me after spending 40 hours a week talking to LLMs

AI was supposed to make design easier. For Strath McKay, it has done the opposite. Strath is the co-founder of Akima Studio, a boutique studio working across websites, digital products and e-commerce. His path into design wasn’t conventional: he left his job as a mechanic, learned through real client projects, moved into product design and crypto, burned out, stepped away, and returned to an industry being rapidly reshaped by AI. In this episode of Beyond the Brief, we talk about why static Figma screens are no longer enough, how client expectations have changed, and why designers increasingly need to build what they design. Strath walks me through how Akima moves between Figma, agents and code, builds complete Shopify experiences, turns meeting transcripts into polished proposals, and creates small purpose-built tools around its own workflow. We also get into taste, craft, AI slop, the pressure to keep up, and why sometimes the best thing a designer can do is put the blinders on, focus on real work and keep shipping. Episode five of Beyond the Brief is live. Watch the full episode here on X. Chapters: 00:00 Cold Open 00:25 Intro 00:37 Meet Strath 01:46 Strath’s Story 09:04 Crypto and Web3 14:18 AI Made Design Harder 19:28 Burnout and Reset 24:40 Starting Akima 27:58 Inside Akima Studio 31:31 The New Design Process 39:38 Designers Need to Build 41:10 Akima’s Proposal Tool 47:24 Purpose-Built Tools 52:46 Agentic Websites 56:11 Advice for Designers 58:17 Wrap-Up Learn more about @StrathDesign and Akima Studio: akima.studio/