Design deserves better than Figma AI

Figma was the latest company to mishandle AI and design — foreshadowing the loss of a vast array of design jobs. We should demand better from our tools and industry. I was almost 14 when I started regularly using a pirated copy of Photoshop. My dad bought CDs from a guy in the Dutch countryside that were loaded with bootleg software. It started with Paint Shop Pro, but I knew that all the legit designers on deviantart were using Photoshop. I re-trained myself to use it to make video game assets and weird digital art. My dream, back then, was to design something for someone and see it used in the world. Digital art is cheap — infinitely so — which makes a physical appearance of your work, even printed on cheap paper, a magical transformation of infinite, meaningless pixels into art. Tangible, real art! The challenge was to convince anyone in my small countryside town that I could design them something. My lucky day came when a then-friend I can charitably describe as a DJ put me in touc

Figma was the latest company to mishandle AI and design — foreshadowing the loss of a vast array of design jobs. We should demand better from our tools and industry. I was almost 14 when I started regularly using a pirated copy of Photoshop. My dad bought CDs from a guy in the Dutch countryside that were loaded with bootleg software. It started with Paint Shop Pro, but I knew that all the legit designers on deviantart were using Photoshop. I re-trained myself to use it to make video game assets and weird digital art. My dream, back then, was to design something for someone and see it used in t