For most of the history of the web, a handsome page was evidence of something. Somebody had taste, somebody had time, somebody had been paid. That evidence is gone. A handsome page now costs a sentence, and clients have noticed, even if they have not yet said so.
So the question a brand should be asking has moved. It used to be whether a site looks good. It is now whether anyone else could have made it by lunchtime.
There are only a few things that survive that test. Material nobody else has: the real archive, the real factory, the real number. A system exact enough that breaking it shows. And the decision about what to leave out, which is the one step a machine is happy to skip.
None of this is an argument against tools. We use all of them. It is an argument about where the value moved. Being able to make a thing is no longer scarce. Knowing which thing, and being willing to stop, is.
Two drafting compasses. Photograph: Matt Artz, Unsplash.