The Consequence of AI on Craft
“We shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us.”*
For the last two generations of designers that has not been the case; they have not been permitted to shape their own tools. Companies like Adobe, Figma, MacroMedia, Sketch, Canva, etc. have shaped their tools for them, indeed they have even shaped design education. More to the point, these companies have determined how design should be done, defining design in both the how and the what with the boundaries of their functionality.
First, whether its in vectors or pixels, and then based on the limits of the respective capabilities, these tools determine layouts, colors, typography, etc., based on the promise of efficiency. Designers can be confident that a rectangle has four right corners, or that a circle is perfectively found. In exchange, these tools have eliminated the consequences of failing to have design craft.
Whether its an ill-timed pen stroke, or the potential harm inflicted from a fresh x-acto blade, these tools have all but eliminated the need for designers learn craft. In its place is one’s proficiency with the software—a level of abstraction removed from the design and its constituent elements. Craft is about details but details are now determined by engineers. Details like letter-spacing—kerning, are left to the programmers to determine based on an algorithm rather than a well trained eye. The idea of manually readjusting how much space resides between the individual letters is no longer considered important except perhaps in the case of a headline or logo. Indeed, exploring and understanding the differences between typefaces and impact that a font has on the expression, the emotional conveyance, of a design is limited to choosing between the default fonts in your software.
With the software’s ability to travel back in time with the pervasive undo button, resources no longer need to be conserved and the risk/reward of a decision, no longer needs to be considered in advance. Indeed, the ability to collapse entire timelines by enabling one to concurrently ideate while also producing the final artifacts removes the time that once afforded reflection and refinement.
This acceleration comes at a cost; this model of working removes the tangible byproducts reflecting the designer’s evolution in thinking; their sketches. Like a mathematician’s chalkboard filled equations, a designer’s sketches walked the problem, its iterations, and refinements, until reaching the solution, which was then produced in final form for production. Not only did this process sharpen the designer’s craft, immersing the designer in their thinking, but it also forced the designer to see the small details and nuances of their design. Enabling them to identify and define success for their designs. Sketches, doodles and tracings not only help the designer to think, and to collaborate, these tangible artifacts can persist in the world as points of reference, compounding the designer’s skills and deepening their understanding of form, composition, color, typography, etc., in short making them better designers.
In response both design education and the practice of design, have been shaped by these tools. Designers who graduated after 2000 likely never learned, let alone really understand, the underlying craft of the their profession. Which is why so many designs look derivative, with their creators mimicking trends rather than pursuing anything original let alone good design. (Every genAI logo has its required sparkles, set against a pink-orange, blue-purple gradient.)
Ironically GenAi could provide an answer
Design used to be a continuous fluid movement between creation and curation, with the designer’s hand never without a pen or pencil, while filling rolls of tracing paper and sketch books. But today’s prescribed design systems and secular patterns afford very little in regards to creation. (see my previous article on design languages vs. design systems.)
Today designers are focused on learning how to enter structured prompt to generate and curate designs from these AI tools. For these individuals design they now write the requirements (structured prompts) and then as critic/curator, reviewing and commenting on what is generated. I feel that design needs to return to role of creator. But in this case the creator of their tools.
Allowing people to create new ways of working, new tools, indeed to redefine the very nature of their work is a common theme amongst AI enthusiasts, myself included. This means that for the first time in decades designers are now able to shape their own tools, assuming they understand the potential for such a transformation. Regardless of whether the majority of designers will put in the effort, both in regard to the required self-reflection and the time to develop and refine their personalized tools. I feel it would be better for the designers to create their tools than for them to leave it up to the platform players who will undoubtedly continue in their efforts to automate and accelerate while ignoring the foundation of craft in design.
There is no question that a new wave of design tools will emerge, each promising a better tomorrow. And like their predecessors will be doomed to consolidation in a market dominated by those handfull of companies who believes one size fits all, with templates, refined capabilities and embedded workflows.
However, designers who are able to create a new sets of tools, ones that embrace craft as well as execution, that balance the human centric practices with scalability, curiosity and novelty with metrics and outcomes, will find themselves at the forefront of what’s to come. As designers we should not settle for some else’s definition of the tools we need, or worse someone else’s definition of “craft” when those people are not designers themselves.
We need to define those things.
We need to own those things.
We need to return to shaping our tools.
*Many attribute this quote to Professor John Culkin, others to either Winston Churchill, or Marshall McLuhan.
