Design: Weekly Summary (November 03-9, 2025)

I’d say this week felt like watching a neighbourhood debate from the cafe window. Different voices, same street. Some folks fussed about how things look. Others argued about what things actually do. A couple of pieces were waving flags for community and craft. There’s a real tug-of-war here between spectacle and substance, between rules that flatten personality and small acts that try to keep personality alive. Read on — there’s a bit of grumbling, a bit of wonder, and a few useful nudges if you’re thinking about what design actually means in practice.

The shiny things: spectacle, projection, and contests

First up: a festive, slightly mad idea. Ian Mansfield writes about Battersea Power Station inviting people to design Christmas-tree-like images to be blasted up the chimneys. You’ve seen light displays on buildings; this one asks you to make it on an Apple device. Submissions due late November, projections from early to late December, no cash prize, just the thrill of being up in lights.

I’d describe this as design-as-event. To me, it feels like a mash-up of community art and corporate sponsorship. It’s the sort of thing that, on one hand, can feel magical — like putting a paper star on a cake. On the other, it’s a reminder that big venues need sponsors to pay the bills. People will show up with hot chocolate and point. Others will roll their eyes and call it brand theatre. Both reactions make sense.

There’s something else here too. The call requires Apple-made art. That’s oddly specific. It’s like asking people to bring only navy blue ornaments to a street party. It narrows who can play, and it nudges the output towards a particular ecosystem. Which is fine for some folks, but not inclusive for others. That detail, I think, is worth a pause.

Also worth noticing: no monetary prize. Recognition only. That’s the kind of carrot that works for some designers — the bragging rights, the photo in your portfolio — and not for others who expect money for time and craft. It’s a small cultural flashpoint. People will either make something whimsical because they love it, or they’ll opt out because their time is time.

If you want to poke at this more, the piece is a short read and it teases the idea of design as public spectacle. It’s the kind of thing that lights up Instagram for a week, and then everyone moves on. But sometimes that week matters.

Apple and the small wars: Liquid Glass, Tahoe icons, and usability grief

There’s a steady drumbeat this week about Apple’s aesthetics. Two posts, in particular, took the controversy by the horns.

Callum Booth rails against Liquid Glass. He calls it impractical. The gist: Apple tried to make interfaces feel like glass. But on real devices — phones and laptops — the idea just doesn’t land. The reflections, the glossy bits, the attempts at realism, they look nice in a marketing render, but they’re fiddly in everyday use. You end up with interfaces that look clever but don’t help you work faster or better. The post suggests these moves are more about internal politics and identity loss than about engineering or user needs.

Stephen Hackett takes aim at MacOS 26 (Tahoe) icon rules. He’s bothered that icons must all become squircles. The squircle conversation is familiar if you’ve followed platform design for a while. What’s new here is the strictness. Hackett laments the loss of character. Icons used to be mini-postcards. Now they’re the same shaped cookie, with less personality. He’s not saying every icon should be baroque, but the new rules feel like a paint-by-numbers kit. Some icons got nicer — DVD Player, Image Capture — but the overall trend is toward homogeny.

Read both pieces together and you get a picture: there’s a push for neatness and uniformity that’s starting to squeeze out small, odd, useful things. It’s like a baker insisting every loaf be the same size and shape. Sure, shelves look tidy. But when did we stop liking seeded loaves or the odd baguette with a collapsed heel? People miss variety. People miss usefulness.

There is also a deeper point in both critiques. The problem isn’t purely aesthetics. It’s about how design decisions map to day-to-day experience. When the interface becomes a style exercise, the tools can become less helpful. It’s an old gripe, but it keeps coming up. You might call it the difference between dressing up a car and making it handle corners.

Form versus outcome: the impostor work problem

Not So Common Thoughts wrote a thoughtful piece called “In Appearance Only.” It moves the conversation away from pixels to purpose. The post argues that a lot of what passes for good work — whether made by humans or AI — looks competent but doesn’t actually solve the right problem. People follow processes. Machines follow prompts. Both can produce something that looks fine. But it’s only the appearance.

I’d say this is the heart of a lot of designer frustration lately. We get rewarded for things that look tidy. We use checklists and reviews that confirm “this is done.” But the actual outcome — did it help someone, reduce a friction, clarify a decision — is left unmeasured. The article suggests changing the evaluation: judge by outcomes, not by how pretty the artifacts are.

