Craft is a mirage

Designers from across the profession have started hoisting the craft banner. A call to arms for design to stay involved, or even take control and show value, while quietly avoiding the harder questions about design’s changing role. These designers are trying to leverage skills they already know, and are uniquely qualified at perform. They are hoping the sheen of mastery will distract others from the uncomfortable truth that the ground beneath the profession is shifting faster than their habits can adapt.

Craft, as we invoke it today, is an illusion, a nostalgic callback to a halcyon era of design when form, color, texture, refinement, and detail were shaped through apprenticeship and skills were accumulated over decades. It gestures at a world where mastery was earned slowly, where developing your eye mattered, and where the fundamentals of design excellence were stable long enough to build a career upon.

But that world no longer exists. The contemporary idea of “craft” isn’t shaped by mentors, time, or tradition—it’s shaped by algorithms. Aesthetic trends are now generated, amplified, and retired not by masters but by influencers; not by patient refinement, but by the churn of social feeds and genAI tools capable of producing thousands of variations in seconds. In this environment, craft has become less an enduring standard and more a rapidly shifting visual currency—cheap, abundant, and easily replaced.

And yet, some within the design profession continues to cling to craft as if it were a shield. They would have us retreat behind it, building high-walled fortresses of refined taste in hopes that AI will not breach its perimeter. They assert that craft is what makes us essential, that we should fetishize detail, nuance, and polish as if their scarcity still signals value in a world where scarcity itself has evaporated.

In doing so, we mistake polish for protection and mastery for relevance. Craft becomes a distraction, a familiar sanctuary that allows us to feel in control while avoiding the deeper transformation underway. It offers comfort but not clarity. More importantly it ties us to the past, rather than laying out a path for the profession. By obsessing over craft, refinements and details, we risk the obvious questions: do those things matter in today’s market where aesthetics are fleeting? Assuming you believe them to be, how do you measure their value? But the harder question remains:

What does craft mean in a world where algorithms
decide what “good” looks like?

These are not questions that refinement alone can answer. They require designers to step out from behind the barricade of craft and confront a profession being reorganized around intelligence, context, systems, and strategy—not just form.

To be clear craft still matters, and design should absolutely retain its ownership; protecting it, and continuing to insist that what we create is elegant, coherent, accessible, and intentionally designed. But we must recognize that the idea of craft itself has evolved from elements of style and taste to a practice that ensures our work has integrity; which is the foundation upon which great products are built.

Craft cannot be the ceiling of our ambition. Designers can, and must do more than refine surfaces or perfect interactions. The era of AI is reshaping how products are conceived, how innovation emerges, even how opportunities are identified. It is dissolving the boundaries between ideation and execution, between strategy and implementation, between imagination and production. And it has placed the integrity of what we create, and the people who build it, to be front and center.

There is no credible reason for designers to remain on the sidelines of this transformation, or accept a narrowing definition of the discipline, let alone retreat into the yesteryear notion of craft as if it were the only defense against irrelevance. Designers have always been builders—in spirit, if not always in title. Now we can be builders in practice. The tools exist. The barriers have fallen.

This is not mission drift. It is the next logical expansion of the discipline. Its the same type of shift that occurred with desktop publishing, but this time on a much larger scale. Craft was used as a barricade then as well, but quickly fell aside within a few years as the technology evolved.

If anything, designers are uniquely equipped for this moment. A profession rooted in creative problem-solving, human-centered thinking, integrative reasoning, and a long-standing commitment to sustainability is exactly the profession that should be leading—not resisting—this technological shift.

AI does not diminish the role of design; it enlarges it. It expands the canvas. It amplifies our reach. It accelerates our ability to shape, test, refine, and deploy ideas. It gives designers the power to influence not just the interface, but the entire architecture of the experience—technical, organizational, operational, and strategic.

But only if we step forward.

Hiding behind craft may feel safe, but it guarantees marginalization. Embracing this opportunity positions designers at the forefront of how modern products are defined, built, and sustained.

This is the moment for designers to lead.

Not with nostalgia, but with vision.

Not with fear, but with fluency.

Not from behind the barricades, but from the center of the transformation itself.