Fifteen years, three tools
From Photoshop comps for agencies that printed their presentations to Figma files with a developer inside them. The tools changed completely. The job did not.
I started cutting layouts in Photoshop for advertising agencies that still printed their presentations. A homepage was a 1200-pixel-wide JPEG, and if the client wanted to see the hover state you made a second JPEG. Slicing that file into HTML was somebody else’s problem, usually a very patient person two desks away.
Then came Sketch, and with it the idea that a screen was a set of reusable parts rather than a picture. Symbols, shared styles, a plugin for everything. For the first time the file I handed over was closer to a specification than to an illustration.
Today the same job happens in Figma, with a design system in the left panel and a developer commenting in the file while I work. Prototypes click. Tokens sync. The distance between what I draw and what ships has never been shorter.
What did not change
Every one of those transitions came with the same anxiety: the tool would make the craft obsolete. It never did, because the craft was never the tool.
The job, in 2011 and now, is the same three moves. Decide what matters on this screen. Make that thing obvious. Make everything else quiet. Photoshop could not do that for me, Figma cannot do it for me, and whatever comes next will not either.
What the tools did change is who gets to see the thinking. A printed comp hid every decision behind a finished surface. A Figma file exposes the grid, the spacing, the component logic, the alternatives you tried and left in a corner of the canvas. That transparency is uncomfortable at first and then it becomes the best argument you have.