It was the year 2006, and I was 13 years old. Our teacher walked us over to a new class, “Computer Lab”. I took my seat on a small plastic chair i

The future of design tools

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2024-07-08 13:00:06

It was the year 2006, and I was 13 years old. Our teacher walked us over to a new class, “Computer Lab”. I took my seat on a small plastic chair in front of a translucent turquoise teardrop-shaped iMac G3. I remember the design leaving an impression on me. It felt alien and futuristic. It was the first day so they let us play around with the computers as a sort of low-touch onboarding experience. I opened the Applications folder and spotted an application icon that caught my attention. I clicked into it and Kid Pix booted up. I was intrigued but unsuspecting. Within a few clicks, the screen came to life with animated textures, sounds and motion. I was in a daze, locked in a creative stupor, swirling down a never-ending whirlpool of randomly generated content. I had no idea computers were capable of such serendipity. My mind was struggling to capture the breadth of what I was experiencing. It sucked me in. From that day forward, I fell in love with computers. More importantly, being eternally tethered to the promise of tools unlocking creativity. The radical idea of bringing ideas to life in seconds never left me. Ever since that day, I’ve been chasing the euphoria of creation. For years I would gaslight myself, coping and convincing myself that I was being unreasonable to have a tool that realized the promise of accelerating human creativity on an exponential scale. At other times, I told myself to be patient because one day one of the big companies like Adobe, Sketch or Figma would come along and deliver true to the promise of such a tool. That day never came. Disappointed and disillusioned, I turned to history to study the path of design tools as a way to understand how we landed here in the first place and potentially how we might move forward.

To gain a deeper understanding of design tools, we must go where it all began: Adobe Photoshop. While there are other significant touchpoints such as pen to paper or oil to canvas, the personal computer or the iPhone, it’s Adobe Photoshop that marks the inflection point of what would become a Cambrian explosion of creative digital works. Nothing would ever be the same.