Design

Design, for me, is a way of exploring, questioning, testing, and making sense of things. Sometimes that leads to something visual or tangible, and sometimes it doesn’t. These posts sit in that space: using design to reach towards understanding, direction, or a better outcome.

Clarity Untangling Making

All essays in Design

  1. Make it professional, make it pop 20th of April 2026 “Make it look professional.” “Make it look good.” “Make it pop.” None of these are especially clear design instructions. But they are often useful all the same.
  2. Easy, facile answer machines 10th of March 2026 My problem with AI is that design, strategy, and consultancy depend on awkward questions, uncomfortable truths, and human judgement, not just easy answers.
  3. The reverse stone soup challenge 22nd of September 2025 There’s a folk tale about Stone Soup. There's a particular design challenge that I think of as its reverse.
  4. Obvious in hindsight 11th of September 2025 Good design often disappears into the background, leaving outcomes that feel obvious only in hindsight, even when the path there was anything but simple.
  5. On asking why, copying, and outcome bias 12th of May 2022 I seem to go through a cycle of thinking I ask ‘why’ way too much, and then, shortly after, that I don’t ask ‘why’ nearly enough.
  6. Branding success 14th of July 2020 My first experience of running a branding project happened in my teens, before I was even aware of branding as a thing. What's more, it was a measurably successful project in its own right – though not in any way I could have expected.
  7. Design as goal reaching not problem solving 13th of July 2020 Instead of problem solving, I now view design as an ongoing goal-reaching activity. The difference for me is that the context is bigger, the constraints require more thought, but the results are much greater — and more meaningful — in their impact.
  8. Design is uncomfortable 28th of May 2020 Design is uncomfortable. At least I frequently find it uncomfortable. Anyone who has sat in front of a blank page will know something of this.
  9. Nothing new 28th of May 2020 In my work there is always an urge to tread new ground, to discover, to create what’s never been created or seen before. However, that's often not what is needed, and there's the often quoted fact that everything is a remix, that there is nothing new under the sun.
  10. Where are you Siri? 24th of April 2020 I talk to my phone, my wrist, my iPad and, occasionally, my computer. I ask them to remind me of things, I ask what the weather will be like, I ask them to time something for me. Sometimes I ask them something more complex, and, sometimes, they help with that too.
  11. The gap between now and next 5th of February 2016 Any project requiring a designer has two states: Where it is now; Where you want it to be. There is a gaping void of uncertainty between the two.
  12. On design 12th of July 2012 Design is about problem solving - working within constraints to achieve a certain, set, and ideally measurable goal. However, the bulk of a designer's role is getting to that problem.

© Alex Magill