The Gap
Vanishing middle designers are the most interesting people in any studio — and the first ones the industry stops talking about. The gap between junior promise and senior authority isn’t new, but it’s getting harder to cross, and we’ve been watching it happen up close for twenty years. What follows is what that looks like from where we sit.
It has happened. There are no more mid-level designers. Only struggling juniors and a few seniors remain—nothing in between.
No place to learn anymore. New titles keep popping up—product designer, UX designer, design strategist. Fancy names. Empty promises. They don’t hide the problem; they highlight it. The truth? The designers who truly know their craft—those who survived decades of media evolution, from print to web, packaging to branding, identities to campaigns—are vanishing.
These are the people who spot problems before they exist. Who connects the dots nobody else sees. Those who solve issues before they explode…
The gap isn’t coming. It’s here.
Why Vanishing Middle Designers Define the Gap in Boutique Studios
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Is it sexy?
Is it sexy design? That's the question we ask before anything else leaves the studio. Not as provocation — as a filter. We've built 80+ awarded projects around this single, uncomfortable standard: if you can't feel it, it isn't finished.
In the corporate world, there’s this unspoken rule that enthusiasm should be hidden
Corporate enthusiasm, by some unspoken rule, is supposed to stay hidden — filed away behind neutral tones and careful hedging. We've never understood that. Twenty years of design work, 80+ awards, and 128 projects later, we're still the studio that treats genuine excitement as a feature, not a liability. The corporate enthusiasm unspoken rule isn't just a cultural quirk — it's a design problem, and we treat it as one.
Definition of a brand
Definition of a brand is where most projects quietly fail — not in execution, but in understanding. A brand is not a logo, not a palette, not a tagline. It is the gap between what a company says it is and what people actually believe. We've spent twenty years closing that gap, and the distance is rarely where clients expect it to be.
Ljubljana to do
Ljubljana to-do lists are usually the same – the castle, the market, Plečnik. We have been designing in this city since 2004 and we see it differently: through the facades, the typography on the windows, the details that the tourist guide doesn't mention. This guide is Ljubljana to-do for those who observe.
12 Proverbs
Design wisdom proverbs don't come from books. They come from the gap between what a client asked for and what they actually needed — a gap we've been navigating since 2004. These twelve distillations aren't motivational. They're diagnostic, drawn from real projects where design wisdom proverbs were the only honest way to say what went wrong, or right.
Deadlines
Design project deadlines are not the enemy of good work — they are the condition that makes good work possible. We've delivered over 128 projects across two decades, and the deadline has never once been optional. What changes is how seriously you treat it as a design constraint rather than an administrative inconvenience.
Black and white
Black and white design is where we start every project — not as a stylistic preference, but as a structural test. If a mark, layout, or identity doesn't hold in two tones, it won't survive color, scale, or time. Black and white design is the first filter, and for us, it's often the only one that matters.
Both love and design require deep engagement
Love and design require deep engagement — not as a metaphor, but as a working method. We've spent twenty years watching clients mistake familiarity for understanding, and it costs them. Deep engagement with a brief is what separates a mark that lasts from one that merely looks correct on the day it's approved.