AI Design Slop

Generative AI optimizes for appearance, but it often fails on the fundamentals of hierarchy, accessibility, and intentionality. This guide highlights the common patterns that mark a design as “vibe-coded.”

LLMs have democratized coding, graphic design, and writing. I think that’s wonderful. In the past, even putting together a prototype required web development skills or hiring someone to build a proof-of-concept. That is no longer the case. As someone who safely decommissioned Federal data infrastructure at the end of a global pandemic, though, I feel compelled to remind people that a prototype is often not fit for deployment to production.

Vibes are great for experimenting & prototyping. If you haven’t tried it, I encourage you to. AI is not going away, and the best way to learn is through safe practice. Besides, vibe-X’ing is fun. It allows you to iterate on a vision at a speed that was unprecedented 10 years ago. It’s empowering to move from concept to something tangible in minutes, rather than weeks or months. It lets people prototype faster, experiment, and take ownership of their vision. Why spend money on someone’s expensive services when Claude or Codex can take care of both the design and implementation for you? Carpe diem, no?

Well, vibe-coding & vibe-designing don’t make the realities of engineering & design magically vanish. They don’t make the realities of how society operates vanish either. The ease of creation often masks the complexity of implementation and may even herald impending destruction. Let’s not mistake the output of a successful prompt for a successful product. A prototype proves a concept is viable, but it doesn’t prove that it’s reliable, scalable, or sustainable. And just like there’s no such thing as a free lunch, there’s no such thing as free building.