Every time I'm starting a new project from zero, I'm really asking one question: what deserves to exist?

In tech, our answer tends to be colored by minimalism. Dieter Rams famously said, "Good design is as little design as possible." But taken too far, every product starts looking the same.

A lot of people in tech believe function is king, while others lament over the loss of ornament. In the 1800s, craftsmen spent years on grand cathedrals, engraved rifles, and twenty-foot-long rugs, and it can feel like that level of craft belongs to a bygone era. But look at the way light glides across the curve of an AirPods case. Engineers sculpted that in CAD purely for the sake of beauty and delight, and knockoff AirPods can’t replicate that level of craft. So it's more accurate to say ornament never died. It just found a new vessel, hidden beneath the veneer of minimalism.

So how do you learn to see it? For me, being an eager student of life has led me to disciplines like ikebana, calligraphy, and philosophy. Each one has sharpened my sensibility, and made me a more patient, passionate, and invested maker of products that pay attention to the human. Every rabbit hole I fall down and every side project I build helps fill in the shape of my craft.

Design was born to fight for the person on the other side of the work. Dostoevsky wrote that beauty will save the world, and I believe it too. I want to make things that make people's lives a little bit easier, and a little bit more beautiful. That's what deserves to exist.

— Carolyn