Let’s get one factor out of the best way: AI is just not the villain of net design. It’s simply the flashy scapegoat we’ve all determined guilty whereas quietly ignoring the true killer hiding in plain sight—templates.

No, not the innocent-looking starter kits all of us downloaded in our early days. I’m speaking in regards to the all-consuming, cookie-cutter, Website positioning-optimized, funnel-worshipping design sameness that has turned the open net right into a tragic gallery of “Purchase Now” buttons floating on beige rectangles.

In the event you’re questioning why the online feels lifeless, lifeless, or such as you’re caught in a scrolling Groundhog Day of “hero picture, tagline, three icons, CTA,” it’s not as a result of AI hallucinated its method into the design division.

It’s as a result of we templatified creativity into submission!

The Actual Killer: Sameness as a Service

We used to design web sites like we have been crafting digital properties—customized woodwork, unusual hallways, shock colour selections, even bizarre sound results for those who dared. Every one had quirks. A persona. A soul.

Now? Web sites are simply barely re-skinned Shopify shops pretending to be model experiences. Even portfolio websites—the sacred playgrounds of creativity—have turn into sterile clones of one another: pastel backgrounds, sans serif fonts, and a strategically positioned photograph of a espresso mug to humanize the horror.

What occurred? Templates occurred.

ThemeForest, Squarespace, Webflow, WordPress—bless their comfort—have created an ecosystem the place differentiation is just not solely optionally available, it’s discouraged. As a result of originality breaks the template.

And breaking the template is unhealthy for conversion. Or Website positioning. Or the shopper’s cousin Chad who as soon as learn a Medium article about UX greatest practices.

Templates Didn’t Simply Flatten Design—They Flattened Expectations

Let’s be actual: purchasers aren’t asking for design anymore. They’re asking for “a web site like this.” You already know the one. It appears to be like clear. It has animations. It scrolls easily. It’s “trendy.” Which, in 2025, is only a euphemism for “I need what everybody else has so I don’t must assume.”

Templates didn’t simply streamline net improvement. They rewired what folks count on a web site to be.

Why rent a designer when you’ll be able to drop your model colours right into a no-code template, plug in some Lottie information, and name it a day? The tip end result isn’t unhealthy. It’s worse than unhealthy. It’s forgettable.

And the worst half? We did this to ourselves.

AI Didn’t Kill Design—We Gave It a Map

Everybody’s busy blaming ChatGPT, Claude, or Midjourney for killing originality. However AI didn’t beginning itself into our workflow. It educated on what we fed it. And what did we feed it?

1000’s of templated, templated-from-templates, Website positioning-farmed web sites that every one look the identical. You possibly can’t inform a robotic to innovate when your portfolio is fabricated from duplicated grid layouts and gradient buttons copied from Stripe in 2017.

AI isn’t the tip of design. It’s simply the inevitable mirror held as much as an online we already standardized, sanitized, and offered for $39 on a market.

We gave AI the Ikea catalog of the web and anticipated Bauhaus in return.

The Design Internet Is Lifeless—Lengthy Dwell the Software Internet

Right here’s the exhausting fact nobody desires to say out loud: the “web site” as we knew it—handcrafted, bespoke, exploratory—is dying.

Instead, we’re getting net apps, not websites. Utility is the brand new creativity. The homepage has been changed by the dashboard. The About web page is now a Notion doc. And that experimental format you have been pleased with in 2014? Yeah, it doesn’t even go Core Internet Vitals anymore.

The online we beloved was a canvas. The online we’ve got now’s a sequence of modular blocks optimized for consumer retention, advert income, and frictionless e-commerce.

And possibly that’s inevitable.

Design is now not about creating a singular expertise. It’s about minimizing bounce price, hitting conversion targets, and operating A/B assessments on whether or not button #4 ought to be 1.5em or 1.6em tall.

We’re now not designers—we’re template wranglers, nudging variables till the spreadsheet turns inexperienced.

Internet Design Isn’t Simply Dying—It’s Evolving into Product Administration

The road between designer and product supervisor has blurred into oblivion. You’re not designing a homepage; you’re optimizing a funnel. You’re not selecting typography; you’re preserving “model consistency.” You’re not making artwork; you’re massaging enterprise targets.

The typical web site at the moment isn’t designed—it’s assembled.

It’s a sequence of UX parts picked from a pre-approved design system that lives in a Figma file so massive it has its personal gravitational pull. We’re not paid to invent anymore. We’re paid to make sure nothing surprises anybody. Internet design has turn into company danger mitigation disguised as creativity.

The Irony? Templates Have been Imagined to Be Instruments, Not Endgames

Let’s be truthful: templates have been by no means evil. They have been supposed to assist us go quicker, prototype higher, and democratize design. However like inventory images earlier than them, they’ve turn into the quick meals of the web—low-cost, handy, and nutritionally empty.

And identical to quick meals, they’re addictive.

Why cook dinner from scratch when the Huge Mac of touchdown pages is a click on away? Why iterate on originality when the template is “confirmed to transform”?

We constructed a world the place adequate is the default. After which we educated the following technology of designers to deal with it because the ceiling, not the ground.

Is There Hope? Positive. However It Gained’t Be on ThemeForest.

If net design has any hope of surviving, it’s going to require rebel. A willful rejection of effectivity for the sake of expression. A refusal to evolve to “what works” and as an alternative a deep dive into “what surprises.” And admittedly, that’s exhausting to justify while you’re working with tight deadlines and purchasers who learn one too many SaaS touchdown web page tear-downs.

The artists of the online—the bizarre ones, the courageous ones, those who nonetheless code CSS by hand and animate issues that serve no function apart from pleasure—they’re on the market. However they’re now not mainstream. They’re not within the high 10 of Product Hunt. They’re within the margins, hiding out in codepens, private blogs, and obscure corners of the indie net.

If you’d like design to stay, cease feeding the template machine. Construct bizarre stuff. Ugly stuff. Complicated stuff. Human stuff.

As a result of the online wasn’t meant to be a conveyor belt of sameness. It was imagined to be a playground. A punk zine. A laboratory. Somewhat chaotic. Somewhat damaged. However undeniably alive.

The Verdict: We Did This. Not AI.

Let’s cease pointing fingers at synthetic intelligence for killing creativity. AI didn’t templatify the online—we did. We selected pace over originality. Conversions over character. Comfort over craft.

So sure, AI may end the job. However let’s not neglect who pulled the set off first.

And if the dying of net design is inevitable? Let it die bizarre.