Redefining craft in the age of AI
Designers won’t be relevant unless we evolve
Watching the wave of AI inundating our industry, reading the headlines screeching about design jobs lost to robots, you may find yourself wondering if this is how the ox-and-plow farmers felt watching the advent of the gasoline-powered tractor take over the fields.
Or maybe you’re feeling more anticipation and awe like Sumerians might have felt in the 4th millennium as they rolled the very first wheels down the road.
Wherever you land on the spectrum of fear > awe, one thing is obvious: Times are changing, and changing at lightning speed.
So the real top of mind question as we watch computers generate copy and animate videos and create art is: Where do we creatives fit in all of this?
Be an opportunity finder
The answer is both incredibly simple and resoundingly difficult: We make our place. Carve it out anew, refresh and redefine what craft means, rethink our value, re-anchor ourselves in a new perspective.
Instead of curling into a curmudgeon state, muttering about all the things we hate about technology’s latest leap forward, we need to be willing to evolve. We can give over more of the mundane making to the robots and use them as tools to amplify our own potential for making.
We are opportunity finders for everybody else; now it’s time for us to apply those skills to our own path — and to our own craft.
Ok, you say, but how exactly do we do that?
Excel and be amplified
I’ve been giving this topic a great deal of thought, mapping out answers in Figma to help me visualize how each discipline might find its way forward. All of this thinking is based on my own experience using AI products, as I see what areas are changing and what opportunities those changes open up.
Here are the two big questions I’ve been asking myself:
- Where can creatives excel — what are the areas where we can focus and expand our skills in ways that AI cannot?
- Where can we use AI to amplify our creative skills?
As I’ve gone down this AI rabbit hole, I keep thinking about the early aughts when we first began to hear rumblings about this new thing called digital photography: a thing you could do without a camera because the camera was going to be in your phone! What? It seemed nuts.
At the time, I was an amateur photographer with a photo blog. (Remember those days?!) I was also an early adopter of the Nokia Nseries phone because they were a client of mine. This was pre-iPhone, of course, and it was hard to believe this phone would replace everything. But my 5 megapixel camera made me a believer in no time at all.
As more people got access to better photography tools, the professional photographers evolved. They got to know this new digital tool and they learned all the ways they could use it. They looked for ways to amplify their own talent and creativity. They created new paths forward.
AI isn’t going to make designers extinct. But it will make the act of designing more accessible to more people. Think about all the products and platforms and possibilities for creativity that could be built on top of AI, in the way that Instagram and Tik Tok are only possible because of digital photography.
In order to find our path forward in this new landscape, we have to do the work. Which brings me to my final point…
Embrace exploration
No matter what your level or role, no matter what your current mindset is on AI, I urge you to do one simple thing, right now: TRY THE TOOLS.
You have nothing to lose by checking them out, seeing what all the noise is about. But you have a great deal to lose if you close your eyes, ignore them, and pretend this will all go away. (It won’t, I promise you.) In fact, some companies are already rewriting creative job descriptions to include AI craft and responsibilities.
If you haven’t used AI, then you don’t know what the tools are — and are not — capable of. Don’t get dragged down (or up) by the hype. Explore for yourself. See what’s out there, see what you can do with it. Come to your own conclusions. If you want a place to get started, you can check out my explorations on substack. I’ve been testing the capabilities of all sorts of new tools.
Being informed is part of your path to finding more opportunities to stay relevant and to be even more creative.
Creativity is not being replaced. It is still unique to humans. But where we use our creativity will shift, and our path forward requires us to redefine the value of design by understanding and claiming this new territory.
To help guide you in your AI explorations, here’s three things you can do this week:
- Sign up for Designing with AI: Prompting workshop
- Sign up for Designing for Change: AI edition workshop
- Follow along with my reviews and reflections on the latest AI tools
