AI Didn’t Kill Web Design —Templates Did It First

Let’s get one thing out of the way: AI is not the villain of web design. It’s just the flashy scapegoat we’ve all decided to blame while quietly ignoring the real killer hiding in plain sight—templates.

No, not the innocent-looking starter kits we all downloaded in our early days. I’m talking about the all-consuming, cookie-cutter, SEO-optimized, funnel-worshipping design sameness that has turned the open web into a tragic gallery of “Buy Now” buttons floating on beige rectangles.

If you’re wondering why the web feels dead, lifeless, or like you’re stuck in a scrolling Groundhog Day of “hero image, tagline, three icons, CTA,” it’s not because AI hallucinated its way into the design department.

It’s because we templatified creativity into submission!

The Real Killer: Sameness as a Service

We used to design websites like we were crafting digital homes—custom woodwork, strange hallways, surprise color choices, even weird sound effects if you dared. Each one had quirks. A personality. A soul.

Now? Websites are just slightly re-skinned Shopify stores pretending to be brand experiences. Even portfolio sites—the sacred playgrounds of creativity—have become sterile clones of each other: pastel backgrounds, sans serif fonts, and a strategically placed photo of a coffee mug to humanize the horror.

What happened? Templates happened.

ThemeForest, Squarespace, Webflow, WordPress—bless their convenience—have created an ecosystem where differentiation is not only optional, it’s discouraged. Because originality breaks the template.

And breaking the template is bad for conversion. Or SEO. Or the client’s cousin Chad who once read a Medium article about UX best practices.

Templates Didn’t Just Flatten Design—They Flattened Expectations

Let’s be real: clients aren’t asking for design anymore. They’re asking for “a site like this.” You know the one. It looks clean. It has animations. It scrolls smoothly. It’s “modern.” Which, in 2025, is just a euphemism for “I want what everyone else has so I don’t have to think.”

Templates didn’t just streamline web development. They rewired what people expect a website to be.

Why hire a designer when you can drop your brand colors into a no-code template, plug in some Lottie files, and call it a day? The end result isn’t bad. It’s worse than bad. It’s forgettable.

And the worst part? We did this to ourselves.

AI Didn’t Kill Design—We Gave It a Map

Everyone’s busy blaming ChatGPT, Claude, or Midjourney for killing originality. But AI didn’t birth itself into our workflow. It trained on what we fed it. And what did we feed it?

Thousands of templated, templated-from-templates, SEO-farmed websites that all look the same. You can’t tell a robot to innovate when your portfolio is made of duplicated grid layouts and gradient buttons copied from Stripe in 2017.

AI isn’t the end of design. It’s just the inevitable mirror held up to a web we already standardized, sanitized, and sold for $39 on a marketplace.

We gave AI the Ikea catalog of the internet and expected Bauhaus in return.

The Design Web Is Dead—Long Live the Application Web

Here’s the hard truth no one wants to say out loud: the “website” as we knew it—handcrafted, bespoke, exploratory—is dying.

In its place, we’re getting web apps, not sites. Utility is the new creativity. The homepage has been replaced by the dashboard. The About page is now a Notion doc. And that experimental layout you were proud of in 2014? Yeah, it doesn’t even pass Core Web Vitals anymore.

The web we loved was a canvas. The web we have now is a series of modular blocks optimized for user retention, ad revenue, and frictionless e-commerce.

And maybe that’s inevitable.

Design is no longer about creating a unique experience. It’s about minimizing bounce rate, hitting conversion targets, and running A/B tests on whether button #4 should be 1.5em or 1.6em tall.

We are no longer designers—we are template wranglers, nudging variables until the spreadsheet turns green.

Web Design Isn’t Just Dying—It’s Evolving into Product Management

The line between designer and product manager has blurred into oblivion. You’re not designing a homepage; you’re optimizing a funnel. You’re not choosing typography; you’re preserving “brand consistency.” You’re not making art; you’re massaging business goals.

The average website today isn’t designed—it’s assembled.

It’s a series of UX components picked from a pre-approved design system that lives in a Figma file so large it has its own gravitational pull. We’re not paid to invent anymore. We’re paid to ensure nothing surprises anyone. Web design has become corporate risk mitigation disguised as creativity.

The Irony? Templates Were Supposed to Be Tools, Not Endgames

Let’s be fair: templates were never evil. They were supposed to help us go faster, prototype better, and democratize design. But like stock photos before them, they’ve become the fast food of the internet—cheap, convenient, and nutritionally empty.

And just like fast food, they’re addictive.

Why cook from scratch when the Big Mac of landing pages is a click away? Why iterate on originality when the template is “proven to convert”?

We built a world where good enough is the default. And then we trained the next generation of designers to treat it as the ceiling, not the floor.

Is There Hope? Sure. But It Won’t Be on ThemeForest.

If web design has any hope of surviving, it’s going to require rebellion. A willful rejection of efficiency for the sake of expression. A refusal to conform to “what works” and instead a deep dive into “what surprises.” And frankly, that’s hard to justify when you’re working with tight deadlines and clients who read one too many SaaS landing page tear-downs.

The artists of the web—the weird ones, the brave ones, the ones who still code CSS by hand and animate things that serve no purpose other than joy—they’re out there. But they’re no longer mainstream. They’re not in the top 10 of Product Hunt. They’re in the margins, hiding out in codepens, personal blogs, and obscure corners of the indie web.

If you want design to live, stop feeding the template machine. Build weird stuff. Ugly stuff. Confusing stuff. Human stuff.

Because the web wasn’t meant to be a conveyor belt of sameness. It was supposed to be a playground. A punk zine. A laboratory. A little chaotic. A little broken. But undeniably alive.

The Verdict: We Did This. Not AI.

Let’s stop pointing fingers at artificial intelligence for killing creativity. AI didn’t templatify the web—we did. We chose speed over originality. Conversions over character. Convenience over craft.

So yes, AI might finish the job. But let’s not forget who pulled the trigger first.

And if the death of web design is inevitable? Let it die weird.

Noah Davis

Noah Davis is an accomplished UX strategist with a knack for blending innovative design with business strategy. With over a decade of experience, he excels at crafting user-centered solutions that drive engagement and achieve measurable results.