Hasta La Creative!

A new class is gaining power in the left-brain territory of Silicon Valley: designers.

You could witness their rise at Google’s I/O developer conference last month, where the company introduced aesthetically pleasing versions of products such as Google Maps. Its new look for Google+ even seemed to borrow from Pinterest, with posts formatted as cards that cascade downward when users refresh the page.

But it’s not just Google. Many technology titans previously satisfied with making products useful increasingly feel pressed to make them beautiful, too. They are responding by giving design and user experience a more prominent organizational role. Startups, meanwhile, are getting hungrier for designers at the top of their games, spurred partly by the ascendance of Silicon Valley darlings like Pinterest, Airbnb and Path — all of which have co-founders who double as design or product leads.

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