select the right opportunities. Does the problem space interest you intellectually? Will the project expand your skill set? Will you work with people from whom you can learn? These not only become more viable considerations once you’re not worried about making rent, but the essential path forward. The transition point between focusing on compensation and edification isn’t about reaching a specific salary number — it’s about achieving enough financial stability that you can think beyond survival. For some, this might happen quickly; for others, it may take several years. It might happen more than once in a career. The key is recognizing when you’ve moved from financial desperation to financial adequacy. Recognition Is Always Overrated Finally, recognition. This is probably the least valuable measure of success a designer could pursue and receive. It is subjective. It is fickle. It is fleeting. And yet, it is the bait used to lure inexperienced designers — to unpaid internships, low-paid jobs, free services and spec work of all kinds. The pitch is always the same: we can’t pay you, but we can offer you exposure. This is a lie. Attention is harder to come by than money these days, so when a person offers you one in lieu of another, know it’s an IOU that will never pay out. Most designers are better off bootstrapping their own recognition rather than hoping for a sliver of someone else’s limelight. I might not have understood or believed this at the start of my career; I take it as fact today, twenty years in. That said, I wouldn’t say that all recognition is worthless. Peer respect within your professional community has value — it can lead to better opportunities and collaborations. Having work you’re proud to show can open doors. But these forms of recognition should be byproducts of doing good work, not primary goals that drive decision-making. Design careers built upon recognition alone are indistinguishable from entertainment. The recognition trap is particularly dangerous early in a career because it exploits the natural desire for validation. Young designers are told that working for prestigious brands or winning awards will jumpstart their careers. Sometimes this works, but more often it leads to a cycle of undervalued work performed in hopes of future payoff that never materializes. Applying the Hierarchy Here’s how this hierarchy works in practice: Early career: Focus almost exclusively on compensation. Take the job that pays best, even if it’s not the most exciting. Learn what you can, but prioritize financial stability above all else. Mid-career:: Once you’ve achieved financial adequacy, shift focus to edification. Be more selective about projects and opportunities. Invest in skills and relationships that will compound over time. Established career:: Recognition may come naturally as a result of good work and years of experience. If it doesn’t, that’s fine too — you’ll have built something more valuable: expertise and financial security. Looking back, I can say that I put far more emphasis on external recognition and validation too early on in my career. I got a lot more of it – and let it distract me — ten years into my career than I do now, and it shows in my work. It’s better now than it was then, even if no one is talking about it. Every designer is better off putting whatever energy they’d expend on an attention fetch quest toward getting paid for their work, because it’s the money that will get you what you really need in the early days of your career: a roof over your head, food on the table, a good night’s sleep, and a way to get from here to there. If you have those things and are working in design, keep at it. Either external recognition will come or you’ll work long enough to realize that sometimes the most important recognition is self-bestowed. If you can be satisfied by work before anyone else sees it, you will need less of the very thing least capable of sustaining you. You will always get farther on your own steam than someone else’s.

A new book. First pages are always hit or miss. I cannot unsee the face in the building to the left. Peeking face is not me, but Nostradamus. The doom signals of 2025 are many and unrelenting. They can’t all be true, so it’s clear someone wants a frightened people. Still enjoying the exploration of tiny collages. Most of them in the past few batches are no larger than 4”x6” — the book pages themselves are 5.5”x8.5”. The size is the challenge.