Where’s the AI Design Renaissance?
Erik D. Kennedy
After lots of hype, current AI tools haven’t made designers much faster or replaced design jobs. AI works well for small, low-complexity projects and personal prototypes but fails on novel, tightly constrained, or high-stakes design. Designers should focus on creative vision, craft, and complex problems where AI still struggles.
2 Oct 2025
one-off chats with an LLM are a terrible way for a non-designer to end up with a great design.
Why do I say this? Because one-off chats with a human designer are a terrible way to end up with a great design!
So if all AI does is hand clients the ability to make their own logo bigger, is that not just giving them more rope to hang themselves?
And, for what it’s worth, I’d recommend steering your own designs away from the hallmarks of UI-by-AI: Inter, cards displayed in parallel, everything being 8px rounded, etc. The time to know your brand, know your audience, know the problem you’re solving, and lean way in starts now.
A third axis that I think about is “tightness of constraints”. I have a working theory that AI performs best when constraints are loosest.
As a simple visual example, note how much better it is at impressionism than blueprints – one is about vibes, the other requires geometric exactitude.
'impressionist painting' vs 'blueprints'. AI nails what's vibes-based, but struggles with the tight constraints of geometric exactitude
