Designers vs Capitalism (A Designer’s rant)

Why your app looks like everyone else’s and why you feel nothing.

Let’s rip the band-aid off, shall we?

I’ve been in design for about a decade and a half. I’ve seen the rise of the thumb friendly zone, the fall of Flash, the flat design apocalypse, and whatever this current era of “clean,” sanitised, soft-shadow soup is called. And if I have to look at one more quick commerce landing page that looks exactly like 10 others, I’m going to scream on LinkedIn (because visibility matters, obviously).

We need to talk about the elephant in the Figma file: Capitalism.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I like getting paid. I like my overpriced coffee in a fancy cafe in Indiranagar. But let’s be real, Capitalism cares about exactly one thing, growth. The line on the chart must go up and to the right, usually at a 45-degree angle, forever. Human values/welfare? That’s a cute “Nice to Have” in the company’s vision statement.

CHAPTER 1

Just a data point with a few attributes and retention rate.

In this blind sprint for infinite growth, we’ve stopped designing for people. We design for users.

In the eyes of a growth obsessed board of directors, a “user” isn’t a human being with anxieties, dreams, and a pending home loan. No, a user is a DAU (Daily Active User). They are a CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost). They are a data point to be funneled, retained, and squeezed until the LTV (Lifetime Value) is optimized.

We aren’t creating experiences that touch the soul anymore; we are creating “frictionless flows” to extract as much value as we can, as fast as we can. We need to empathise with stock prices more than whom we are building for.

CHAPTER 2

The Breed of Optimizers

I see it in the new age designers and the portfolios that cross my desk. These folks bred in an ecosystem of hyper growth, are terrifyingly efficient. They learn to optimize quickly based on business metrics. They can A/B test a CTA button color to squeeze out a 0.4% conversion lift before I’ve finished my morning workout.

But ask them if the button is necessary in the first place? And they look puzzled.

Empathy has become the biggest lie in our industry. It’s just a buzzword people throw around in interviews to sound human.

“I built an empathy map!” Great, Buddy. But you were also made to design a “Dark Pattern” that you thought was not worth a fight. That’s not empathy; that’s entrapment.

CHAPTER 3

The Rise of “References”

Designers now feels less and generates more. The result? Taste is dying. When a problem arises, nobody asks, “What is the unique, soulful solution in this specific context?” Instead, they ask, “How did Airbnb do it? How did Swiggy do it?”

We solve problems by looking at how others solved them. We inherit their constraints, their biases, and their context, and we paste it into our artboards. This creates a dangerous cycle. If you copy a design that was compromised by a tight deadline that a PM was chasing for their appraisal packet, you are copying the compromise, not the solution. You are photocopying a glitch.

Companies, fueled by the “Move Fast and Break Things” mantra, don’t give us time to reimagine. They give us a sprint (two weeks, if we’re lucky) to “ship it” before the VP’s next mood swing.

The result is the Beige-ification. This is why every product feels the same. We have collectively optimized the soul out of the internet. Everything is a rounded rectangle. Every font is a geometric sans-serif. Every illustration is that modern 3D style generated by a prompt.

Creativity is dying because risk is the enemy of efficiency. And in a growth oriented world, consistency is safer than character.

CHAPTER 4

The Lost character

I’m a Millennial. I’ve been around the block. And lately, buying stuff whether it’s the latest gadget or a piece of furniture it just feels… blah. It doesn’t touch me. It doesn’t linger. It’s a transaction, not an event.

Remember the Nokia era? God, the absolute audacity of those designs. The Nokia 6600 (the joystick), the way we held the N-Gage, the sharp, metallic snap of the MotoRazr. These devices had a silhouette. They had personality. Buying a phone back then felt like choosing an identity. We used to admire the hardware, the weirdness, the character.

Now? Look at your phone. It’s a black rectangular slab. Upgrading to a new phone doesn’t feel like an upgrade; it feels like buying a replacement part for a refrigerator that ‘maybe’ more efficient.

Why did the magic die? Because these companies stopped experimenting. Who is going to take a design risk when they have a trillion-dollar valuation to protect? With trillion-dollar market caps comes a paralyzing fear of failure. They don’t want to wow you anymore; because they just want to ensure you don’t leave the ecosystem. They are serving us “this re manufactured s#!t” because it’s safe.

It’s not just phones. Sitting in a modern car feels like sitting inside a giant, iPad. It’s feature-rich, sure, but it lacks a soul. We need to talk about the absolute stupidity of putting touchscreens in cars. We have traded the tactile joy and the safety of physical switches for layers of digital menus. Back in the day you could adjust the AC or change the volume without taking your eyes off the road. Your muscle memory knew exactly where the knob was. It was a “click” that confirmed the action. Now we are frantically tapping a piece of glass to touch the right button for the fan speed or giving voice commands that half the time are misunderstood, while doing 80kmph on the highway. It is bad design presented as “minimalism.” Tapping a piece of glass will never, ever feel as good or be as safe as pushing a button that pushes back.

We have made our entire environment like the soulless touchscreen, a glowing hallucination that turns into a black rectangle the moment the battery dies.

Look at old Chettinad houses in Southern India or the Renaissance architecture in Europe. The intricacies, the verandahs, the drama. Now look at your region-neutral 2BHK with particle board furniture ordered online. It works. It holds stuff. But does it make you feel anything other than mild frustration?

We pay 2.5 Crores for this drywall box that marketing calls a “Breeze of Elegance.”

The “Hamara Bajaj” Chetak was a family member. It had a sound, a rhythm. The new electric scooters littering the sidewalks are just disposable utilities.

We have traded texture for convenience. We have traded soul for scale and in doing so, we’ve built a world that is incredibly efficient at leaving us completely cold.

CHAPTER 5

Rebel against the Template

Listen to me, young pixel-pushers with your Auto-Layouts and your Component Properties.

If you want to survive and I mean really survive, not just exist as a ticket-pusher you need to rebel. You need to cultivate Taste.

And you won’t find taste on Dribbble or the 10 different apps you have on your phone. You need to:

Travel more and travel slowly: Don’t just go to the Eiffel Tower. Go to a bookstore on a cobbled street in Florence. Look at the typography on a 50-year-old signboard in Old Delhi. Observe locals, not tourists. Pause gently without looking at your step counter. Smell a new city. Feel it.

Develop a wider perspective: Watch diverse content with an intent. Don’t just doom-scroll; observe the humans of RK Narayan or the pacing of Tarantino. Widening your perspective prevents you from thinking a “hamburger menu” is the peak of human innovation.

Look deeply: Learn to appreciate that handmade cup you have in your kitchen. Look at the texture. Feel the imperfection of the rim. Someone’s hands made that. It wasn’t optimized. It was crafted. How are you comfortable having your coffee in a paper cup and eating food with a wooden spoon anyway?

Obsess over Detail: Not “pixel perfection,” but character. Why is that curve on the Royal Enfield Fuel tank designed that way? What story does it tell? What emotion does it evoke.

This is hard work. It takes time. It doesn’t scale. And it can’t be learned in a crash course.

But it builds Character.

And you need character. Because here is the scary truth, a designer without character is just a product of mass production. You are a template just waiting to be replaced by AI.

AI tools don’t have a soul. But if we don’t use ours, nobody will be able to tell the difference, when the machines take over.

Go question the world around you. Phew!