Every week the Focus Lab design team meets up to talk about the work. Client feedback we're navigating, what's clicking, what's not. We call that meeting "Probs and Solves" and it's one of my favorite hours of the week.

But we're not just talking about the work. We're just talking. Sharing what shows we're watching, cracking jokes, passing around memes and new tools, and making genuinely weird, stupid, brilliant stuff together just because it makes us laugh. The work we deliver to our clients isn't the quality that it is despite the informality of our time together, but because of it.

Design has always persisted and grown this way. Through people. Through the mentor who shows you how they see before they show you what they make. Through conversations that rewire your brain and change how you approach the work forever. That stupid joke logo someone made ends up forming the basis of a legitimately great idea. That transmission is the culture of design. It's why we do it. It's what we came here for.

AI enters that culture the same way literally everything else does: someone finds it, shares it, the group tries it out, and it either sticks or it doesn't. The conversation, the curiosity, and the work itself stay human. Clients feel that because humans feel that. They always have and they always will. AI will kill our industry the same way photography killed painting or Photoshop killed graphic design. It won't.

So here's what I'd ask of this community: just keep talking to each other. If you're early in your career, message the designer whose work inspires you and ask them something or share something of your own. If you're further along, be worth reaching out to. Be generous with your knowledge and your time. Bring people into your process, and ask to be brought into theirs.

Designers adapt. It's not a response to AI, it's just the job.

Stetson Finch, Design Lead

LINK ROUNDUP

1. Design Writing Needs Designers Writing

For designers, "writing forces you to figure out exactly what your idea is; if it isn't working, you'll know immediately. Where design is like a ballet – implicit ideas carried through form – then writing is closer to a theatre – your thinking has to be explicitly spoken."

2. The Bezier Game

The pen tool is mightier than the sword. This game challenges you to draw shapes using as few nodes as possible – a deceptively simple test.

3. Taste in the Time of Slop

We covered taste last month. Turns out we're not done. Cole Hammack, Principal Strategy Director at BUCK, makes the case that taste can't be scrolled into: "Taste gets developed in the world, not on the feed."

4. Symbl.space

Built by Guillaume Berthonneau, Symbl tests logos against different contexts "because every mark should be tested before it's trusted."

5. Guess the Logo Swoosh

Difficulty level: extreme. One is Nike. Good luck. Answer Key

CREATIVE SPOTLIGHT

With over 500 pieces, this archive features graphic ephemera compiled by graphic artist Anthony Burrill over his career. As he told Creative Boom, "You should cultivate your sense of creativity constantly by looking for new inspiration in unlikely places. It's sometimes good to look back and see the things I've been involved in with a sense of satisfaction. But I'm always more interested in what's coming next."