The Peculiar Business of Watching Yourself Think

You know what's really weird? The other day I caught myself doing something funny - and once I noticed it, I couldn't stop thinking about it. I'd spent about nine hours working on this design for a web application. You know how it goes: moving things around, adjusting sizes, tweaking colors. For most of the day, nothing looked quite right. It was like trying to tune a radio and getting nothing but static.

Then suddenly - boom! - everything clicked into place. The whole thing just sang. And I got this wonderful feeling, this warm glow of satisfaction that every designer knows. But right in the middle of enjoying this feeling, I had this thought that made me laugh out loud. "Of course you think it looks good, you nimrod! You just spent nine hours adjusting it until it matched exactly what you think looks good!"

Now isn't that a peculiar thing? It's like being proud of making a sandwich exactly the way you like sandwiches. Well, of course you did! Who else's taste were you following?

When you're designing something, you're simultaneously the cook and the food critic. You're making all these little decisions - should this button be bigger? Should this text be bolder? Should this thing slide in from the left or fade up from the bottom? And with each decision, you're essentially tuning this thing to match your own preferences. It's like you're building a maze while already knowing the way out.

It reminds me a bit of those optical illusions where you can see either a young woman or an old lady, but never both at the same time. I keep switching back and forth between "This design is great!" and "Well of course you think it's great - you made it specifically to be great according to your own definition of great!"

The counterpoint? I'm actually pretty good at this! Clients like what I do, people use the stuff I make, it works great. But that almost makes it more bizarre. Because when I look at something I've designed and think "Yes! That's exactly right!" - what I'm really admiring is how perfectly I've managed to make something that matches... well, what I think is exactly right!

You know what else is wild? People can actually recognize my designs across different companies and products. It's not because I'm trying to make them look similar - I'm not! Each one is solving completely different problems for completely different people. But apparently, there's something about the way I think about space, and movement, and hierarchy that comes through no matter what I'm working on. It's like having an accent you can't hear in your own voice, but everyone else can spot right away.

It's enough to make you dizzy if you think about it too long. Here I am, spending my days essentially creating things that I'm guaranteed to like (because I won't stop tweaking them until I do), and then other people like them too. Not because they're objectively better - how could they be? They're just one way of seeing things. But maybe that's exactly what makes them work: they're consistent, they're coherent, they're... well, they're thoroughly thought through, even if they're thought through in my particular way of thinking.

The whole thing is like one of those strange loops where you can't tell where the beginning ends and the end begins. But maybe that's okay. Maybe that's exactly how it should be. that's what I kept telling myself. Until I started really pushing what technology could do to amplify this whole process.

AI. AI. AI.

Let me tell you what really keeps me up at night. It's not the usual designer worries - deadlines or client presentations.

I'm not even doing all this tweaking by hand anymore! I've built this whole circus of tools and helpers and automated pipelines. It's like I've taken all my fussy little preferences and encoded them into this menagerie of tireless assistants. I've got AI critics running around giving feedback, scripts testing different variations, prompts generating alternatives faster than I could ever sketch them out.

You know what's really funny? The results are better than ever, and it makes perfect sense why. I've applied this huge optimization machine to my design process. Instead of me personally trying thirty different hues, my digital helpers are trying two hundred! Where I might have carefully stepped through four layout variations, my automated pipeline is charging through dozens. My studio looks like mission control now - screens full of variants, each one almost-but-not-quite-right.

And boy, does it wear me out! By the end of the day, my brain feels like it's been put through a pasta maker. But it's a good kind of tired, you know? The kind you get when you've really pushed the boundaries of what's possible. It's like I've built this giant magnifying glass for my design instincts, and now I can see and adjust things I never could before.

See, right now I'm comfortable having these AI assistants help with the obvious stuff. "More space." "Less space." "What if we made these edges sharper?" That's all just turning knobs and pushing buttons, really. It's like having a really eager assistant who can try a hundred variations while I'm conducting furiously.

But there's this other thing I've been avoiding, and it's starting to feel like a monster under the bed. What if I sat down and really tried to explain to the machine how I think? Not just the surface stuff, but the real meat of it - all those little rules and hunches and "just because" decisions that make up my design sense.

what if it worked?

Imagine writing down every single one of those little voice-in-your-head moments. All 31,439 of them (yes, I'm making up that number, but sometimes it feels that specific). Every tiny rule about why this goes there and that should feel like this and when this happens you need to adjust for that. It's like trying to explain how you know when you're sitting in a comfortable chair. You just know, right? Except now imagine writing down every single factor that goes into that knowing.