There’s a practical angle too. If you’re a middle manager or a project lead, you may not notice this until a product launch flops. That’s when the glossy visuals don’t translate into retention or conversion or whatever metric you care about. It’s a subtle rot. You only smell it when things go wrong. The piece nudges readers to reconnect the work back to the original problem. Track the effect. Ask the awkward questions.

This notion ties back into the Apple posts. You can make a UI look like glass or make all icons conform, but does it change how someone interacts with their device every day? That’s the worthwhile question, and it’s one that doesn’t get asked enough.

Teams, orgs, and the future of creative work

On a related note, Paul Jun lays out a prediction: product, brand, and marketing teams will collapse onto themselves. He’s not being coy; he means the current silos are slowly killing original work. Marketing grabs design for the message, product steals it back for features, brand tries to keep control. The result: everyone points fingers and creative work gets diluted.

The prescription is to empower small teams. Let product, brand, and marketing work together earlier, not in a handoff conveyor belt. Paul argues that integrated teams produce more coherent experiences. He’s bullish on teams that have real autonomy. That way, you don’t have marketing insisting on a campaign that undermines usability, or product shipping something that clashes with the brand promise. It’s sensible and feels overdue.

This resonates with the other posts. If design is only a surface-level thing, it becomes an arm of marketing. If design is about outcomes, it needs to be part of product strategy. Paul’s piece reads like a plea for sanity. It’s also practical: smaller teams move faster, with fewer political jams. You don’t need a big org chart to deliver something that works.

If you work in a company where design is always asked to dress up a decision that’s already been made, Paul’s prediction will feel familiar. You probably nod, maybe mutter a swear. That’s honest.

Architecture, values, and the moral of beauty

A Learning a Day took a different route: architecture as a mirror of societal values. The piece dives into Gothic architecture, using Westminster’s church as a case study. The point is simple but necessary: buildings are not just shelter. They encode beliefs about beauty, community, and what matters.

The author contrasts the US — efficiency-first — with places like Hungary, where beauty and community are more central to planning. That comparison doesn’t pretend one is right in all cases, but it’s a useful nudge. It presses the question: what do our public places say about our priorities? A town hall that looks like a warehouse says one thing. A church or square that invites lingering says another.

This connects with the design discourse in a quiet way. The Apple posts rail against homogeneity and loss of craft. The architecture piece asks if our built environment is doing the same. Are we designing for the fastest metric? Or are we designing for belonging? The two concerns are cousins.

There’s also something about scale. Architecture is unapologetically public and long-lasting. A design decision there matters for decades. UI trends change every few years. But the mindset is shared: when you prioritize short-term efficiency, you risk losing the soul of a place, or the soul of a product. The piece is a gentle reminder that values show up in materials, in ornament, in who a place is for.

UX London: a calendar for thinking people

A lighter, practical note: Jeremy Keith announced UX London 2026. It’s back in June with themed days: discovery, design, delivery. You can buy single-day tickets, or the three-day pass if you want the full soak. There will be talks and workshops. Speaker announcements start early next year. Early bird tickets are a thing.

I’d say conference announcements are always half-glossy promo and half-community heartbeat. UX London has a reputation for being useful. The detail that stuck out: proposals are encouraged, but don’t pitch an AI-heavy talk. That’s interesting. It’s not an outright ban, but a signal. The organizers seem to want practical craftspeople, not hype.

For anyone who cares about in-person exchange, this is the sort of calendar marker you put in your diary. Conferences aren’t magic, but they matter for the serendipity — that awkward chat over coffee that changes a project. UX London tries to make space for that.

Recurring themes and the small fights that matter

A few patterns keep repeating across these pieces.

• Surface versus substance. This is the loudest motif. From Apple’s shiny UI experiments to the “appearance only” piece, a lot of writing this week asks: are we doing the attractive thing, or the useful thing? The answer is rarely binary. Often, it’s both — but only if teams care about outcomes.

• Homogenisation versus personality. The squircle icon fight is symbolic. When platforms force sameness, you lose quirks that help people recognise, remember, and connect. This matters. It’s like going to a village where every shop has the same sign. You lose a sense of place.

• Teams and power. Where design sits in the org chart shapes what design becomes. When marketing or brand dominates, design can become a wrapper. When design is integrated and trusted, outcomes improve. That’s not theoretical. It’s structural.

• Publicness and community. The Battersea competition and the architecture essay touch on design as civic life. Design isn’t only pixels in private screens. It shows up in squares, events, and rituals. That public side of design deserves attention, because it’s where people meet and memories form.

