Good design builds trust. But figuring out how – and why – took me years.

I started studying industrial design, where everything was about functionality: user goals, durability, material engineering. Later, when I switched to graphic design, the focus shifted to emotion – how color, type, and imagery could trigger meaning and feeling. It felt like two very different worlds.

That feeling stayed with me for years, even though I worked across branding, advertising, and complex software UIs. For a long time, I kept visual design and UX design in separate mental boxes: to me, visual design was mostly about emotions, UX was heavy on engineering.

That view started to change when I moved into UX full-time, working closely with user research and testing. Around the same time, I began seriously developing backpacks for ski mountaineering. I understood some of the user needs – but not all. That meant reaching out, testing, and mapping use scenarios I wasn’t familiar with.

I still think that both backpack design and UX design live closer to the engineering end of the design spectrum. Meanwhile, branding and advertising sit nearer the emotional side. But good design – whether it’s an ad, a digital service, or a backpack – always balances both.

Without functionality, users feel frustrated.
Without emotion, they feel nothing.

You’ve probably heard about German car designers obsessing over the sound of a door closing. It needs to feel just right. It’s the same with digital UIs: sound effects, micro-animations, and transitions can make users intuitively grasp the finesse of a system, strengthening trust and satisfaction.

The more critical a product is for success or survival, the more these nuances matter.
A good alpine backpack needs the right features, lightness, and materials – but it also needs to feel right. It must spell TRUST.

The same dynamic applies to branding and advertising.
A user "uses" a logo or an ad by glancing at it. If it’s well-designed, it earns a few more seconds of attention. The viewer connects the colors, shapes, words, and meaning. The best-performing ads tickle the brain just enough to feel interesting – but not so much that they confuse. When something is easy to understand, we tend to trust it more, like it more, and even believe it more.

Behind the scenes, a lot of engineering goes into these moments – not in buttons or menus, but in messaging, imagery, and tone. They must fit naturally into the context: the platform, the environment, the mood.

Working across such different end-goals has helped me become more strategic and analytical – and more aware of the emotional weight every design project carries.

Even the most technical UI project needs emotional resonance.
And even the most expressive brand work needs structure and analytical thinking behind it.

Design makes complex systems and ideas easier to use, easier to trust, and easier to connect with. And at the heart of that work is the same goal: Building trust.