Design today suffers from excess. Motion for the sake of motion. Interactions that exhaust instead of guide. Typography that prioritizes personality over readability. These choices often impress designers — not users.

Over-designed experiences introduce friction disguised as sophistication. They slow users down, demand unnecessary attention, and turn simple tasks into sequences of visual performances. And while these experiences may look impressive in a portfolio, they fail in practice.

The real cost is long-term usability. Systems become harder to maintain. Content becomes harder to scale. Teams struggle to introduce new features without breaking the delicate aesthetic.

Simplicity isn’t a lack of ambition — it’s an understanding of responsibility. Good design doesn’t beg to be noticed. It communicates, supports, and disappears at the exact moment it should.

When you strip away the theatrics, what remains is the work that actually matters: clarity, purpose, and precision.