Sep 8, 2024
Requiem, Conformism, and Revolution
AI is taking over the world of graphic design, and we – designers – watch anxiously as our profession undergoes a profound redefinition. On one hand, there's technological enthusiasm. On the other, we are becoming increasingly reduced to aesthetic consultants, somewhat lost in this new landscape.
This isn’t a lament about progress. Our work, which once focused on deep reflection around communication, strategy, and understanding the audience, is now more often about serving up visual answers in an aesthetic game: pretty or ugly, trendy or outdated. Somewhere along the way, we lost the sense of defending our design decisions. Have we accidentally fallen into this trap? In our rush to please others (rather than solving real problems), have we given away what’s most important in our profession?
So here’s the question: Have we, designers, reduced ourselves to "aesthetic laborers"? Silent, grabbing job after job, avoiding discussions, giving up. Maybe we lacked assertiveness, maybe just time, because the market demanded speed. Or maybe we've fallen into something even trickier.
AI is like a mirror, mercilessly reflecting what we are becoming as designers. Machines that generate images, often without any reflection on why we create them in the first place. Algorithms don’t question – they answer. Design work was always about process: iterations, tests, exploration, analysis. And now? Have we been sidelined by technology, or have we simply gotten used to being executors rather than creators?
Perhaps this is the moment to critically look at ourselves and realize that the future of our profession requires a new definition. McLuhan was right when he said, “the medium is the message” – the tools we use change our perception and our way of working. The key question is: What role do we want to play in this?
Maybe the future of design isn't in faster image generation but in what we, as humans, can bring to the process. The power isn’t in the spectacle but in thoughtful action. Design is about something much deeper – responding to real needs, creating new perspectives, telling stories that move people.
Vilém Flusser might say our role is to program visual cultural codes. It’s no longer just about how something looks, but what it means. In a world where anyone can "design" a logo in five minutes, our value lies in a deep understanding of context, in the ability to assign meaning.
One thing is certain – the future of design won’t be about fighting AI, but about learning to collaborate with it. Our strength lies in our ability to perceive meaning, something algorithms will never grasp. Someone has to break the visual homogenization. It’s up to us to decide how we will use technology to create something meaningful.