The Relentless Inevitable

Early in my career I was working for the digital division of a large multinational ad agency. We shared a floor of the office with the studio. In those days (~1997) every large ad agency had a studio. Its purpose was to take the ads created several floors up by art directors and copywriters and get them ready for media. Print ads were formatted for publications in the media buy. TV ads were duplicated on to various tape formats, put into courier envelopes and sent to stations. Coupons were laid out and prepared to be sent to print.

By the time i got there the studio was much smaller than it had been in its past. There were two or three people left working there, although the space probably held 20 or 30 at one point. The remaining members were master craftspeople. I would watch them cut and paste (literally with knives and spray glue) art and copy. They still were using Letraset for some type setting. A completely analog process in an increasingly digital world.

It was clear, to us and to them, that their jobs were not long for this world. Despite being the best at what they did, they were slower and more expensive than what was to replace them. Who needs someone to copy a TV ad to a video tape when you could send it to every station digitally? The relentless inevitability of technology.

Cut to 2015, at the first Epicurrence. A buzzy new startup called The Grid was there to pitch a room of designers on their product. The basic idea was that design could be automated. Want a site that looks like it was designed by Massimo Vignelli? No problem. Want a new brand campaign in the style of Nike? The Grid could do it.

We peppered the young founder with questions and criticisms about why this would never work. There was no way software could deal with the endless complexity of large corporate design challenges.

The Grid never delivered on its promise. It shut down a few years later. All of us smugly said "told you so" and went back to our work.

Like a lot of technology, they weren't wrong, they were just early.

Design tools have had AI for a few years but their abilities are pretty basic. Framer can generate a reasonable, but generic, looking site for you. Midjourney can create pretty compelling images if you invest the time to prompt it enough. But none of these have really felt that threatening.

Watching the Figma keynote this week (June 2024) they rolled out a bunch of AI features and suddenly designers feel threatened. Two things seem to be causing the fear.

1) The call is coming from inside the house - The fact that Figma, a beloved tool of designers, is rolling out features that seem to reduce the need for its customers feels like an act of aggression.

2) The reaper comes for all of us eventually - The fact that people can see the end to a certain type of design work is sending people into full existential mode.

I think back to the studio people who probably saw a PC in the 80s and didn't find it threatening. After all, it could not do what they did. Even with desktop publishing tools like QuarkXpress, PageMaker and eventually InDesign they felt safe. But slowly, these tools could do what they did and what once took 30 people eventually took 3 people and ultimately no people.

But of course that isn't really true. Someone still sends ads to newspapers and TV stations. Someone still creates them, goes to the meetings, gets consensus, goes to Cannes and accepts gold statues.

It was always inevitable that technology would come for designers. I am pretty sure we reached "peak design jobs" somewhere in 2021 and the number of design jobs will decline or stay flat.

There is also an argument that the number of people "doing design" will increase because of these tools. A democratization that will send many designers into full gate keeper mode of who gets to call themselves a designer.

Value is always in motion and hand wringing over it is wasted energy. Arguing whether technology can replicate "taste" or "creativity" isn't important. Over time it will be able to do both.

Embrace this change. These are still tools and what is most important is how you use them. Accept the relentless inevitable.