The Future of the Designer — From the Desk of Van Schneider — Edition №263

I've spoken with friends running their own studios (many of them very talented in their own right) who have already integrated AI into their workflow. They're now 10 times more efficient, 10 times better at client pitches, while simultaneously cutting costs.

The winners are now winning by an even wider margin, especially if they're able to integrate AI into their existing, already exceptionally good creative process.

If the client could theoretically do everything themselves with AI, then why hire a designer?

Excellent question. I believe there are three reasons to continue hiring a designer:

1. Clients lag behind. It'll takes a few years before they fully catch up and stop hiring creatives for certain tasks, at which point creatives have caught up on what makes them worthy (beyond just production output).
2. Clients famously don't know what they want. That's the primary reason to hire a designer with a vision. Even with AI at their fingertips, they wouldn't know what instructions to give because they don't understand the process.
3. Smart clients focus on their strengths and outsource the rest. If I run a company I could handle my own bookkeeping, but I'll hire someone. Same with creative services. AI won't change that fundamental business logic. Just because I can, doesn't mean I should.

I'm about to state something brutally honest that might offend some: Creative imagination is incredibly rare. It's not evenly distributed. Most people cannot envision what does not exist. They cannot create without a reference point, cannot build without a blueprint. Most people simply have very limited imagination.

Imagine handing the general public a tool that could instantly create any movie they could describe. No need to wait for Hollywood. Sounds amazing right? But most people wouldn't even know where to start (including myself). Not because people are stupid, but because original vision is exceedingly rare. The ability to create something from nothing is almost supernatural in its scarcity.

If you think about it, AI has digested the entirety of human knowledge but lacks the lived experience to make it meaningful. It's like a tourist who's read every guidebook but never actually visited the country. Technically informed but missing the scents, the sounds, the subtle social cues that bring true understanding. It can mimic but not originate, it can copy but not create with a perspective.

This is why, the Creative Director will survive.

AI will generate exactly what you tell it to create. A blessing for those with vision, a curse for those without. You can feed it every reference, provide every specification, but the output is only as good as your ability to recognize what is good and what is bad.