In Design Machines: How to survive the digital apocalypse Travis Gertz discusses the precarious future of web design and how we as designers can use editorial design to inspire the rich reactions and connections that magazines make on readers.

• We design like machines
• In modern screen-based design, everything looks the same.
• techniques and trends like responsive design, flat design
• "The practice of design involves a whole new mountain of influence crunching down, strong arming decisions, imposing standards, and questioning abilities."
  1. "Metrics-obsessed pseudo-science"
  2. "Copycat culture"
  3. "Crap content selling crap"
• We design like machines
• Content is being conformed to corporate templates -- Squarespace, The Grid, Medium, et al.
• Editorial design
  • “how do magazines achieve rich reactions and connections, and how do we translate those approaches to the screen?”
  • "Unlike the web, editorial systems are designed for variation, not prescription. They are a starting point, not a final deliverable."
  • Content drives design and design augments the content.
  • "Let’s destroy the arbitrary division between UX and visual design, let’s pull research away from our own reality distortion fields, and let’s give our content more responsibility."