Akansha @snugg_bug_

Me whenever the stars are visible

[For every designer who is scared right now 🩶] If the AI stress is catching up to you or you're feeling left behind, take out 5 mins and read this. Nobody really knows how to survive this 'wave'. Even the people building these AI products don't know the future. And if someone's handing you a clear cut path, they're probably selling something. I'm writing this based on the people I know. Some of them are building these tools, some are switching roles. Many just reached out because they didn't know who else to ask. Over the last ten years, I have watched parts of this industry shift. Photoshop to Illustrator to Sketch to Figma. Each time the tool changed, the designer role also evolved. With AI, this is a much bigger move, but that sense of fear feels exactly the same. Here's what I'm actually seeing: Design roles are contracting. It is real. The junior and intern-level work is the most exposed right now, because AI can do a lot of what a new designer would spend their first year learning. Senior designers with strong networks and reputations are largely okay, but not untouchable. Many managers honestly, are more worried than they're letting on. A lot of them haven't touched tools in years. There's also something happening with hiring where managers aren't bringing on juniors right now. Some of it is tight budgets, but a lot of it is that they don't know how to grow someone in this environment anymore. There's no clear ladder to point to. – The roles that remain look different. Companies are now deliberately building out senior and principal IC tracks so the best craft people don't have to choose between growing and managing. A senior designer who goes extremely deep, who has strong taste, ships things and shapes product decisions, is very valuable today. The new shape for a design manager is someone who should also build. They should use tools to prototype fast, validate ideas quickly, show rather than tell. A manager who can demo something in a meeting rather than describe it is a completely different asset. UX writing, content design, marketing are merging into product thinking in a way they weren't before. Designers who can write, actually write well are powerful. – Experiment on your own before it's pushed on you. The design process is changing. The double diamond, the wireframe, the detailed case studies are starting to feel dated. What's replacing it has a lot more building and shipping than documenting and presenting. Don't upskill frantically. Just because a new tool dropped doesn't mean you have to master it. At this rate you'll just burn out chasing things. Pick one process you already do and figure out where AI actually helps within it. Pressure test an idea, poke holes in your reasoning, generate great visuals, explore a direction you'd have killed too early. Get really good at one or two things vs half baked many. Don't get attached to tools. The designers who struggled most through every tool shift were the ones whose identity was too tied to what they already knew. Being the best Framer person in the room was never the point. It was always the work itself. – Learn some code. Even a little. I say this as someone who never wrote code before. Think of it like a 30-day experiment, not a career change. I can share more on how I approached this because I know how intimidating that sentence sounds. Build live things. No one wants static mocks sitting in Figma. See if you can do interactive project demos, solve your own problems by building small tools, push things out, let people use them. A live product in your portfolio right now is worth more than ten polished case studies with no shipping story behind them. – People want a point of view. Generic work is losing. Execution is cheap now. A lot of work is starting to look the same and the ones standing out have something to say. Bring that to your work. Freelancing overall has a lot more money in it right now. But if you're producing generic, template-level work, you're probably in danger. Niche and specific is where the premium is going, and that gap is only going to widen. A lot of people who joined design during the covid wave, drawn by the stability or the salary or the sense that the process was settled, will probably leave. That's okay, maybe even good. Design has always been a craft that changes. The ones who stay will be the ones who actually want to build things. – Be someone people want to work with. Being easy to work with is underrated and always will be. Being collaborative, fun to work with, easy to communicate with async – all this builds up over years in ways no tool can replicate. I've seen technically average designers outlast brilliant ones because of exactly this. Being a good hire isn't just your portfolio. People imagine what it would be like to talk to you, brainstorm with you, disagree with you, and sit in a room with you for two hours every week. Work on that too. Who you surround yourself with matters too. If you don't have people to look up to at your work, find small tight communities that do the kind of work you like and actually share it. I prefer these over large noisy ones. Some big Discord ones are mostly anxiety and self-promotion. – If you're early career, this is for you specifically. I've had many recent grads and those just finishing a bootcamp struggling to find work. I want to say this clearly that is not a reflection of your ability. The timing is just brutal right now and that's not on you. If you're just starting out, look for lean startups or agencies. They still desperately need designers who can think and move fast. Get in the room first and figure out long term plans from there. Hiring pipelines are filled due to mass applications. Post your work online, share WIP experiments, DM the founder whose app you redesigned just for fun. Nobody is coming to find you. You have to shamelessly show up. – More people are building now because friction has never been lower. A lot of them are discovering mid-build that design is what separates good from forgettable. That's not nothing. There's also a new kind of client emerging. Solo builders, indie founders, one-person companies shipping at scale. They don't need a design team but one designer who can build alongside them. That role is growing and it's genuinely interesting work. Yes there's anxiety. But there's also more to build and more personality to showcase. That's where I'd put my energy.

@ditherblue @ringg_ai I'm interested akanshamandal.framer.website

@kaashvisaxena Me 😌every single day

@rachelqrwei this is beautiful

@soumyadesign @Xeer thought the same

@AashishPunjabi1 👋akanshamandal.framer.website

@kaushik_murali @framer love the footer😊

@hvpandya this is so valuable

@oyeabhijit Just saw something similar to this in insta by an artist en_ho

@BeingBanarasii @sidharthgehlot its AI

@suncheetosji @flyspicejet One time, I was flying spicejet from guwahati to mumbai. A lady was sitting in the next row, her seat literally came off the frame in the middle of the flight.

I need to calm down

@Niteesh22 Best show ever! 🙌 also check out "common side effect" another great show

@Zerkyboi Looks like you are about to summon a demon

@UghDitya next up! dhokla

@gahannrao I'm interested

@likeanushkaa Cactus communication