AI and Design in the Year 2025
June 27, 2025
I had a client tell me a couple of years back that they didn't need to pay for design anymore. He attached a graphic he had made in a minute using DALL-E. My first thought was, "Oh wow, designers are f*cked." My second thought was, "Wait, this is pretty far off from the company brand guidelines."
Then I started noticing more mistakes. In addition to being nowhere near the company's brand look, the logo was not the logo, and words throughout were spelled wrong—including (ahem) the company name. It soon became a game of “How Many Mistakes Can You Find in This Picture?”
At first glance, it was a very ornate and eye-catching illustration. After a few seconds, it became clear that what I was looking at was just plain bad.
That was a single instance where I briefly saw the potential of this new technology and then was instantly introduced to its weaknesses.
However, that brief punch in the gut made me think: technology will do this. Technology can disrupt and upend things. In the art world, painting was officially announced dead upon the advent of photography in the 1830s. But painting is very much alive almost a couple of hundred years later. It certainly isn't the same as it was in the early 19th century. And what photography has done is force the art of painting to find its own language. Impressionism and Cubism may never have been born had photography decided that it was the new owner of the realistic image.
Since that first client AI image fiasco, I've seen amazing examples of what AI can do in the realms of art and design. When used well, AI imagery can bring an artist's or designer's imagination to life fairly quickly. Perfectly? No. Easily? No. Any designer who has found success creating AI imagery will jokingly tell you that in the time it took to iterate and reiterate to create a useful image, they may as well have done it in Photoshop.
AI image creation has disrupted and upended design. But in the end, it's another tool—one that can be embraced or ignored. Now think of the painter in the days when the boogeyman of photography darkened art's doorway. Some painters ignored it. Others used it as impetus to discover new ways to make art with their chosen medium. The way the new movements of painting connected with audiences (add Surrealism, Expressionism, Dada, Futurism, Pop Art) showed that innovation in that ancient medium was not only possible but that people hungered for it.
So now, the boogeyman of AI darkens the doorway of design. And it is doing all kinds of weird sh*t. What's the smart thing to do? I don't think AI can or will replace designers. But I can't imagine designers who ignore or fight the positive potential of AI being successful in today's market—and certainly not over time. So designers who learn to use AI will have a leg up.
How? There are many ways smart designers are using AI today. And here I'm simply talking about image-making tools. I have made significant upgrades to my processes and workflows using LLMs like ChatGPT and Google Gemini. But back to tools. Think of simple manual tasks: removing backgrounds, resizing images, and generating novel iterations of a design. I have used it for product demo creation, logo idea generation, and abstract background art generation. In short, you can save days and more easily turn your creative gears.
Said more plainly: AI will not replace designers. But designers who master AI will replace those who don't.
Don’t worry about sounding professional. Sound like you. There are over 1.5 billion websites out there, but your story is what’s going to separate this one from the rest. If you read the words back and don’t hear your own voice in your head, that’s a good sign you still have more work to do.
Be clear, be confident and don’t overthink it. The beauty of your story is that it’s going to continue to evolve and your site can evolve with it. Your goal should be to make it feel right for right now. Later will take care of itself. It always does.
Cover Illustration: Created by Motorgoat using Google Gemini and Photoshop