Design is a Form of Care

Good design begins with curiosity — and with questions asked in good faith.

When design asks: Who is this for? In what conditions will it be used? What does it need to work well? — it solves problems. Trouble begins when those questions are replaced with answers like: This is how it’s always been done.

A recent New York Times article described an order within the U.S. State Department to abandon a newer typeface in favor of an older one — a return framed as a restoration of tradition, professionalism, and decorum. The article was about fonts — but it was also about power, and the politics of undoing anything associated with the previous administration, even when the original move was meant to make government communication more accessible.

Design always assumes an audience. The choices we make — typeface, color, contrast, spacing, shape — all influence how easy or difficult something is to use or understand. Those choices suggest who the reader is, and how much strain they’re expected to absorb.

Clarity erodes when familiarity is mistaken for a design principle. The question shifts from Does this work? to Does this look right? And “right,” more often than not, simply means familiar.

In recent decades, designers have paid closer attention to accessibility — not as a trend, but as a form of care. More open spacing. Clearer letterforms. Better performance on screens. Sometimes that means choosing typefaces designed to be easier to read — like Atkinson Hyperlegible, created with the Braille Institute to make similar letters easier to tell apart. These choices are not aesthetic indulgences. They are acknowledgments of reality. People read while tired. On phones. With aging eyes. With assistive technologies. Design either responds to that reality, or leaves the burden with the reader.

What struck me about the article wasn’t the preference for one typeface over another. It was the confidence with which tradition was invoked — a confidence that overlooks the reader.

Tradition itself is not the enemy. It can offer continuity, reference, a sense of lineage. But tradition alone cannot tell us what works now. It cannot account for new contexts, new bodies, new ways of moving through the world. When we stop examining our choices, design becomes less about helping people and more about projecting importance.

Over the past few months, my own life has been in motion — a home packed up and sold, a child stepping into their own geography, a move to a different town, switching gears and travel plans while abroad. Long stretches of figuring things out as I go. And through it all, I’m reminded of how much clarity matters — and how much easier unfamiliar places and systems become when they’re designed clearly.

Good design doesn’t need to make a show of itself. It doesn’t rely on stiffness or severity to be taken seriously. It simply makes it easier to understand what’s being asked. It reduces unnecessary effort. It respects the person on the receiving end.

Tradition, at its best, is a conversation across time. But when it hardens into a rule, it stops listening. And design that stops listening may still look official — but it no longer serves.

I’m writing this from Wales, on a trip that was meant to lead to France, at the tail end of the year — a small reminder that plans change. And that curiosity, at heart, is a form of care. In design. In systems. In relationships. In ourselves.

May the coming year find us asking better questions — and making space for the people we meet there.✦

---

Sign up here to receive these letters in your inbox. Or pass this on to someone who walks the world a bit like you do.