Ellen McGirt

I've been designing digital products for 25 years. I remember when the big decision was going from 800×600 to 1024 pixels. I've lived through multiple cycles of VR hype , watched the web go from static pages to social networks to AI everything. I've launched products that failed spectacularly and others that succeeded for reasons no one predicted.

AI may mark a turning point in how we create, but as TK Tennakoon writes, the hand that guides the brush, human ingenuity, remains irreplaceable.

In her first opinion piece for Design Observer, Kim Devall, the creative director at Bindery, cites the rise of automation and new technology as a fundamental threat to doing good work. She encourages creatives of all stripes to slow down, embrace the struggle, and really make the work. She knows it's not easy. “There's no shortcut for acquiring good taste, it's something you have to build over time,” she said via email.

In a wide-ranging conversation with Design Observer, the architect of IBM's “Hallmark” transformation explains why most corporate transformations

Readers weigh in, quietly, on the gun control debate, retailers are getting the stink eye for commercializing Juneteenth, and nobody's quite sure if Queen Elizabeth's Jubilee celebration was racist or not.

The Supreme Court case Louisiana v. Callais gutted the Voting Rights Act and rewrote the rules of American democracy. Draw the Line spends ten episodes telling the inside story of Louisiana's fight over power, maps, and who gets left off them. As goes Louisiana, so goes the rest of the country. Who's fighting for your vote?