by David Minogue & John Behrens

Four years have passed since the advent of Midjourney and ChatGPT. Without question, the design industry has undergone a profound transformation in that time, forcing us to rethink our relationship with design, our connections to customers and coworkers, and our own identity as designers.

The impact of these technological changes has already separated the haves from the have-nots in both industry and academia.

The speed and breadth of efficiencies from AI are accelerating at such a rate that they not only increase throughput but force us to reconsider the core role of the designer and the design process.

What parts of the design process can, and should, be outsourced to AI?

Changes will impact not just the quantity of time or cost, but a qualitative shift in how design should be taught and practiced.

While journalists and academics speculate about whether AI will transform design, the reality is undeniable: things have already changed.

The Future is Here

Across multiple conversations with executives and industry experts, it became clear that companies are fundamentally rethinking their workflows and hiring practices.

The automation of traditional design tasks, such as sketching, rendering, resizing, and layout adjustments, radically alters the role of designers and the skills they need to succeed.

This shift surpasses straightforward image generation and includes highly specialized tools that support detailed design construction, product development, and strategic brand design.

Chris Ford, CEO of Pilot Agency, explains, “It’s like having the world’s fastest and best sketch artist sitting right next to you.” Pilot, the Boston-based design powerhouse behind brands like Nike, Netflix, and Yeti, has already begun prioritizing interdisciplinary skills over raw artistic talent.

Zack Chomyszak, a senior creative director at Pilot, adds, “The demand for hardcore artists is diminishing,” as designers move from manual creation to guiding technology toward outcomes.

At IDEO, once considered the pinnacle of industrial design agencies, a 32 percent workforce reduction last year signaled a broader industry shift.

Jay Dettling, former VP at Adobe and CEO of Hero Digital, described AI as “a major inflection point, just like the internet… that will radically shift the world of design.”

So How Does This Work?

The change in widely available design tools continues at a breakneck pace, disrupting traditional workflows.

For years, mastery of software like Photoshop, Illustrator, SolidWorks, Keyshot, and Figma was essential, demanding the precision and fluency of a programming language.

Today, tools like Adobe Firefly, Vizcom, Adam CAD, and ChatGPT empower even non-designers to generate polished outputs.

These platforms don’t understand design the way humans do, but they analyze, deconstruct, and reassemble patterns with speed and scope no human could match.

They assess trends in color, form, layout, typography, and branding, often producing results that are both visually compelling and market-aligned.

AI is already being used in practical, high-impact ways. For example, companies use tools like Midjourney or Looka to rapidly generate hundreds of logo concepts, which branding teams can then refine and align with client goals.

In product development, platforms like Vizcom and AI-powered CAD systems such as Adam use sketch-based or text-based inputs to generate and iterate on physical product concepts within minutes, cutting weeks off the traditional design timeline.

Designers now act more like strategists, guiding AI tools toward concepts that align with brand goals, then shaping the results into refined creative solutions.

Where a human designer might create a handful of branding concepts over several days, AI can generate thousands of iterations in minutes, giving businesses a vast range of options to explore and refine.

Artificial Creativity

The marriage of AI and design brings both opportunity and friction, particularly in how we define creativity.

Computer scientist Jakob Nielsen argues that AI can generate novel ideas and solutions that rival human creativity.

Regardless of whether that’s true, AI already facilitates innovation by generating unexpected outputs. In STEM industries, hallucinations, those unpredictable outputs, are a liability. But in design, they can be a strength.

A hallucination is inherently original. It recombines patterns and inputs in ways no designer would have predicted, which can lead to breakthrough ideas.

In some creative disciplines, students are actively taught to hallucinate, recombining patterns in original, unexpected ways. This unpredictability, often dismissed in scientific or technical fields, may become one of AI’s greatest assets in design.

Re-Evaluating Design Education and the Future

As AI tools continue to advance, the designer’s role is transitioning from creator to curator.

Designers must still guide the tools, refine outputs, and align work with user needs and goals, but the number of people needed to push the buttons is shrinking.

Traditional artistic skillsets are no longer the primary value metric for designers. To remain relevant, professionals must rethink their process, using speed to test ideas, iterate, and pivot quickly.

This change is already shaking classrooms and curriculums. Academic institutions must act urgently to embed AI literacy across the design education experience.

Students must be prepared for a job market where raw artistic talent is no longer valued and leveraging AI is essential, not optional.

The backlash against this shift is familiar. When Canva exploded in popularity in 2020, many designers protested that it made design “too easy.”

One designer complained, “It allows non-designers to generate artwork and turn around and say, ‘Look, I can do that too.’”

Despite early resistance, Canva ultimately became a standard tool used by professionals and amateurs alike across industries, from presentations to social media graphics.

Design as an industry should embrace AI tools, not resist them. This isn’t about giving up creativity, it’s about elevating it.

In the future, design will be a cross disciplinary practice rooted in systems thinking, engineering, business, and strategy.

Critics

Critics of AI in design often cite privacy and originality. Jay Dettling has warned that AI models may inadvertently reproduce proprietary information, making data security a serious concern.

That said, techniques like closed source training and federated learning can address these concerns by keeping sensitive data internal to an organization.

Others, like Ted Chiang in The New Yorker, argue that AI lacks the human experience and intentionality that define real art. It can imitate, but not originate.

Whether or not that’s true doesn’t change the reality: AI is already reshaping design processes and accelerating outcomes. Its creative impact is undeniable, regardless of its depth or intent.

For many, the anxiety is less about creativity and more about survival. Designers worry that their skills are being automated out from under them. But the greater risk lies in refusing to adapt.

Conclusion

The design industry stands at a crossroads. Industrial, graphic, and UX designers are all feeling the tremors. Despite assurances that designers are irreplaceable, the reality is that design is being transformed, fundamentally and irreversibly.

But this is not the end of design. It is a reinvention.

While automation will absorb repetitive tasks, designers who adapt will become more valuable. As Yuhki Yamashita, Chief Product Officer at Figma, explains, “Designers will have the opportunity to think about bigger problems… and explore more broadly and deeply.”

Executives like Chris Ford, Zack Chomyszak, and Jay Dettling provided first-hand accounts of how their firms are shifting workflows and rethinking talent in response to AI.

Design is not art. It is the craft of solving problems and creating possibilities. This new wave of technology will challenge designers, but it can also make the profession stronger.

Change is part of the iterative process. Designers who embrace it will become not just creatives, but strategic thinkers, innovators, and leaders.

Designers are leaders and visionaries, not painters. We have the opportunity to become more.

David Minogue is President of Spade Product Design, an award-winning inventor and product designer, and a Research Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

John Behrens is the former Vice President of AI Product Development at Pearson and former Vice President of Learning Analytics at Cisco. He now serves as Director of the Technology & Digital Studies Program at the University of Notre Dame.