AI Isn’t Design’s Biggest Problem
This essay was originally published in Fast Company on August 18, 2025.
Of all the design fields, I think graphic designers might be the most insecure. The introduction of any new technology can feel like a threat to the field’s existence and renders design jobs obsolete.
Think of desktop publishing in the ’80s and ’90s, which made designing layouts accessible and easy. Or the late 2000s, when graphic designers’ work moved online and there was fierce debate about whether designers should learn to code because “print was dead.” Then came smartphones (and, at the same time, social media) which put creative tools in the pockets of millions of people, rendering nearly everyone an amateur graphic designer.
I don’t need to tell you that there is yet another new threat on the horizon casting yet another dark cloud over the graphic design industry: artificial intelligence. And this time, the threat is real. The World Economic Forum included graphic design among the most at-risk jobs due to artificial intelligence, slightly below accountants, bank tellers, and data entry clerks. This is all very worrisome for a profession that has always been prone to insecurity.
It’s interesting because the tasks AI tools are best at are not creative tasks, but rather those that involve repetitive actions, automation, recognizing patterns, and analyzing data—none of which appear on the surface as the kind of things graphic designers spend a lot of time on.
And yet, so much of modern graphic design has been automated and systematized to the point of it feeling like it’s already come from an AI system. Much of today’s graphic design—from book covers to brands, digital interfaces to social media posts—has been standardized around similar processes, default tools, and a few globally familiar styles and practices.
Like an essay written by ChatGPT, most of the results of AI design look very similar: the averaging of everything else. Unfortunately, that also sounds like a good description of a lot of contemporary graphic design. Today’s graphic designers are using the same tools, designing for the same contexts, and following the same patterns. Perhaps AI feels threatening to graphic designers because, in many ways, they already design like AI.