Design through every lens: 7 perspectives on the industry

The design scene is constantly changing. Every new AI tool, trend, and opportunity shifts its shape in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. At Readymag, we watch those changes closely and constantly rethink the landscape, spotlighting both timely and timeless design through the Examples collection and the Websites of the Year award. In 2025, the award breaks formats, welcomes experiments, and embraces boundary-free creativity that shapes the web.

We’ve asked some award jury members—people whose expertise grows in tandem with each industry shift—to share their perspectives on the design industry, innovation, and the nuances that make great websites. Read, get inspired, and submit your websites.

Who speaks:

Catalina Risso, founder and creative director at Portafolio Project. Brand and interactive designer, educator at Elisava, Barcelona. Readymag ambassador.

Valentin Baumann, visual designer at Studio Dumbar in Rotterdam. Specializes in experimental, digital, and motion design.

Cat How, founder and creative director of How&How, a digital design and branding agency with offices in London and Los Angeles.

Marcos Rodrigues, interactive design director at Porto Rocha. His past experience includes working with such digital-focused agencies as Huge Inc. and Work & Company.

Tea Uglow, co-founder of Dark Swan Institute. Former creative director for Google’s Creative Lab in Sydney.

Denis Deviatko, communication designer at Readymag.

Alexander Moskovskiy, head of design at Readymag.

What is innovation in design

Tea Uglow: Innovation is the art of playfulness. The best way to learn, or explore, and frequently the innovation itself is in the willingness to exist in a sustained state of experimentation and play with the ideas until you move past the mundane or prosaic.

Catalina Risso: In a saturated world, honesty is the innovation. It happens when design manages to remain deeply human amidst constant technological change. It’s about creating experiences that feel relevant, responsible, and emotionally resonant, where technology amplifies creativity rather than replacing it. Innovation is empathy translated into form: the courage to slow down, listen, and design with purpose. 

Cat How: Innovation isn’t about chasing the next shiny tool—it’s about asking better questions. Real innovation is in how we use our craft to tell the stories that desperately need to be told: combining curiosity, instinct, and imagination to create work of genuine impact. It’s craft meeting conscience, aesthetics meeting ethics. The most innovative thing we can do right now is make brands that make things better.

Alexander Moskovskiy: When we talk about innovation in design, there are usually two types. The first is something no one has ever done before. You look at it and think: wow, that’s different, that’s interesting. In things like this, simplicity usually plays a big role. You look at it and it just feels clean, sharp, and cool. The second type is about complex projects that are just exceptionally well executed. You see the work and immediately understand how much effort went into it, and how few people can pull something like that off.

Denis Deviatko: Innovation in design is the moment when clarity, meaning, and form align so precisely that it feels inevitable, yet never seen before. It’s rarely about technology, but resonance. The kind of work that stays with you: radical in its simplicity, precise in execution, and powerful enough to reshape visual history.

Valentin Baumann: To me, innovation lies in experimenting, collaborating, believing in an idea, questioning the idea, loving the process, and trusting the outcome.

Marcos Rodrigues: Innovation in design happens when people create something that others can genuinely relate to. When they feel seen, understood, and free to make it their own.

What makes outstanding websites

Valentin Baumann: Websites are buildings. They shape how we move, what we notice, and how we feel inside. They’re a creative playground with seemingly infinite possibilities—but bound by utilitarian restrictions. They can feel brutalist, cozy, pragmatic, and personal. But if a website feels like a building where I can’t find the toilets, or it takes three minutes to open a door, I’m out of that place fast.

Catalina Risso: A remarkable website doesn’t try to impress: it connects. It tells a story that feels authentic, with clarity and rhythm in every detail. What stays with me is not just the visuals, but the feeling the experience leaves behind: coherence, personality, and presence.

Marcos Rodrigues: A website becomes outstanding when the experience it gives truly makes sense to you. When it feels unexpected yet intuitive. That covers everything about design to me: from the visual layer to copy to interactions. Great websites are about offering something valuable rather than demanding people’s attention. That’s when the magic happens.

Denis Deviatko: Outstanding web design starts with clarity that holds everything together, even when things get loud. Decoration, rhythm, and a bit of chaos can work, as long as there’s a clear idea behind it. The best websites stick to that idea from start to finish. Nothing feels random. It’s not necessarily about being minimal—more about being intentional. When the idea holds strong, the rest can move freely around it.

Cat How: A remarkable website has a point of view—it knows exactly what it is and isn’t apologizing for it. Such websites embody a combination of meticulous craft and bold creative thinking, where every detail feels intentional yet the whole feels effortless. They don’t just look pretty: they make you feel or understand something differently, surprise you, move at unexpected rhythms, and trust you to explore. In a sea of templates, the best ones will be those that stand out with personality, confidence, and a wallop of creative bravery.

Where does design move

Catalina Risso: Over the past decade, design has moved from the surface to the system, from aesthetics to meaning. I’ve witnessed the rise of tools that democratize creation and the growth of education as a bridge between disciplines. As AI and automation accelerate, design will become increasingly focused on curation, ethics, and emotional intelligence. The future of it belongs to designers who can navigate complexity while keeping the human at the center.

Cat How: I’ve watched the industry evolve from being gatekept and siloed to wonderfully collaborative and international—you can run a world-class agency from anywhere now. The shift toward values-led design has been genuinely refreshing; clients increasingly understand that their brand must stand for something beyond selling.

With AI and emerging tech, I see two paths: one where we let tools flatten our work into a sea of sameness, and another where technology frees us to focus on the deeply human, strategic thinking that machines at the moment can’t replicate. I hope we choose the latter—using tech to amplify craft and to co-create with, allowing humans to have fun at what we do best. The designers who win will be those who pair technical fluency with a good taste for curation and creative direction. They’re also the ones educating themselves on AI right now.

Tea Uglow: Many of the changes I have seen over the recent time have replaced human labour with digital efficiencies. In-house colour reproduction; digital-to-print; HTML5; all the evolutions in video processing and streaming—I could do this with 3 or 4 people now, when I would have needed a team of 7 or 8 before. Therefore, human designers will still be involved, but the structure of work will change—especially for companies with hierarchical organizational models.

Marcos Rodrigues: I’ve seen many shifts in the industry: from the rise of flat design and the startup boom to pull-to-refresh, infinite scroll, and Tinder’s swipe gestures, all the way to today’s wave of automation and AI. The past 15 years have been wild. Looking ahead, I believe what will truly stand out is what no machine can generate: your own perspective, your own self.

Alexander Moskovskiy: The industry is evolving in a way where many things are becoming either completely interface-free or built on standardized interfaces. Individual stores turn into marketplaces, taxis become aggregators. In general, websites rely less on interfaces, and that’s a good thing. If you spend a long time inventing one good bicycle, it’ll be better than 500 bicycles invented in parallel. Because everything is being generalized and aggregated, the value of individual, distinctive work grows. So does the skill of creating something unique—something that stands out, communicates a message clearly, and is remembered.

I feel optimistic about web design in the context of current technological changes. Once upon a time, photography was expected to kill painting, but in the end, painting only benefited: people stopped just painting trees and people, and started exploring what else they could do with the medium. I believe web design will follow a similar path.

Valentin Baumann: My colleague from Studio Dumbar, Liza Enebeis, once told a thing that still resonates with me: “Creativity is constant, it’s how we create that constantly changes.”

The Readymag Websites of the Year 2025 is here so that you can showcase your work in both meaning and mastery, and thus contribute to the future of design. Submit your websites—personal or commercial—those that push limits, cross genres, and challenge conventions.