"Design isn’t something you look at, it’s something you live in": 5 questions with Wybe Magermans

Architecture taught me that design isn’t something you look at. It’s something you live in.

Brands, like buildings, are meant to be inhabited. But too often they’re treated like show homes – perfect at launch, then left untouched. The guidelines gather dust, like an empty building no one ever moved into.

And just like architecture, if a space isn’t used, it deteriorates. It becomes dormant. Eventually, weeds take over.

That’s why I focus on creating visual identity systems, not assets – things people can adapt, evolve and keep alive over time. Because the real test of any creative work isn’t how it looks on day one, but what happens once people start living in it.

Outside of work, I’m still drawn to architecture through my photography project, Black_Rimmed. I’m interested in moments where cities feel monumental, yet strangely intimate places designed for millions, briefly reduced to one person, one movement, one interruption.

That tension between system and human use is the same thing I look for in brands. Most branding fails not because it’s badly designed, but because it was never designed to be lived in.

Brutalism, and I don’t think it’s a guilty pleasure. It’s ugly because it refuses to flatter you. It doesn’t care if you like it. And in an industry obsessed with approval, that’s incredibly refreshing.

We’ve optimised design into submission. Everything is rounded, softened, “accessible”. Brutalism pushes back. It’s awkward, sometimes aggressive, but at least it has a point of view.

I don’t think there’s such a thing as good or bad taste, only taste or no taste. I’d take something with a clear perspective over something designed to please everyone.

Design pretending to be strategy.

There’s a lot of work dressed up with language that sounds intelligent but is fundamentally empty. Big words, meaningless grid systems on logos, nice decks, zero impact. If you stripped the visuals away and the idea collapses, it was never strong to begin with. We’ve become very good at presenting thinking, less good at actually doing it.

That creativity isn’t the output. It’s the leverage.

People still treat it like the final layer you apply once the “real decisions” have been made. It should be shaping those decisions from the start. The irony is, businesses will obsess over marginal gains in efficiency while completely underestimating the commercial impact of a strong creative idea.

The right creative move can change perception, behaviour, even entire categories. But only if you let it in early enough.

Faster, noisier and much less forgiving.

AI will commoditise execution. If you can make it quickly, so can everyone else. That means taste, judgement and perspective become the real differentiators.

At the same time, audiences are getting sharper. They can smell inauthenticity instantly, especially when it comes to things like diversity and inclusion.

So the industry will split: those producing more, faster, cheaper, and those actually saying something worth paying attention to.

The middle ground disappears. The real question isn’t what tools we’ll use. It’s whether we’ll still have anything meaningful to say.

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