Opening your place to the street

"There is a line you hear everywhere now: the work of making things look good can be done by AI, so the designer's work, from here on, will be deciding what is worth making. Or, asking the questions. I find myself agreeing with that line whenever I hear it. The trouble is the next sentence, which usually does not come. How, exactly?"

"If you live as a freelance designer for any length of time ─ and especially if, like me, you spend most of your days making graphics ─ the thing people ask you for, almost always, is something clean and competent. A logo. A flyer. A small brochure in the brand voice of someone you have not met. This is reasonable. It is the thing they are commissioning, and the thing you hand back across the desk."

"The conversation upstream of it is a different matter. What they actually want to be in the world, what the people they care about actually need ─ that conversation has usually happened, or has usually failed to happen, before you arrive. So how, in practice, does a designer get invited into that upstream conversation? Into the place where people are still deciding what to make, and for whom?"

Making things look good can be done by AI, shifting design work toward deciding what should be made and asking questions. Freelance designers are often commissioned for clean, competent deliverables such as logos, flyers, and small brochures that match a client’s brand voice. The upstream conversation about what people want to be in the world and what their audiences actually need often happens before the designer is involved, or fails to happen entirely. The practical challenge is how designers get invited into that earlier stage where decisions are still being made about what to create and for whom.

Read at Medium