On the showcase sites you see designers acting in public for the praise of other designers. A lot of the design you see isn’t solving particular problems, and it isn’t particularly thought-out.

A lot of it is mimicking styles. People are following the various design trends and are really great at mirroring them. These people tend to be relatively cheap, efficient, and incredibly attractive to startups. They’re able to produce something that looks very, very slick and very polished very quickly, but the eye of the stylist tends not to focus on deeper problems.

I think the stylists are very important. It’s good to have a few stylists on your team, but actually, I think you’re better off having a stylist come into the project later.

At the start of the project, you need someone who’s more of a design thinker, who isn’t into producing glossy visuals, but is able to rigorously tackle problems in a designful way: by using the various techniques and understanding of human behavior and interaction with design to solve the broader and trickiest problems.

Andy Budd.