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Tag: Web Design

  • How Templates Killed Web Design Before AI Ever Could

    AI Isn’t the Villain—Templates Are

    The web isn’t dying because of AI—it’s drowning in a sea of templates. Platforms like Squarespace, Wix, and Shopify have made building a site easier than ever—but at the cost of creativity, originality, and soul. If every website looks the same, does design even matter anymore?

    Let’s get one thing out of the way: AI is not the villain of web design. It’s just the flashy scapegoat we’ve all decided to blame while quietly ignoring the real killer hiding in plain sight—templates.

    No, not the innocent-looking starter kits we all downloaded in our early days. I’m talking about the all-consuming, cookie-cutter, SEO-optimized, funnel-worshipping design sameness that has turned the open web into a tragic gallery of “Buy Now” buttons floating on beige rectangles.

    If you’re wondering why the web feels dead, lifeless, or like you’re stuck in a scrolling Groundhog Day of “hero image, tagline, three icons, CTA,” it’s not because AI hallucinated its way into the design department. It’s because we templatified creativity into submission.

    The Real Killer: Sameness as a Service

    We used to design websites like we were crafting digital homes—custom woodwork, strange hallways, surprise color choices, even weird sound effects if you dared. Each one had quirks. A personality. A soul.

    Now, websites are just slightly re-skinned Shopify stores pretending to be brand experiences. Even portfolio sites—the sacred playgrounds of creativity—have become sterile clones of each other: pastel backgrounds, sans serif fonts, and a strategically placed photo of a coffee mug to humanize the horror.

    ThemeForest, Squarespace, Webflow, WordPress—bless their convenience—have created an ecosystem where differentiation is not only optional, it’s discouraged. Because originality breaks the template. And breaking the template is bad for conversion. Or SEO. Or the client’s cousin Chad who once read a Medium article about UX best practices.

    Templates Didn’t Just Flatten Design—They Flattened Expectations

    Clients aren’t asking for design anymore. They’re asking for “a site like this.” You know the one. It looks clean. It has animations. It scrolls smoothly. It’s “modern.” Which, in 2025, is just a euphemism for “I want what everyone else has so I don’t have to think.”

    Templates didn’t just streamline web development. They rewired what people expect a website to be.

    Why hire a designer when you can drop your brand colors into a no-code template, plug in some Lottie files, and call it a day? The end result isn’t bad. It’s worse than bad. It’s forgettable.

    And the worst part? We did this to ourselves.

    AI Didn’t Kill Design—We Gave It a Map

    Everyone’s busy blaming ChatGPT, Claude, or Midjourney for killing originality. But AI didn’t birth itself into our workflow. It trained on what we fed it. And what did we feed it?

    Thousands of templated, templated-from-templates, SEO-farmed websites that all look the same. You can’t tell a robot to innovate when your portfolio is made of duplicated grid layouts and gradient buttons copied from Stripe in 2017.

    AI isn’t the end of design. It’s just the inevitable mirror held up to a web we already standardized, sanitized, and sold for $39 on a marketplace.

    We gave AI the Ikea catalog of the internet and expected Bauhaus in return.

    The Design Web Is Dead—Long Live the Application Web

    The “website” as we knew it—handcrafted, bespoke, exploratory—is dying. In its place, we’re getting web apps, not sites. Utility is the new creativity. The homepage has been replaced by the dashboard. The About page is now a Notion doc. And that experimental layout you were proud of in 2014 doesn’t even pass Core Web Vitals anymore.

    The web we loved was a canvas. The web we have now is a series of modular blocks optimized for user retention, ad revenue, and frictionless e-commerce.

    Design is no longer about creating a unique experience. It’s about minimizing bounce rate, hitting conversion targets, and running A/B tests on whether button #4 should be 1.5em or 1.6em tall.

    We are no longer designers—we are template wranglers, nudging variables until the spreadsheet turns green.

    Web Design Isn’t Just Dying—It’s Evolving into Product Management

    The line between designer and product manager has blurred into oblivion. You’re not designing a homepage; you’re optimizing a funnel. You’re not choosing typography; you’re preserving “brand consistency.” You’re not making art; you’re massaging business goals.

    The average website today isn’t designed—it’s assembled.

    It’s a series of UX components picked from a pre-approved design system that lives in a Figma file so large it has its own gravitational pull. We’re not paid to invent anymore. We’re paid to ensure nothing surprises anyone. Web design has become corporate risk mitigation disguised as creativity.

    The Irony? Templates Were Supposed to Be Tools, Not Endgames

    Templates were never evil. They were supposed to help us go faster, prototype better, and democratize design. But like stock photos before them, they’ve become the fast food of the internet—cheap, convenient, and nutritionally empty.

    And just like fast food, they’re addictive.

    Why cook from scratch when the Big Mac of landing pages is a click away? Why iterate on originality when the template is “proven to convert”?

    We built a world where good enough is the default. And then we trained the next generation of designers to treat it as the ceiling, not the floor.