The really scary part is: what if I succeeded? What if I managed to pour all of that - my whole way of seeing and thinking about design - into this system? And what if it actually worked? What if it started generating designs that were... well, that were sort of me? Because lets be honest, no one care about exactly me, the transmission is lossy anyways.

And then imagine all of that written down somewhere. Every rule, every preference, every little trick and technique, all laid out like a map of my mind. Anyone could read it. Anyone could see exactly how the magic trick works. "Oh, so that's how they do it! When this happens, they always do that. When something feels wrong, they adjust these three things in this specific order."

It's like being a chef and writing down not just your recipes, but every single little thing you've ever learned about cooking. Every tiny adjustment you make when the sauce isn't quite right, every little trick you use to know when the bread is done. Not just the what, but the why and the how and the when.

I'm not even sure why this bothers me so much. It's not like knowing how a magic trick works makes it any less magical when it's done well. And it's not like writing down how Beethoven composed would suddenly make everyone Beethoven. But still... there's something unsettling about the idea of laying out your entire creative process like a dissected frog in a high school biology class.

I'm just not ready to find out if what I think of as intuition and taste can really be broken down into thousands of little rules - whether it's 31,439 of them or a million.

Isn't that a kick in the head? Here I am, happily using AI to test a hundred variations of my designs, but scared to death of using it to understand how I actually make those designs in the first place. It's like being comfortable letting someone drive your car but terrified of letting them look under the hood - even if that someone is yourself.

The irony doesn't escape me - while I'm wrestling with these existential questions about AI and creativity, my partnership with these digital tools has pushed my work to new heights. The designs I'm producing with my army of AI assistants are hitting that sweet spot more consistently than ever before. Clients can buy the man and get the machine for free!

The Curious Case of Being Almost Different

This sweet spot in design - and boy, it's a funny thing when you really look at it - where you want to be different, but not too different. Especially now, when AI is making it easier than ever to crank out perfectly acceptable, perfectly forgettable designs... It's like that game kids play where you have to keep your hand as close to a candle as you can without getting burned. Too close and ouch! Too far and you're not even playing anymore.

Let me explain what I mean. You go to websites these days, and they're all using these "design systems." That's a fancy way of saying they're all using the same box of parts. It's like they've got this big box of LEGO pieces, and everybody's building slightly different versions of the same house. Sure, some are blue and some are red, but brother, they're all houses!

What happens when someone comes along and builds something that's... well, it's still obviously a house, but there's something different about it. Something that makes you stop and look twice. Not because it's weird - we've all seen weird houses and usually they're weird because somebody forgot houses need to be lived in - but because it just feels more right somehow.

That's this sweet spot I'm talking about. And it's not something you can plan. Believe me, I've seen people try! They sit there with their protractors and their fancy theories about "disruption" (that's what they call it these days when you want to be different on purpose), and they end up making something that looks like it's trying too hard.

No, the really neat stuff happens when someone develops their own way of seeing things, their own little quirks and preferences, but - and this is the crucial bit - they never lose sight of what these things are for. It's like having an accent. Nobody plans their accent, it just develops from who they are and where they've been. But a good accent doesn't stop people from understanding what you're saying - it just makes it more interesting to listen to.

The Only Loop That Matters

And here I am, building better and better tools to help me reach in exactly the way I already reach. Creating an ever-more-perfect mirror of my own aesthetic instincts. Training machines to help me be more precisely myself.

But you know what? All this philosophical hand-wringing about strange loops and self-reflection is just another form of professional procrastination. While the design Twitter-sphere ties itself in knots about AI and authenticity and "what it all means," something much simpler is happening:

Projects are getting done faster. Schedules are opening up. Clients are getting better results.

Because here's the reality check we all need sometimes: We're designers, not philosophers. We exist in a business ecosystem that created us to generate value for other people. No one's lying awake at night wondering about the metaphysical implications of my design process. They just want their projects delivered on time, on budget, and looking better than their competitors'.

So while everyone else is stuck in their own strange loops of AI anxiety, I'm looking at my schedule and seeing something much more interesting: space for new clients. Because at the end of the day, that's the only loop that really matters - the one where we turn expertise into value, value into revenue, and revenue into better tools to do it all over again, faster and better than before.

Want to be part of that loop instead of the philosophical ones? My schedule just opened up.