The cynicism our current moment inspires appears to be, regrettably, universal. For millennials, who watched the better-world-by-design ship go down in real time, it’s hard-earned. We saw the idealist fantasy of creative autonomy, social impact, and purpose-driven work slowly unravel over the past decade, and are now left holding the bag. Gen Z designers have the same pessimism, but arrived at it from a different angle. They’re entering the field already skeptical, shaped by a job market in freefall and constant warnings of their own obsolescence. But the result is the same: an industry full of people who care deeply, but feel let down. As Shar Biggers describes it, designers are “realising that much of their work is being used to push for profit rather than change, making the rich richer, and being manipulated for misinformation. I’m constantly meeting designers who are looking to do work they believe in, and they’ve yet to find an opportunity to do that. And when they do, even that lets them down for numerous reasons.”

The arc of disillusionment for any given designer has become somewhat predictable. As students, designers are encouraged to make expressive nuanced work, and rewarded for experimentation and personal voice. The implication, of course, is that this is what a design career will look like: meaningful, impactful, self-directed. But then graduation hits, and many land their first jobs building out endless Google Slides templates or resizing banner ads. The disconnect is jarring – not because the work is beneath them, but because no one prepared them for how constrained and compromised most design jobs actually are. We trained people to care deeply and then funnelled them into environments that reward detachment. ​​And the longer you stick around, the more disorienting the gap becomes – especially as you rise in seniority. You start doing less actual design and more yapping: pitching to stakeholders, writing brand strategy decks, performing taste. Less craft, more optics; less idealism, more cynicism.