It is perfectly fine to decide that being on the cutting edge of design is not your priority. But if it is, you’re less likely to see it by looking at other full-time designers.
For example, I see designers comment on posts about vibe-coding: «But my PM would never approve X» or «It still doesn’t do Y».
But that’s exactly the point. If a workflow already works in a company like yours, you’re just catching up.
The same designers were saying:
«Our VP will never approve switching from Photoshop to some Mac-only app built by some guys in Europe with no funding», until they did.
“No way we will switch to a browser-based design tool that doesn’t even allow me to own my files”, until they did.
From whom to learn
In Silicon Valley, they say, “To know the future, see what the nerds are tinkering on weekends.”
In design, the “nerds” or early adopters are not FAANG designers. They’re freelancers, agency owners, and design founders. Two reasons why:
They can experiment without approval and with less friction.
They have a higher economic incentive to do so. (If a freelancer saves 1 hour, they make $100-200 more, while a full-time designer earns the same)
For example, in 2013, when I had an agency, we used Photoshop for client work, but started using Sketch for internal projects. In fact, it was my technical co-founder who suggested trying it because he felt he could finally use a design tool himself (while Photoshop was too overwhelming for him).
In my current product, I started it in Figma, built it in Lovable, realised it’s too expensive and not actually good, switched to Cursor and eventually migrated to Replit. No one could tell me no.
Right now, a freelancer is building a side project with the workflow you’ll use in the future.
People to follow
I didn’t prepare a curated list of people to follow, but someone on LinkedIn asked me to give some examples. Here are some random picks: