After reading the article, I took a solid pause to process it and figure out not only how to start my response, but also whether I even wanted to copy-paste from the original. I prefer the hard mode, so let’s go with a summary that better shows what I actually understood from the text and then it’s up to you to decide. Though I will start with the very same quote the author used:

“The thing that pisses me off the most is the degradation of the intellectual role of the designer.”

“The thing that pisses me off the most is the degradation of the intellectual role of the designer.”

What a striking way to paint a deliberately raw picture of a profession losing its cultural weight. In What Design Can’t Do — Graphic Design between Automation, Relativism, Élite and Cognitariat, Lorusso does exactly that.

He begins with

the gig economy,

where design appears side by side with everyday services. A logo for five dollars. A poster for nine. Websites squeezed in between Excel sheets. Platforms like Fiverr and TaskRabbit don’t elevate design — they flatten it, shrinking intellectual labor into a routine service.

Automation

is another force in this story. Not the distant sci-fi fear of robots replacing humans, but the everyday reality of software defaults and online generators. Lorusso recalls Vonnegut’s Player Piano: once a movement is recorded, a machine repeats it endlessly. Opening Word or InDesign feels the same. The page isn’t blank at all — it’s already filled with invisible choices. Margins. Fonts. Grids. Someone else’s design before you even start.

From here comes

template culture

Why spend time on small decisions when the default can be celebrated for its efficiency? British designer Daniel Eatock once created a generic poster for any event. One poster fits all. He proved his own redundancy. The irony? The designer disappears.

Lorusso also highlights

appropriation and visual relativism

Kraftwerk sleeves modeled on Constructivism, Peter Saville borrowing from Futurism, Tibor Kalman inspired by supermarket signs. High and low collapse into an endless carousel. Minimalist, maximalist, nostalgic, futuristic — pick your poison:

“No more rules! Anything goes. Nothing leads.”

“No more rules! Anything goes. Nothing leads.”

The “star designer” fades, their once singular voice drowned in a crowded digital marketplace. Others move in the opposite direction, toward writing.

The writer-designer intellectualizes practice, publishing essays and research first, sometimes outsourcing the visual outcome entirely. But this new role rarely leaves the design bubble — recognized only by other designers.

At the same time, design seeps into everyday life in almost invisible ways. A new Facebook cover. A blog template swap. A PowerPoint tweak. Small chores, but Lorusso calls this

diluted design

We are all “hyperemployed,” juggling countless small tasks that resemble design. In this world, graphic design risks being valued on the same level as sending an email. Even politics illustrates this shift.

Bernie Sanders’ loose, “authentic” campaign visuals felt more powerful than Hillary Clinton’s flawless corporate branding. And Trump’s meme machine — chaotic, amateur, built with free tools — spread faster than any official campaign. While professionals debated kerning, memes captured the public imagination.

Education does not escape either. Students are urged to “make the world a better place,” running on coffee and competition, while ignoring their own precarious future. Critical design borrows from startup logic, promising to solve complex problems with shiny artifacts.

The result is what Lorusso calls

the entreprecariat

designers forced to be both entrepreneurs and precarious workers, hustling endlessly but rarely secure.

His conclusion is bleak. Graphic design has shifted from creative craft to cognitive labor. The battle against free tools and unpaid work seems lost: in a world drowning in templates, why pay? Schools become “temporary autonomous élites,” selling students borrowed time before sending them back into uncertainty. At worst, design is reduced to a service micromanaged down to:

“Two points left, two points right. What remains is the haunting sense of marginality”

“Two points left, two points right. What remains is the haunting sense of marginality”

A profession that once promised cultural authority now struggles to prove its worth.

The designer is no longer an intellectual figure but part of the cognitariat — overworked, undervalued, and lost in the noise of contemporary life.

Lorusso's perspective on template culture, diluted design, and the precarious life of the cognitariat is striking — and at times convincing. Still, as I read, I kept asking myself:

From where I stand as a UI/UX designer, things look different and far more positive.

bigger then you think

Honestly, I read the essay a couple of times, in case I missed something the first time, and each time I kept thinking about the same thing: how deeply design has spread its roots into our lives.

Today design is no longer some unique form of expression that only the narrow "blessed elite" is allowed to touch, but a trainable skill that an ordinary person uses daily.

"Today design is no longer some unique form of expression that only the narrow "blessed elite" is allowed to touch, but a trainable skill that an ordinary person uses daily."

"Today design is no longer some unique form of expression that only the narrow "blessed elite" is allowed to touch, but a trainable skill that an ordinary person uses daily."

People far from our “high profession” make logos, presentations, and social media posts because they value the role of design. They know that people love with their eyes! In other words, visual form directly affects success. That is why templates, marketplaces and a variety of creative tools are in such high demand.

Template culture, in this sense, is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it simplifies and makes design more accessible at the cost of uniqueness. On the other hand, it protects both beginners and design as a system itself from potential chaos.

It is like padding the room with airbags so the kid does not bump their head and the parents will not need to call in a "doctor" (aka designer). But because of this, the market is flooded with repetitive, cookie-cutter solutions — the very marginalization of design Lorusso talks about.

These shifts also transform the role of the designer.

Today, a designer does not just make things beautiful, metaphorical or profound. They explain, educate, moderate, and often act as a digital manager facilitating the connection of marketing, strategy, and visual communication. You could say the modern designer is a multi-armed architect of processes.

The true value of a designer now lies in strategic thinking and in the ability to turn separate elements into a coherent system. In fact, I would argue the ability to create such systems is the very peak of contemporary design.

Feel free to quote me on that later.

A template gives a quick answer but remains identical and, in a way, isolated.

"The brilliance of design today lies in building systems that can withstand external chaos of marketplaces, social media, and last-minute client edits."

"The brilliance of design today lies in building systems that can withstand external chaos of marketplaces, social media, and last-minute client edits."

The paradox is that design is a human-made thing, and humans are prone to trends. One of them is the cyclical nature of our preferences.

If the system is the peak design achievement today, could the next peak be a return to the unique art object?

"Will design once again be sold as art rather than as a service? Yes? No? I have no idea!"

"Will design once again be sold as art rather than as a service? Yes? No? I have no idea!"

What I do know is that it will be accompanied by template-based practices. If elitism ever comes back as “the thing”, it will be assessed differently — by rarity, the manmade, and the unfiltered, one-of-a-kind experience.