Design misfits, I see you

An exploration on craft and soft skills

Hi, I’m Maureen and I work as a product designer and design content creator.
The Cursor Magazine is my online publication on design and career.

---

TL;DR Designers whose skillset focus on the intangible soft skills might feel like misfits in an industry that focuses so strongly on "craft". Craft is oftentimes seen as excellence in execution. This article argues how craft is also about the strategic, human-centred skills that bring design to life.

I’ve always felt like a design misfit. The jobtitle "designer" always felt like a pair of boots that were both too big to fill and too small to fit at the same time.

I don’t have a design degree. I don’t live laugh love visual design. Spending all day working away in Figma doesn’t excite me. Just between us: I look forward to AI taking over the parts of my job that involve spending hours in design tools, meticulously crafting high-fidelity prototypes with flawless animations.

Early in my career I struggled to fit into the conventional mold of what a product designer “should” be - especially when these roles often felt like rebranded visual designer positions. This struggle forced me to reflect on the role of a designer and what design craft truly means.

What does design craft mean, anyway?

Does design craft refer to being a Figma wizard? Is it about mastering design methodologies? Does it mean having a deep understanding of visual and interaction patterns? The term ‘craft’ seems to mostly focus on the hands-on execution of design work, but defining it solely in technical terms feels limiting.

In most of the articles I read online about design craft, it seems like craft is associated with finesse, taste and a high bar for quality. Hang Xu recently explored the definition of design craft in a series of posts on LinkedIn, presenting two perspectives:

More traditional, non-craft-focused designers might view craft as being too UI-centric, prioritizing aesthetics over usability and problem-solving.

Craft-focused designers, however, see it as a fundamental requirement. To them, taste and strong instincts are what separate great designers from good ones, enabling faster and more effective decision-making rather than relying on time-consuming processes.

I believe defining design craft solely as technical execution is shortsighted. There is an intangible yet equally impactful side of design craft. One that involves building relationships, facilitating decision-making, defining strategy, and articulating ideas through storytelling. This side of craft is often undervalued because it’s harder to quantify, but it’s essential to the success of a designer’s work.

Brick or mortar

This is where I found inspiration in Brad Frost’s article Job Title: It’s Complicated. Frost categorizes people into two types: brick people and mortar people.

• Bricks are those who fit clearly defined roles. Think of the traditional product designer who aligns perfectly with the job description—one who thrives in hands-on execution.

• Mortar people are the connectors—the glue between disciplines, teams, and ideas. They don’t fit neatly into a single role but instead bridge gaps, helping bricks come together to create a strong structure.

Seeing my skillset through this lens helped me realize that there is a place for those who enjoy the strategic and facilitative parts of design more than the hands-on execution. Frost points out that embracing this strength comes with its own challenges:

"Because mortar people are harder to place, they need to fight for autonomy or else they’ll be pigeonholed into the role of a brick. This leads to frustration and dissatisfaction."

I’ve experienced this firsthand. Whenever I found myself in roles that defined design craft solely as pixel-perfect execution, I felt both intimidated and constrained. I don’t enjoy spending most of my day moving pixels in Figma. I see design as a profession where stakeholder management, storytelling, collaboration, and communication aren’t ancillary but essential. The best designs emerge not just from beautiful execution but from the ability to align people, define strategy and tell a compelling story.

So, if these skills are critical to design success, why don’t we consider them part of craft?

Design: making things…happen.

The term "soft skills" has always felt like a misnomer. Skills like stakeholder management, storytelling, and facilitation are some of the hardest to master. They require practice, experience, and deep intuition - just like the hands-on aspects of design.

Reflecting on my own career, it's mostly the intangible skills that lead to real impact. Building relationships with a breadth of stakeholders before starting a big project. Bringing together expertise knowledge from different disciplines through facilitation. These moments aren’t just byproducts of design work; they are design work.

Design is not just about making things but also about making things happen. That requires more than just executional craft it requires strategic craft.

A sidenote about AI

I want to make a note about AI tools here, since we're talking about craft and a lot of AI-powered design tools seem to focus on the hands-on parts of design.

I believe the coming of AI tools makes our jobs easier, especially when it comes to craft part. Imagine a future where we can load design systems and common patterns into an AI-powered design tool and quickly build realistic prototypes. This (very optimistic) vision gives me hope. What if AI will not take away our jobs, but rather enable us to truly focus on the human part of design?

For the brick-designers, AI can pose a threat. What if you focus your skills purely on execution. Will AI not be able to do this faster and more efficiently? For mortar designers, AI presents an opportunity. If AI handles execution, designers can focus more on research, ideation, and the human aspects of design— the parts that AI cannot easily replicate.

So what if, instead of replacing designers, AI enables us to elevate our roles?

There's a place for us misfits

Finding product design roles that fully embrace the breadth of a designer’s toolkit is challenging and I've not always been succesful at finding the right role. As a result, I oftentimes felt like a design misfit. Diving deeper into the topic of design craft and reflecting on Brad Frost's brick and mortar metaphor made me realize that design craft is more than just execution.

True craft is the ability to seamlessly connect vision and execution. The ability to move between hands-on design work and the strategic, human-centric skills that make it all possible.

We might have to carve it out ourselves but after all, there's a place for us mortar-designers.

---

I’d love to hear from you….

Have you ever felt like a mortar designer in a world that priorities bricks? How have you navigated that challenge?

In the next publication: Rebuilding my confidence

In the next publication I’ll talk about my journey of reconnecting with my creativity and regaining my confidence as a designer after navigating a toxic workplace.