My Predictions for The Creative Industry: Let's Hope I am Wrong.

Everything you will learn in design will become outdated in 5 years...

Some things you learn are timeless, like design theory, gestalt, hierarchy and color theory, but so many other things you learn today using software will be dramatically outdated in 5 years. Things will become outdated quicker than any time in history.

You can thank AI for speeding up the evolution of how creatives will work and what we might be responsible for. I have been studying the impact of AI in the design space for the last 18 months and below are a few of my future predictions.

---

Before reading make sure to check out my design theory pdf book here with a special 50% off for you guys! Also, for a few more days my design courses are heavily discounted up to 90% OFF! Check it out here.

---

1.) Adobe and other design softwares will continue to release more and more AI features which will eliminate the way we do things now.

Refine Text to Vector Graphic output generation

This is not ALL bad, but some of the processes we have built up over years and decades will need to be rewired and relearned. This may not be a pleasant process for some of us “elder” creatives who have spent 20 years using similar workflows and tools.

• Pen tool will be replaced by a sketch to AI feature and other similar features. This will make us less and less dependent on learning this critical tool (that can sometimes take years to master).

• Object selection and removing tools will be obsolete as AI will eliminate the need with AI selection options (already in place but will expand).

• Color changes in a document will be automatic based on the source imagery you supply (AI based). Stealing another artist’s color palettes will be easier than ever! (please note the sarcasm!)

• Layout in your design will be a matter of writing a prompt for layout and it automatically populates with photos and resources you collect. It will be less experimentation with layouts based on trial and error (what we do best!) and more reliance and dependence on what AI generates and considers best.

• Photo sourcing and manipulation will be more of an automatic process based on AI and prompt writing. Which leads to my next prediction...

Image source: kittl.com

2.) You will be required to know how to write AI prompts.

It will no longer be "optional" to speed up your workflow but now required to keep up with other designers who are using AI to get work done.

MidJourney Prompt

• Writing AI prompts will become an entire field akin to UX/UI design with universities creating degrees based solely on prompt generation.

• A lot of money will be made by those who spend time reading books and specializing in AI prompt writing specifically. This will be like a new “gold rush” in which many of those in the design industry may pursue due lack of opportunities.

• Prompt writing will be required even in basic software that never had AI integration before like your browser, PDFs, Word and social media.

• Eventually, prompt writing will become an assumed foundational skill just like learning a word processing program or Excel and will lose its value as a stand-alone specialty.

3.) There will be a subcultural movement by creatives that resists AI.

Image I generated using Adobe Firefly 3

There will be a huge resistance to AI becoming more and more a part of a creatives work requirements. People will ban and boycott Adobe and other softwares to maintain traditional methods in creating content without the use of AI.

You can see consistent resistance to change with all major technological advancements over time. For example, in the early 90’s, how many designers resisted the move way from pen and paper and into computer software? Those who used Exacto Knives were seen as the “old guard” who were protecting a dying way of doing things because of their resistance to industry changes. This repetitive pattern in history will repeat itself with AI.

Society will continually mock those who resist this change to AI and that will only fuel the fire in the counter cultural movement of eliminating AI in creative workflows.

There will be entire groups of design influencers who will be built around this resistance and they may even name their group.

Their name will be a chant spoken behind the scenes in Reddit forums and other emerging social media channels as a battlecry for the return to “real artists” work.

AI content will be seen as a disgusting display of large tech companies influence in forcing progress on people.

4.) The internet will be filled with more AI trash.

In some ways this has already happened. The good news for us traditional designers and creatives is this will be our moment to stand out. Real authentic artwork in which we show our process in detail will be revered. The trend of going back to our creative “roots” with more traditional methods and mediums will grow.

Unfortunately, 90% of the internet will NOT be generated by humans and this could lead to a shift away from content consumption and move toward a different forms of learning and entertainment that will be harder for AI to replicate.

4.) Graphic Designers will do entirely different jobs than they do now.

If you were to take a poll on what types of projects designers typically are tasked with you might see a list similar to this:

Logo Design
Branding
General Social Media Graphics
Icon Design
Flyers and Posters
Mailers

This list will dramatically change in 5 years with the emergence of software advancements.

Unfortunately, a lot of the tasks listed above that designers do now will be automated with software and AI prompts.

I remember just 10 years ago being paid by clients to turn sketches into vector or to take raster image and hand trace it with the pen tool in Adobe Illustrator. That is a thing of the past with vectorizing software and tools being built in to so many programs. AI will make that process super accurate.

Generating logo designs using AI is not ready yet to take our jobs, as I write a bit about the results in my article I wrote last year here. Unfortunately, with further money poured into AI research, logo generation tools could become scary good, just like the OpenAI Sora project is scaring the utter mess out of video editors right now.

Up to 40 percent of my income when I was a full-time freelancer graphic designer came from doing logo design projects, yikes!

One thing you cannot take away from a designer’s abilities is their creativity and adaptability to custom situations.

This will be what we grasp onto as we become more like “creative overseers” or “creative project managers”.

This requires us to have management of lots of different creatives tasks, assets, people and software to make sure a project has the “human touch” and balances creativity with business goals.

Graphic designers have a good opportunity to evolve from pencil pushers to true managers. This can be another article unto itself, but for the meantime, designers have to come up with ways to do more than what is required of us now as we risk being “automated” out of a job if we continue to only focus on traditional graphic design projects.

I am going to check back in 5 years to see how all of my “predictions” did.

Who knows? I could be way off (I hope!) but I’m just sharing my thoughts about what is on everyone’s mind in the design industry.

Are we going to lose our relevancy? Am I going to hate being a designer in 5 years when I am required to re-learn everything all over again? Will creativity be replaced by productivity? I hope the answers to those questions end up being no.

What are some questions that are heavy on your mind? I would love to help answer them below.

Are you a free subscriber to my design newsletter? If not you should be!

Make sure to check out discounts on my courses and my book! on my website below.