Screen Privacy for Designers and Creative Professionals

You're at the coffee shop refining the new logo. The client is launching in six weeks and the mark is the centerpiece of an embargoed press push. A woman two tables over works at a competing agency. She doesn't need to know what you're doing, but Figma at full brightness across a dimly lit café is a billboard. The launch isn't quiet anymore.

Designers carry work that's literally meant to be unseen until launch. And designers love working in cafés.

What's on your screen

A designer's open files in a given week:

• Client work under NDA, often with the client logo visible in the file
• Unreleased product designs, hardware mockups, screen flows, packaging
• Brand identities before reveal, including the wordmarks and color systems
• Internal prototypes that haven't been approved for external sharing
• Marketing campaigns under embargo
• Pitch decks for new business, with strategy and pricing
• Source files in Figma, Sketch, Illustrator, with layer panels that reveal the entire system
• Client feedback threads that often include candid client opinions about competitors

Figma is an especially generous leaker. The Multiplayer cursors and the project sidebar reveal client names, file names, and team structure at a glance.

Where shoulder surfing happens for designers

Cafés, the lifeblood of the freelance and small studio designer. Co-working spaces, especially shared studios where multiple agencies operate. Conferences, OFFF, Brand New, Config, where the laptop comes out in every session. The train and the plane. The shared studio where a competing project might be sitting across the room. Client offices during workshops, where their employees walk through. The Apple Store while you wait for a repair, working from a demo unit nearby.

The shared studio case is its own challenge. Many design studios share space with other studios, and friendly competitors literally work twenty feet away.

The unique risks

Design work has IP exposure that other professions don't.

NDA breaches: most client work runs under NDA, and the contract usually doesn't distinguish between intentional and visual disclosure.

IP leaks before product launch: a hardware mockup leaked via a café screen-read can hit Twitter and ruin a product reveal that the client has been planning for a year.

Embargo violations: agency work for press launches operates under strict embargoes. A leak attribution to the agency loses the client.

Trademark applications: a logo glimpsed before the trademark filing is filed can trigger a competing application or a trademark squat.

Pitch confidentiality: new business pitches under NDA can disqualify the agency from the pitch if disclosed.

Portfolio rights: even after a project ships, displaying it publicly might violate the contract. A screen full of unreleased portfolio work is its own risk.

The logo on your screen is the launch. If it leaves the café in someone's memory, the launch left with it.

Practical methods

Designers tend to be visual, which means their screens are at full brightness with vivid colors. That's exactly the worst combination for privacy.

Privacy filter rated for design work. The standard 3M filters are too dim for color-critical work. Look for the lighter filters in the 90-degree range, which are still useful in cafés.

Reduce brightness in public. A logo at 30% brightness is much harder to read at distance than at 100%.

Use Figma branches and private projects for unreleased work. The branch view hides the in-progress logo from anyone who clicks into the main project.

Don't open the Figma sidebar in public. The project list reveals client names.

Hide layer panels and the file name bar in public with Figma's UI3 features. Cmd+Shift+\ toggles the UI.

Use a code name in the file until launch. "ProjectX-mark-v07" reveals nothing. "Spotify-redesign-v07" reveals everything.

Lock the screen every time you stand up in a shared studio. Cmd+Ctrl+Q.

For more, the shoulder surfing at work guide covers the layered approach.

Where camera-based detection fits in

Cafés and shared studios are the primary use cases. Peeker runs locally on the Mac, watches for faces behind you, and shows a small preview in the corner. Nothing leaves the device. Nothing is recorded. For a designer working in shared visible space, it catches the moments when you're absorbed in the kerning and didn't notice a person stop behind you.

It doesn't fix the color-critical-work problem with privacy filters. That tradeoff is yours to make.

FAQ for designers

Will Peeker conflict with my Cintiq or external displays? No. It uses the built-in webcam regardless of external displays. The preview appears on the primary display by default and can be moved.

Does it interfere with the iPad Sidecar workflow? No. The iPad is a separate display from the Mac's perspective, and Peeker only handles the Mac's webcam feed.

Will the camera affect Figma performance or color accuracy? No. It uses very low CPU and doesn't touch the GPU pipeline. Color calibration is unaffected.

Wrap

A designer's job is to create things that will be revealed at a specific moment. The least a tool can do is help protect that reveal. Peeker is $5/year, and runs quietly in the background.