What is visual craft, actually?
I’m coming up on my first year as a full time designer, and I’ve been reflecting on my growth. I can feel the improvement in problem decomposition, systems thinking, product strategy
Visual craft is harder to articulate.
Visual craft is both science and art
There’s a foundational layer — hierarchy, typography, color, spacing — the stuff you can actually study. And then there’s the other half that comes from taste, a part that only comes from repetition, from testing and being wrong.
Good craft is not about making something look cool or beautiful. Craft, in the context of UX, is about making something feel the way it was supposed to feel — and making sure it actually works for your audience.
I keep coming back to the cooking competition, Culinary Class Wars. One of the judges never scored dishes on his own taste; he scored them on whether the dish delivered what it was trying to deliver. A curry that tastes punchy and loud but was supposed to feel like home or nostalgia, has failed, even if it tastes incredible. Regardless of whether that is because the chef lacked intention or the diner didn’t understand it. The bottom line is it didn’t tell the story the chef intended it to.
Every design decision needs intention
My mentor believes that “every visual decision needs a rationale.” If you can defend it, you’re probably doing good design. I believe this too.
But sometimes, rationales conflict. Two defensible choices can point in opposite directions, and “I have a reason” stops being useful as a tiebreaker.
When that happens, user experience wins. Which decision is best for the user?
Everything below that is taste and testing. You show work, ship it, and learn from observing the outcomes. And slowly, that feedback becomes the taste you’re building, an instinct you build one rep at a time.
Some tangible ways to improve craft
A few things have actually moved the needle for me:
- Iterate more. Do “a dozen more iterations,” even when you think you are already done. Naturally, some will stand out more than others; answering why is the key to growth.
- Asking other designers how something feels. Jamming on visuals specifically, not the whole problem.
- Remembering that visual design is present in every project, even the unglamorous ones, and treating that as an opportunity instead of an afterthought.
- Ask yourself “why” on every visual decision, even the small ones. Especially the small ones.
How do you measure your own craft?
Keep a visual record of your work over time.
I went back and looked at stuff I made two years ago. It looks bad now. Like really bad. But a year ago, I couldn’t have told you why it looked bad, or what I’d have done differently. I didn’t have the taste or experience yet.
Now I do. I can look at old work and articulate exactly what’s off — the hierarchy, the spacing, the thing it was trying to feel like versus the thing it actually feels like. That gap is the growth. It’s just not the kind of growth you can perceive overnight.
So what is visual craft?
If I strip away the principles and the rationale-chasing, here’s what I think visual craft really is: it’s storytelling.
Every visual decision is intentional. What am I trying to make someone understand and feel, and does every choice on the screen serve that? That’s craft.