Hi Friends! I’m excited to share this week’s “Designing Near Future” Newsletter with you. If this email landed in your promotions folder, you know what to do. Welcome to the new members that joined last week.

Here’s a breakdown of what’s in store today

⭐ 1 Shift: The Thing About Design Layoffs…

⚡ 1 Tip: How to Be a Top of Mind Designer

💊 3 Resources: Secret Creative Resources That Pros Use

Reading time: 3 minutes

⭐ Shift

The Thing About Design Layoffs…

Despite signs of economic recovery and predictions of avoiding a recession, tech companies continue to lay off employees, specifically product managers, designers and software engineers. From big design houses laying off employees to a decline in the number of open job postings for design roles, 2023 has been a weird ride and it feels like we are still in the thick of it. Here are 3 stories that paint the not-so-positive picture if you are a designer.

1. Layoffs at Design Powerhouses

Industry leaders and pioneers of design thinking, IDEO announced they are laying off 32% of their staff by the end of this year. This would also mean some of their offices completely shutting down. While mainstream media would use this opportunity to mark the beginning of a slow death for design thinking, I don’t think that is what this means. I particularly resonated with Stephen Gates’ (Ex-Head of Design at Invision) take on this :

Here is his original post on linkedin:

IDEO is not the only design led company that is laying off it’s employees.

Recently, Nike went through a change in it’s design leadership and parallelly laid off product managers and 70+ creative contractors.

2. Product Managers Taking a Hit

Product managers getting cut seems to be on trend this year (unfortunately). Earlier this month, Snap laid off 20 product managers. (Interestingly, at the time of writing this, they are also hiring PMs). Earlier this year, Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky shared that they completely got rid of the product management function at Airbnb and now supposedly the product designers have full control over the creative experience. This announcement was followed by a round of lay-offs spread across the company.

3. Design Jobs on the decline

The third story comes from Indeed, the job posting company. Their research suggests that hiring softened for both UX research and design in the latter half of 2022, along with declines in the tech job market as a whole. The number of open roles has decreased even further since the start of this year. Since their peak in early 2022, UX research job listings have dropped 71% and UX design job listings dipped 70%.

Where are we headed?

To be completely clear, the design industry is not in a recession and this is not the end of the world for us. This is simply an adjustment of headcount (majorly in tech) due to the effects of over-hiring post COVID. (See the spike during early 2022 above). That being said, if the trend continues, UX and product specialists may find it hard to communicate their value in an economic situation riddled with AI and remote work expectations. Wall Street Journal reported a recent decline in starting salaries within the United States, revealing a drop of 18% for developers and engineers, and an 11% decline for UX professionals, when compared to late 2022.

Here’s my take:

Design, historically perceived as a glamorous and innovative field, has often grappled with a branding dilemma. Celebrated for its 'newness' and its fusion of emotion, psychology, and creativity, design stands in stark contrast to a world that predominantly values and rewards logical, linear thinking. As Steve Jobs famously said, 'Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.' By repositioning design as a discipline that is nimble and universally accessible, we can potentially break away from the exclusive domain of elite design houses. Such a transformation paves the way for smaller, more specialized teams, and creates a fertile future for design-led entrepreneurship. I’m already seeing the birth of a lot of new small focused design teams, are you?

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⚡ Tip

How to Be a Top of Mind Designer

It’s rare that the shift and design tips column ever align in this newsletter but this is one such event and this tip comes in at a good time, specially if you are trying to stand out as a creative in a sea of sameness.

There are two parts to staying top of mind.

1) Building Trust
2) Maintaining Trust

The first part of these tips come from Tom Hirst. He says:

Marketing (for a freelancer) is about trust.

If people trust you, they’ll buy from you.

7 ways to gain trust:

- Be discoverable (online and offline)
- Be authentic (don't fabricate)
- Be transparent (show results)
- Be accessible (help people)
- Be relatable (tell your story)
- Be brilliant (do great work)
- Be useful (spread value)

The second part comes from everything I have learnt as an Industrial Designers

7 ways to maintain trust

- Share your story through content (online and offline)
- Write more comments (be clear and offer value)
- Share your unique perspective on targeted news (free value)
- Share your work and talk about both results and process
- Show up to design events (make friends)
- Join your local design community (No community? Build one)
- Don’t be apologetic for your obsession


I will write more about content for designers soon in the coming year so stay tuned in if you are interested.

Happy designing fam!

💊 Resources

3 links to boost your creativity.

• FictiveKin Websystems is a handbook sharing the best design principles to follow when creating a web system

• Deck.Gallery is my new go-to website for amazing looking design presentations, brand guidelines, pitch decks and keynotes

• High Resolution is my favorite design podcast/video series although 6 years old and only 25 episodes long.