Design, technology and AI: what changed in 2026
Felipe Monteiro
Founder
Oct 15, 2026
Design is now read by machines, too
In October 2026, Figma launched Specs, a Markdown editor where teams describe their brand's visual language so that people and AI agents follow the same rules. Days earlier, Google released DESIGN.md in alpha, an open format that combines tokens (color, type, spacing) with the intent behind each choice in a file AI can read, including automatic contrast checks. Both send the same message: the design system is no longer a brand PDF forgotten in a folder, it is a working instruction. Brands that don't document their rules will watch AI make them up instead.
More code doesn't mean more product
At the same event, Figma's chief design officer Loredana Crisan shared a telling number: with AI, lines of code produced grew 17 times, but releases grew only 1.3 times. Generating got cheap; deciding is still expensive. Tools that turn layouts into code, like Figma's code layers, now in public beta, speed up exploration. But what separates a memorable website from just another website is judgment: knowing what to cut, what to refine and why.
The browser got more powerful
On the technical side, Interop 2026, a joint effort by Apple, Google, Microsoft, Mozilla and Igalia, is bringing to every browser features that used to require heavy JavaScript libraries: smooth page-to-page transitions (View Transitions), scroll-driven animations in pure CSS, anchor positioning, container style queries, and the contrast-color() function, which picks black or white text on its own to keep things legible. In practice, that means more cinematic experiences with less code, faster load times and fewer dependencies to maintain over the years.
What this means for your brand
Three practical moves. First, document your visual identity in a format both people and AI can follow. Second, structure your website so search engines and AI assistants can understand it, with structured data and clear content. Third, invest in art direction, not just production. AI shortens the path, but the brands that stand out are the ones that know where they're going. That's how we work at the studio: current technology in service of an authorial eye.