When we built Marathon, design and engineering were two separate worlds. Designers worked in Figma. Engineers worked in code. The two were stitched together by hand, and a lot of that stitching was comments. Feedback, decisions, things to fix, scattered across files and lost the moment a thread got long. Marathon pulled those comments into one place, gave them titles, synced them into the tools teams actually ran on, and made any piece of feedback easy to share with anyone. It did its job well.

Since then the ground has shifted, and for the better. Design and engineering have merged into one process, and more of the real work now happens in code. The part that stays in design has become the most valuable part of the whole thing. Taste, judgment, intention, the search for the right form. Marathon was built to manage a different kind of design work, the kind that is now fading, so it has done its job and we are winding it down.

This same shift is why we are doubling down on our agency. As the production side of design gets automated, the hard parts get harder and more valuable. Taste. Craft. Intention. The judgment to know what is worth making, and the artistry to make it well. That is exactly what a great design partner is for, and it matters more now than it ever has.

Jeremy Blaze
Never Before Seen