Three questions designers ask to defeat AI

Designers aren’t being replaced by AI but production tasks are.
And that’s exposing something uncomfortable.

For years, much of the industry has drifted toward output. Faster delivery. More assets. More variations. More production. Delivering logos, social posts, layouts, templates.
Work that once required skill, time and craft can now be AI generated in seconds.

Design still has value

Not because design has lost value. But because some of what we’ve been calling “design” was never the highest-value work to begin with. It was focussed on outputs as we operated on autopilot.
Autopilot where briefs are accepted without question and solutions applied too quickly.
Autopilot where output becomes the default response instead of research, analysis and thinking.
That’s where AI now competes and often wins because production is easy to automate.

Design can make change

Design can make change

The designers who will struggle are those who define their role by what they make.
The designers who will grow are those who define their role by impact and what they change.

Clients want:
Clarity
Positioning
Differentiation
Growth
Understanding.

Clients want designers to move from outputs to making changes that impact their business. In a recent interview with a design client we were told they had chosen a designer who questioned the brief and asked what needed to change for the project to be successful. They asked what the measurable impact would be.

Take Away

Designers need to ask;
“What problem am I actually solving?”
“What has to change to solve this problem?”
“What will be the impact of these changes?”

From our work on costing and pricing design projects we know these three questions will improve profit.

Here’s how the DBC helps.

Contact Greg if you would like learn about our three month program to help introduce impact pricing for clients.

We help designers build a more profitable design business

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Greg Branson

Design Business Council
www.designbusinesscouncil.com
greg@designbusinesscouncil.com
Greg’s passion is the research and development of methods that improve design management and the role of design in business.
Greg has developed a series of processes and tools to help designers manage their business better along with a series of workshops that show designers how to use these tools.