Lately, a question keeps coming up: “Do we actually still need web designers? My website was vibe coded in a day.”
My default answer is “Yeah, I can see that,” and the reaction is almost always a wince, as though they have been called out.
But I don’t mean to judge at all. Wix, Squarespace and WordPress taught me how hard it is to arrange content in a way that feels compelling, so the shortcut makes sense. It is wonderful that anyone can now put up a website without a designer or developer, so one would expect them to sound excited when I say their website looks vibe-coded. Why is the reaction the opposite?
The question “Do we still need web designers” is a fair one, and usually an honest one. Sometimes it comes from curiosity, and sometimes from spite, especially among older business owners who were once burned by unreliable web hosts or webmasters. Either way, an honest question deserves an honest reply, so I won’t hesitate to point out their vibe-coded website.
Sometimes, I’ll even say “but I don’t think your target audience will mind”. Logically, that should sound like a relief, but for some business owners, it sounds damn well like an insult.
Before I continue, I want to make it clear: I use AI heavily in my workflow, and I do not claim my design is superior to AI. Again, an honest question deserves an honest reply.
The conversation usually turns to how their site can be improved. That’s when I ask the fundamental question: What is the website meant to do for them? Is it there to appear credible, to rank on Google, or to present case studies that educate people about a field? Could social media achieve the same thing?
Often, it turns out the site was built simply because they now could do it themselves.
Websites in 2026 are what logos were 10 years ago
A website has become like a logo. Everyone has one, so everyone wants one. Yet neither guarantees business success in the short term, or any return on the money spent, so spending as little as possible on something that may not move the needle is a reasonable instinct.
The opposite reality is just as true. Good designers are rare and hard to access, and plenty of business owners have never met one. When the good option is out of reach, the fast one wins by default.
The impulse is easy to understand, and the same question applies elsewhere. Do I really need an accountant when AI can explain accounting and tax? Perhaps not. But the value of an accountant goes beyond execution: whether to register as a sole proprietor or a Sdn Bhd as freelance income grows, which reliefs and deductions are being missed, what to prepare for next year. AI can answer each of those questions (provided one knows to ask them).
AI = more access and control
We have already moved past the era of information overload. What overwhelms us now is possibility, and the urge to act on all of it, because action feels like productivity. Taking matters into our own hands also satisfies something innate: we like to feel in control, and AI feels like the ally that finally puts every capability within reach.
But reach is not the same as skill. Too often, we are swinging a big sword at problems we have never trained for.
AI ≠ more skill and judgement
This is also why the service industry is being disrupted, and why everyone is being forced to reconsider what else of value they bring to the table.
Value here can mean two things:
- The first is the offer rather than the service: the sense of going the extra mile for someone.
- The second is a return to skills that do not scale. They look easy to mimic but are hard to sustain over the long term, and are usually described as soft skills or concierge-level service (the kind of service that makes people say, “I can’t believe you did that”).
While everyone hides behind AI, automating work and pushing buttons, people will pay more for someone they trust to follow things through, not just someone who holds the knowledge.
Once knowledge is no longer gated, value flows toward trust, judgement and personal story.
That is why people still choose a particular doctor, lawyer or barber even when the information is free online. They are paying for someone who takes responsibility for the outcome.
Reflecting on my own design practice at Studio From Mars
At the time of writing, I am witnessing a change in both what designers deliver and how the work gets made. For example:
- The conversation is no longer about delivering a one-off website that serves the client forever. It is about guiding them in the right direction through internal tools, prompts, trends and data.
- Clients proactively ask to collaborate on an idea, even though they could prompt it into existence themselves. They believe you can prompt it better than they can (a surprise, honestly, but I’ll take the honour).
Back then there was a workflow. Now there is just the work left to be done, and making sure it flows.
Having said that, big agencies and small studios are racing from the same starting point again. Everyone is reinventing their processes, and no one is particularly correct (yet).
So let’s say everyone just keeps prompting…
My biggest dilemma with AI is not slop. It is how many thoughts and experiments are missed in pursuit of speed. Even when AI runs overnight to generate variations, the work never feels fully owned, and neither do the mistakes that slip through.
To be fair, most frontier models can now craft very good details and animation. Between running a business and having little time to learn every new tool, it is easy to feel left behind as a studio owner. Yet shipping fast still tends to come at the expense of UI and UX details. Interactions feel half-baked, edge cases go untested, and screens end up overloaded with features simply because adding one was easy (guilty).
But even if polish is no longer what sets us apart, we should all think beyond deliverables:
- Designers: Start understanding business intent. Then find ways to scale the business intent.
- Companies (the clients): Know your first principles, and what success actually means to you.
Metalab is a good example of asking the deeper question. They use trust as a strategy, treating the way trust is built as a mechanism and tying it back to the business goal. That is what justifies why design matters so much.
So what would you deliver?
Titles will keep evolving, as UI/UX grew into product design and then into experience design, but the label was never the point. Underneath it sits a first principle: we do what we do to push business objectives in a thoughtful way. A website, a prototype or a prompt is only the means to that end.
In other words, being thoughtful means asking the question that moves the business forward.
So the next time someone asks, “Do I still need a (web) designer?”, maybe the better reply is a question of our own: which part of your business are you not satisfied with yet?