Walk along a tropical shoreline and you’ll find thickets of mangroves where the sea meets the land. Their roots form a knotted shelter where juvenile fish hide from predators. Strip those mangroves out and the reef looks fine for a while. But without nurseries, young fish never reach maturity. A few years later, the reef collapses.
Every designer has felt it: that pang of frustration when you’re asked to make a product worse. Maybe it’s hiding a feature behind a paywall. Maybe it’s adding extra steps to the sign-up flow to capture more data. Maybe it’s cramming in additional ads in places you know will annoy people, just to squeeze out more revenue. It can feel like the opposite of what we signed up for. We’re here to improve things, not to degrade them.
Across the UK, many post-industrial towns and seaside high streets feel tired — dominated by charity shops, low-investment chain stores, and shuttered units. This lack of vibrancy erodes civic pride, reduces footfall, and discourages entrepreneurship.
Spend any time in Japan and it becomes obvious why so many designers treat it like a pilgrimage. It isn’t just the neon of Shinjuku or the minimalism of Muji that draws them in. It’s something more fundamental: a culture of care that seeps into every interaction, every sign, and every surface.
One of the things I find curious about the startup world is how often people talk about value — and how rarely they actually know how to find it.