Thanks, Jessica!

I don’t want to over-emphasize the titles. I don’t think it’s a big deal that most of these archetypes might all have the exact same title. In building our agency, I care very little about titles and more about the competencies and strengths. We have product designers who excel at the visual part, and product designers that work more strategically.

I hope this article also may inspire some to branch out of their comfort zone a bit. I had no real visual training and avoided it for my first three years, and then focused my self-education on improving it for the next three years. All the while, my best asset as a designer never wavered from more the visionary/strategist archetype. But I was able to bolster that by focusing on other areas for a while.

So, I don’t think that the only end result of non-visual designers is a dumbing down of strategy. Instead I hope it causes inward pressure on these designers to improve and for design schools to take this more seriously.