These themes aren’t surprising if you follow design regularly. But the tone this week felt more urgent. Maybe that’s because the platform owners — the big tech players — keep nudging products toward flatness. Maybe it’s because AI has made folks question what counts as real craft. Or maybe it’s the calendar — autumn always brings new OS updates and yearly events, and that stirs commentary.

Points of agreement, points of argument

Most authors seemed to agree on a few things. One: design should care about people, not just optics. Two: variety and character matter. Three: team structures limit what’s possible. Where they diverged was on solutions.

• Some were nostalgic and wanted more craft preserved. That’s in Hackett’s note about icons and in the architecture piece. They want the weird and the wonderful kept alive.

• Others wanted clear, practical changes: measure outcomes, restructure teams, stop treating design as a stamp of approval. That’s the practical end of Not So Common Thoughts and Paul Jun.

• Then there’s the spectacle crowd. The Battersea project isn’t trying to change how we use our devices or how a team is organised. It’s about community moments. It’s OK for something to be mostly spectacle. It still counts as design, and it still moves people in small ways.

So the debate is partly about priorities. Which of these things do you fix first? The consensus seems to be: small teams, clearer measures, more respect for craft. But people also want public, joyful things. You don’t have to choose one or the other. It’s just hard to do both at scale.

Little analogies that stuck with me

• The Liquid Glass story felt like a new coat of paint on an old toolbox. The box doesn’t work better just because it looks slick; the paint chips, and then you notice the loose hinge.

• The squircle icon mandate is like a town council ordering every shop to use the same window display. For a while, the street looks tidy. Then you realise which shops you liked aren’t recognisable anymore.

• The Battersea competition is like the annual neighbourhood bake-off. No prize money, but bragging rights and photos. It brings people together and makes a memory. Sometimes that’s the only thing you need.

• The architecture piece is a reminder that buildings are like family photos in frames you can live in. They tell stories about what people valued at the time.

These aren’t perfect analogies, but they’re useful. They help the abstract arguments feel like something you bump into on your way to the shops.

A few small takeaways you might actually use

If you’re on a product team: ask what problem you’re solving before you pick a style guide. Measure the thing that matters. Don’t let design become a sticker.

If you’re a manager: try smaller, cross-functional teams. Let them own a problem end-to-end. It’s less spaghetti on the wall and more real delivery.

If you’re a designer: pick your moments. Push back where it matters (usability, recognition, personality). Let some projects be joyful spectacle — people need those too.

If you’re an event-goer: UX London looks like a decent place to resurface from Zoom fatigue and talk with people who do the work.

If you like civic design: watch the Battersea thing and maybe take a friend. It’s free to look and free to judge.

Little asides and tiny digressions (because why not?)

You know how sometimes your phone gets a software refresh and you stare at one tiny change like a baffled neighbour watching someone repaint a fence? That feeling is part of this week’s vibe. Small moves on the surface, big feelings underneath. People get oddly defensive about icons. They’re like socks — you don’t notice until the hole appears.

Also — and this is a petty thought — asking people to use only Apple devices for a public art call is a bit like asking pub regulars to sing only if they’ve got a vinyl record player. It narrows the choir. Not the end of the world, but it does change who gets to sing. It’s a small thing that shifts the chorus.

And yes — conferences asking you not to pitch AI shows that the organisers are weary of hype. They want talks that teach people to do things, not to be dazzled. That’s comforting, like a proper cup of tea after a vending-machine coffee.

Where to click next

All these pieces are short enough to read in a coffee break. If you want the dive: read Callum Booth for the Liquid Glass gripes, Stephen Hackett for the icon nitpicks, and Not So Common Thoughts for the deeper argument about appearance versus outcome. If you like architecture thinking, the Westminster essay is quietly persuasive. And if you want to keep the conversation practical, Paul Jun’s piece is the one that tries to sketch the future of orgs.

There’s a lot of small grumbles in these posts. But they’re not just nostalgia. They’re practical concerns about what we lose when we prioritise uniformity, or brand over craft, or spectacle over solid outcomes. Or maybe you think some of this is just noise. That’s fine too — the best part of this week’s reads is that they make you notice the choices.

So that’s the roundup. Pick one piece, read it, and then do the neighbourhood thing: tell someone about it over a cuppa, or better, do something small in your own work that pushes back against blandness. It doesn’t take much. Sometimes a little oddness goes a long way.

More detail lives on the authors’ pages. They wrote it better than I can paraphrase, and they drop the links if you want to go straight to the source. Happy poking around.