September 15, 2026

The joy of designing and documenting

Recollecting why I started designing in the first place and how I might be able to return to that type of work in the future.

Artificial intelligence doom in relation to my career has been hard to escape lately. The theme can be seen throughout most of my posts on this website thus far. However, I'm feeling different this morning. I wanted to capture this positivity while I have it as perspective and motivation for my future self.

This is a very incoherent post that devolves into a potentially overly optimistic idea around becoming "the village designer".

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Thinking back, who ever really wanted to design stuff for software companies? For a long while, I have genuinely loved the craft of making things with digital tools. Though, my 15 year old self would have thought what I do today is comically lame.

How it started

At some point, I lost sight of why I actually do this—as in, what made me start designing things in the first place? For me, it was snowboarding, but more fundamentally, documenting enjoyable people, places, and things that I was experiencing. I'd record and edit photos and videos of this. A fraction of the footage ended up being cool tricks, the rest, youthful tomfoolery.

I don't think this was ever a form of self-expression as much as it was a helpful mechanism to encourage appreciation and cherishing my life experiences. Especially in my early teenage years, pessimism was easy to slip into. This aspect of my life was a beacon of positivity. The act of design, gave me a way to adorn these moments. At 12 years old, this might have been maxing-out the saturation slider to amplify just how vivid an experience seemed to me...

The process of editing these photo and video artifacts turned out to be half the fun. It was enjoyable to see my ability to polish and house them improve over time. Learning new design tricks and wishing I could recreate certain effects that I saw others create started to add to my motivation of the activity. E.g Mike Benson's Knife Show videos.

Revisiting the past

This website is the first time in a long while where I am back to doing this same sort of "design" on a regular basis. It is debatable whether this is design at all—or simply personal documention (a.k.a journaling).

The label doesn't matter to me, nor do the outcomes of this specific activity. I enjoy it and it feels refreshing. I am a believer in most anything being naturally monetizable if a person is passionate enough about it and willing to spend time mastering it.

"Business rules"

That said, I'm not trying to become an influencer or bird photographer lol. Though, I am starting to see pathways where I can translate this type of work into a career within the self-imposed "business rules" I've given myself as a "grown-up".

As an adult with responsibilities (sigh), I value a certain amount of reliable income and stability. In part, this is what drove me toward career paths like in-house design at tech companies.

For example, even though it may have been more fulfilling, designing for a local business or destination that I frequent was not financially viable. This type of design is more similar to the underlying reason I started designing, at least in part, since it documents and brings-to-light something that I deeply care about and engage with IRL on a daily basis.

The time and effort required for me to nicely design and build things for this type of business has historically been beyond what most could afford. This could have been offset by increasing the number or quantity of projects that I was working on. While I am a pretty fast designer and developer, this would have involved me working all 24 hours of the day.

AI changes that

I believe it is now viable for higher-end creators to have mutually, financially sustainable partnerships with smaller businesses due to the efficiency unlock of AI. Now, this may not be "tech money", "hyper-growth", or "industry-leading design", but enough to afford a decent life and make a difference for the people and businesses close to home.

Example

I use "for example" a lot, but I find examples are helpful, so here we go again 😂. The simplest example here would be that coffee shop that has great coffee but a brand and digital presence that falls short of the product's quality. If you live in a city, this may not be relatable. I'm talking about those gems in small towns of less than 10,000 people along the interstate.

Now, in almost no time, I could build higher functioning and better looking digital experiences for these businesses than the large coffee chains. To get in to the nitty gritty details, SEO is a pain, I hate making stuff for it. It takes forever. Hiring it out on a project like this would cost too much, but it would be critical in landing tourist and interstate traffic. Agents can do this kind of thing, no problem!

Sustainability

The beauty in this idea is that it's not really "AI taking jobs". It's unlikely a small business like this would have reached for this type of specialized help in the first place due to the cost. More likely, they would have reached for a platform.

If this "village designer" approach were to take off, it could impact the revenue of larger DIY platforms (e.g. Squarespace)—my guess is it doesn't take off, though lol. To keep the positivity going, I'm going to tell myself this mostly just creates new jobs and is viable...

Free work

This same concept could be applied to "free" work. For instance, say those county parks that you absolutely adore only have Google Maps drive-by photos on the internet. The world is missing out on their beauty. While it may wreck your peaceful hideaway, if it were to be discoverable and seen, tourism traffic might sky rocket which in turn gives the local economy a much needed boost. A strong local economy in turn benefits the paid work of the "village designer".

Blissfully optimistic

There is chance of a possible future where I can simultaneously make a living doing what I enjoyed as a youth while benefiting my community: documenting and elevating the beautiful people, places, and things that I personally experience daily.

Since there is a chance, or at least I think there is a chance, I am going to start pursuing this idea and find out. I'll probably start with some of that "free work" as it will help illustrate my capabilities in a different realm than tech. It will also be a 0 consequence way to figure out how capable I am with some of the aspects of projects like this that I'm less familiar with (like photography, AEO, SEO, and so on).

Fail or succeed, I'll be back here to share once I have something worth sharing. Let's hope I take a more modest approach to the saturation slider...