When Every Player Plays Every Position, the Game Falls Apart

Imagine a football team where the striker decides to guard the goal, the goalkeeper pushes into midfield, and the defenders run forward to score. Technically, everyone’s “helping.” In reality, the field is chaos. No one’s where they’re supposed to be when it matters most. There’s no structure, no rhythm, no trust in the system.

That’s what’s happening in design today.

The Blur That’s Diluting the Craft

Somewhere in the last decade, we decided that design titles were suggestions rather than specializations. Product Designer, UX Designer, UI Designer, Visual Designer, Service Designer, all distinct disciplines with their own skills and responsibilities, started getting treated like interchangeable labels.

The blurring has real consequences:

Product Designers get reduced to polishing UI, losing the upstream product thinking and discovery work that defines their role. UX Designers are asked to handle brand, typography, and visual expression without the training to excel at it. UI Designers get pulled into research or product strategy they weren’t hired to lead. Visual Designers find themselves trapped inside rigid design systems with no room for the creative expression they were trained for. Service Designers produce beautiful blueprints that never make it into operational reality.

It’s the same as telling a goalkeeper to play striker, and then wondering why nobody’s stopping the goals.

The Football Analogy Made Visual

When positions are clear:

• Goalkeeper protects the goal with specialized skills

• Defenders create structure and stop attacks

• Midfielders control the flow and connect play

• Strikers focus on scoring with precision

Result: Coordinated play, clear accountability, team success

When every player plays every position:

• Chaos in defense, no one protecting the goal

• Missed opportunities, strikers stuck defending

• Breakdown in play, no coordination or flow

Result: Confusion, inefficiency, failure

The Role Confusion on Top of Role Confusion

To make things messier, we’ve layered in a new crop of titles: Design Lead, Principal, Staff, Senior IC. Here’s the problem: a Design Lead in one company is a manager; in another, it’s a senior individual contributor. Sometimes, it’s just a title upgrade to prevent someone from leaving.

And then there’s the “Super IC.” The rationale sounds reasonable, recognizing senior designers who want to stay hands-on instead of managing people. But let’s be honest: “super” is branding for ego. If you really understand organizational leadership, you know your impact speaks for itself without needing a superhero label.

Why This Matters

When every role blurs into “one designer fits all,” several things break down:

Craft erodes. The foundational skills, typography, composition, color theory, disappear from education and hiring priorities. We’re producing designers who can use tools but lack the fundamental knowledge that creates great work.

Efficiency suffers. Specialists spend more time trying to cover skill gaps than mastering their craft. A visual designer struggling through user research isn’t helping anyone.

Accountability breaks down. If everyone’s doing a bit of everything, nobody’s truly owning anything. When problems arise, there’s no clear owner to fix them.

The work gets flatter. With everyone using the same tools and patterns, we start designing for sameness instead of distinction. The unique perspectives that come from deep specialization get lost.

How We Get Back in Position

The fix isn’t complicated, but it requires discipline:

Protect the craft. Bring foundational design skills back into education and hiring. Stop treating design like a purely digital discipline and remember it’s built on centuries of visual communication principles.

Define roles clearly. Make expectations, scope, and accountability unambiguous. A product designer should know they own discovery and strategy. A visual designer should know they own brand expression and visual craft.

Value both tracks equally. Create clear paths for both individual contributors and managers without title inflation or ego labels. Great individual contributors don’t need to be called “super” to be valued.

Hire for what you actually need. If you want a generalist, be honest about that and hire someone comfortable wearing multiple hats. If you want depth, hire for depth and let them specialize.

The Win Comes from Knowing Your Position

In both football and design, clarity of position isn’t a constraint. It’s what makes the whole team effective. When everyone plays every position, the game falls apart. When every designer does every job, the craft falls apart.

The win comes from knowing your role, owning it completely, and trusting your teammates to do the same. That’s how you build both great teams and great work.