By James Neufeld — September 28, 2025, last updated January 7, 2026
How invisible choices in code prove that building is designing
Every line of code contains a design decision.
This was the truth I held onto back when the web was still new and experimental, a time when I found myself bridging two worlds. Most designers approached this new medium with trepidation—ad agencies didn’t even have web departments. While others saw uncertainty, I saw opportunity: the chance to design directly in the medium itself, handcoding websites and customizing WordPress themes when few designers were touching code.
Some called me “more of a builder” than a designer. They were looking for design in the wrong place.
In 2006, when Oliver Reichenstein declared “Web Design is 95% Typography,” it felt like vindication. He articulated what I had been practicing all along:
“It is the web designer’s task to divide up and organize and interpret this mass of printed matter in such a way that the reader will have a good chance of finding what is of interest to him.”
Reichenstein understood what my colleagues missed: typography happens in code. When you set line-height: 1.6, you’re not just writing CSS; you’re making a typographic decision about readability. When you choose max-width: 65ch, you’re applying centuries of typographic wisdom. These aren’t technical details—they’re the essence of design.
When I was building client sites in the 2000s, there was no Figma. Designers worked in layered PSDs, obsessing over beveled or glassy buttons—effects CSS couldn’t yet handle. They were mastering static visual design, while I was focused on the dynamic reality of the web.
My perspective was shaped by being immersed in the emerging digital culture. I devoured every issue of Wired and Canada’s Shift magazine—a pioneering publication that explored the intersection of technology and culture—and studied early web strategy books like Writing for New Media and Getting Hits: The Definitive Guide to Promoting Your Website—which argued that “just building a world-class web site doesn’t mean people will come flocking through your door.” This was the ecosystem I was learning from.
Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug was first published in 2000. The book’s premise—that a good software program or web site should let users accomplish tasks as easily as possible—was preaching to the choir. I was an early adopter of user-centered design principles, thinking about usability and information architecture long before “UX designer” was a job title. (Back then, we were called webmasters.) This forward-thinking approach was in my nature—I was the person ripping CDs to MP3 when many people didn’t own a computer yet.
This mattered because the principles of clarity and usability I championed then are the same ones that define thoughtful design today. While the tools have evolved from WordPress to Webflow, from PSDs to Figma, the fundamental questions remain: Is it clear? Is it usable? Does it serve the user?
But I cared about the decisions that shaped the user’s experience, then as I do now: