There’s outrage over the UX title dying. Shopify dropped the UX and Content Design titles. If you design, you’re a designer. If you write, you’re a writer.
Carl Rivera, VP of Product at Shopify, said it outright:
“We just dropped UX as a title at @Shopify. Same for Content Design. If you design, you’re a Designer. If you write, you’re now a Writer.”
Tom Scott backed it up:
“The ‘UX Designer’ job title is dying out. I can’t remember the last time I worked on a role with UX in the title.”
Andy Budd added:
“We will see more and more of this… saying everyone is a designer with only internal levels as a differentiator.”
There’s plenty of resistance to this shift. But I’ve been saying it for years. Most people with the UX title aren’t really designers. Or they are, but they’re not very good. They found something teachable, something systematic, and turned it into a career. It was never built on taste or instinct. The title gave them cover. That cover is disappearing.
Creative designers have always applied UX principles without needing to call it that. They were the ones pushed into UI roles because they could actually make something look good. Meanwhile, try giving a visual brief to most UX people and watch the panic set in. That’s the part nobody wants to say out loud.
Product Designer was a smarter title for generalists working on products. It reflected range. Not just wireframes and flows, but actual decision-making, visual polish, business awareness, and the ability to tie it all together. Some of that can be learned. Anyone willing to put in the time can understand it. But merging UX and business with creativity is something else entirely. You either have it or you don’t. The first sign I noticed was that the one-trick ponies still struggled with the creative part.
Most of the best hires I made came from agency backgrounds. People who had no choice but to adapt. They went from building websites and apps to social content, pitch decks, banner ads, and campaign visuals. They used Photoshop and Illustrator before they ever touched Figma. They didn’t follow component libraries. They built things from scratch. They had style, timing, and ideas. That’s what made them dangerous.
No, you’re not a designer if you use Canva. I respect what it enables. People publish. But publishing isn’t design. It just borrows from it. You’re copying someone else’s creativity, with no real context. And AI will only make this worse. The tools will spit out assets, but none of them will be original. They’ll be stitched together from what came before. Creativity has context. AI doesn’t.
Once this hype cycle ends, the same people will still be at the table. Most of them are closer to polymaths, able to adapt to anything creative. They mature by studying things outside their own craft. They develop taste. They sweat the small stuff. These are the black t-shirt wearing creatives who never stopped pushing. They’re not chasing the next job title. They’re looking for sharper ways to apply their thinking. They’re not rebranding themselves as AI consultants or whatever the next wave demands. They’re still doing the work.
There are people who write. There are people who design. A few genuinely do both. But if you’re not really a designer, you had no business taking jobs from people who are. The ones who can learn fast, adapt constantly, and still produce work that’s worth what they’re being paid.
And if that stings, maybe you’re not doing the right thing. Because if you were, you’d be too busy designing a new logo for your wife’s sourdough micro-bakery and having a proper laugh while doing it.
This shift isn’t an attack. It’s a reset. The industry is raising its standards and dropping the padding. Titles don’t protect you anymore. The work does.
So make something worth sharing. And put your name on it, not your title.