My favorite parts in this...

“Should designers code?” — debates that happen every year or two on Design Twitter, we would constantly see that designers did not all want to learn or take the time to code.

Now we’re in a world where it’s easier for designers to put their ideas into code. If you look at the prototyping aspect alone, in the Canvas, whether you’re working with production materials or prototyping, you need to be able to riff and explore and try things, and design representations are just one part of that, so is code.

The even bigger question, for the philosophers and art-theory folks, is, “What’s design?”, “What’s art?”, how do you differentiate design versus art? It’s muddy, but design has an aspect of problem-solving, it also has creativity. Art, I think, is a lot of things — you can get endless definitions of design and art — but I think of it as trying to take an emotion, idea, or concept and communicate it to someone in a way that really affects them. That’s not best framed as problem-solving, whereas design is.

How about this definition: art is an expression that it’s meant to be consumed by the end user, and design is meant to serve the end user.

DF: Well, I don’t even know if you should define art as being for an end user.

Yeah, good point.

DF: For me, one of the definitions I lean on is that design is where problem-solving meets creativity. Figma has always had people using the platform for creative use cases. But now you fast-forward to 2026, and design, creativity, media, in some ways art and in some ways not, and advertising — it’s all kind of merging together, it’s all one thing in a way I wouldn’t even have said in 2025. If you believe we’re in an attention economy — you experience this every day — and you believe you have to have a differentiated voice and really have a point of view in your work to stand out, and you think the way people judge software is the design, that’s the differentiator, but you also have to grab someone’s attention, design and brand are so connected. It’s all really coming together in such an interesting way, because of these second-order effects of more creation happening in the first place.

There is even a Bitcoin Lightning shoutout specifically Elizabeth Stark. woo doggie 🐶