    Is There Hope? Sure. But It Won’t Be on ThemeForest.

    If web design has any hope of surviving, it’s going to require rebellion. A willful rejection of efficiency for the sake of expression. A refusal to conform to “what works” and instead a deep dive into “what surprises.”

    The artists of the web—the weird ones, the brave ones, the ones who still code CSS by hand and animate things that serve no purpose other than joy—they’re out there. But they’re no longer mainstream. They’re not in the top 10 of Product Hunt. They’re in the margins, hiding out in codepens, personal blogs, and obscure corners of the indie web.

    If you want design to live, stop feeding the template machine. Build weird stuff. Ugly stuff. Confusing stuff. Human stuff.

    Because the web wasn’t meant to be a conveyor belt of sameness. It was supposed to be a playground. A punk zine. A laboratory. A little chaotic. A little broken. But undeniably alive.

    The Verdict: We Did This. Not AI.

    Let’s stop pointing fingers at artificial intelligence for killing creativity. AI didn’t templatify the web—we did. We chose speed over originality. Conversions over character. Convenience over craft.

    So yes, AI might finish the job. But let’s not forget who pulled the trigger first.

    And if the death of web design is inevitable? Let it die weird.

  • The New Age of Web Design: Profiling Over Personalization

    The next era of web design isn’t about aesthetics or convenience. It’s about understanding you so precisely that your online experience feels predestined. Websites will no longer simply personalize—they will profile you in real time. If that sounds unsettling, it’s because it is. But it’s also inevitable.

    Let’s be clear: web design has outgrown its early ambitions. What once focused on clarity and usability has shifted toward something far more invasive. Profiling is the new frontier—not the friendly, superficial “know your audience” approach. Instead, it’s a deep, psychological mapping of every facet of who you are.

    Tomorrow’s websites will predict your choices before you even sense them forming. They will assess what you might buy, how you think, and even what could spark your late-night frustration.

    Design as Digital Phrenology

    In the 19th century, phrenology claimed you could understand someone’s character by feeling their skull. Now, we’re creating its digital equivalent. Every scroll, pause, and rage-click becomes a data point that feeds a sophisticated psychological model.

    If you lean toward brutalist interfaces and grayscale color schemes, you’ll be labeled rebellious and nonconformist. Prefer clean serif fonts? The system might conclude you’re detail-oriented and anxious. These interpretations will inform every element you see online.

    The future of design isn’t simply about crafting a layout—it’s about mapping and exploiting behavioral patterns with granular precision.

    Goodbye Personas, Hello Dynamic Psychological Profiles

    User personas were once the backbone of design strategy—simple sketches of fictional users meant to guide decisions. But these archetypes are quickly becoming obsolete.

    In their place will be dynamic psychological profiles that adjust in real time. Machine learning models will watch your every action, cross-reference vast datasets, and generate evolving profiles that shape your experience moment by moment.

    You won’t just get a website that feels relevant. You’ll get one that reacts to your mindset, your impulses, and your vulnerabilities as they emerge.

    The End of Traditional UX

    Classic UX design valued clear paths and user autonomy. But autonomy rarely maximizes revenue. The next wave of web design will focus on gently removing choice—on guiding users to decisions that serve business objectives.

    Expect interfaces that use subtle dark patterns calibrated to your individual biases. Recommendations will feel perfectly timed not because they match your taste but because they trigger your fear of missing out. Design will be less about delight and more about persuasion.

    Web Designers as Behavioral Strategists

    In this new landscape, mastery of design tools like Figma will no longer be enough. The most influential designers will be part behavioral economist, part psychologist.

    They’ll need to understand cognitive biases such as loss aversion and hyperbolic discounting. Button copy will be tested for its emotional resonance as much as its clarity. If your audience values authority, a button labeled “Official” will outperform any aesthetic consideration. If they crave autonomy, “Take Control” will drive more conversions.

    Designers will become strategists skilled in decoding and shaping human behavior.

    The Challenge of Ethics

    Will this progression be regulated? Possibly—but ethics has always lagged behind innovation. A few companies will make ethical design part of their brand, and for a time, they’ll be praised. Eventually, though, many will be overtaken by competitors willing to exploit profiling to its fullest potential.

    The truth is simple: when one website can provoke an irresistible reaction, users will choose it over the platform that plays fair.

    Profiling as the New Creative Medium

    Where creativity once meant original layouts and fresh color schemes, it will soon mean discovering novel ways to analyze and influence the subconscious.

    The designer’s canvas will be user data. The brushstrokes will be algorithms. Your thoughts and emotions will provide the raw material.

    Already in Motion

    Look around—this isn’t some distant possibility. Amazon recommendations, TikTok’s For You page, and Google’s tailored results all rely on early forms of real-time profiling. The groundwork is laid.

    Designers are fast becoming architects of digital behavior. Their blueprints are no longer wireframes—they are psychological portraits.

    If that feels unsettling, it should. Because the web ahead won’t just reflect your preferences. It will predict and guide them, until choice itself feels like an illusion.