I started with a pirated copy of Photoshop 7 and a dial-up connection that made downloading a single stock image a half-hour commitment. I'm writing this in London, with Figma, Framer, Weavy, Claude, and Linear all open on the same screen.
The tools changed completely. Radically. Unrecognisably. I want to talk about what didn't.
What's still true, twenty years on:
The brief matters more than everything else combined. No tool — not the best AI model, not the most advanced design software — fixes a poorly understood problem. If you don't know what you're solving and for whom, you'll generate beautiful work that does nothing. I've seen it happen more times since AI tools got good, not fewer. The bar for producing visually impressive output got lower. The bar for producing useful output stayed exactly where it was.
Design is still about removal. I've been given more options by every generation of tools. More typefaces, more components, more visual styles to reference or generate. The job is still — always — choosing what to take out. The most important design decisions are the ones that result in less on the screen, not more.
Trust is still built the slow way. You build it by showing up when you said you would, delivering what you said you'd deliver, and being honest when something isn't working. No AI generates that. No process shortcut replaces it. Clients who've worked with me for years aren't loyal to my tools. They're loyal to the reliability.
What genuinely changed:
Speed of exploration. I can test more directions in a day than I used to in a week. This sounds like a small thing but it's actually enormous — it means I can bring clients better-considered options, because I've explored and discarded more dead ends before they see anything.
Scope of what I can take on solo. Projects that would have needed a small team five years ago — full brand system plus product design plus landing page — I can deliver alone now, because AI handles the parts that are time-consuming but not judgment-requiring. Writing the first draft of copy. Generating reference imagery. Structuring a presentation.
Quality of client conversations. Because I've thought through more angles before the meeting, I arrive with better-tested ideas and cleaner reasoning. The conversations move faster and get to better decisions.
The craft is the same. The leverage is bigger. That's the honest summary.