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Execution at the click of a button might not be the career crisis you think it is. You just need to shift to the skills that are in demand more than ever.
Welcome to another edition of Dear Boom, our advice series where the creative community helps solve the industry’s trickiest problems. This week, an anonymous designer shares a worry that’s keeping many of us awake at night.
“I’ve stopped being afraid of AI,” they say. “But I’ve realised something worse. It’s not that AI is coming for me. It’s that the thing I’ve spent 15 years getting brilliant at—the making, the craft, the production—is becoming the cheap part. What still seems to matter is everything around it. Knowing what’s worth making in the first place. Having taste. Understanding the client’s actual problem. Direction, not just execution.”
They’re not wrong. But also, they’re not alone in feeling stuck about what to do next. So we asked the Creative Boom community for advice. We share their best tips below, and you can read the full discussions on LinkedIn and Instagram.
1. Don’t panic
The first thing to say is: don’t panic! Production was always going to become automated: tools do that. But they can’t replace thinking. They can’t give you taste, judgment, or the ability to know what’s actually worth making in the first place.
Claire McDivitt, marketing director at Lazerian, puts this in historical perspective. “Photography didn’t replace painting,” she points out. “Adobe didn’t replace designers. CNC machines didn’t replace makers. They simply changed what became valuable. AI is another step in that evolution.
“What clients will continue to value,” she continues,
“is something AI can’t replicate: curiosity, judgement, lived experience, taste, storytelling and the ability to ask the right questions before jumping to the answer.”
David Jonathan Johnston, founder at Accept & Proceed tells a similar story. “Perhaps the shift isn’t from designer to creative director, but from maker to sense-maker,” he ponders. “AI can produce endlessly, but it cannot feel wonder, responsibility, trust, belief or intuition. Judgment, taste and consequence will become more valuable as a result”
2. Change how you talk about your work
It’s one thing to make this intellectual leap yourself; it’s quite another to explain it to clients. One place this can begin, says David Sedgwick, founder of StudioDBD, is in your case studies.
“The shift starts with how you frame and talk about your work, not just how you make it,” he emphasises. “Instead of only showing the final visuals, you start to make it clear what the problem was, what decisions you made along the way and what difference it actually made. You begin to move from ‘I make things that look good’ to ‘I solve problems through design and thinking’.
“It also means learning to speak a bit more in terms of business and impact,” he adds. “Not in a forced or jargon way, but in a way that shows you understand what the client is actually trying to achieve.”
Designer Émilie Chen agrees. “Demonstrate that your value doesn’t come only from aesthetic output but from your thinking,” she urges. “Show that you have a wide frame of reference and a strong understanding of visual trends—not just design ones—and culture. Articulate that you can see the bigger picture. This mindset shift is a big one in an industry where things are siloed.”
Here’s a principle that Ian Paget, founder of Logo Geek, has built his entire practice on. “Creating the logo itself is rarely the hard part,” he says. “The real challenge is finding the solution. The real value isn’t in the final artwork. It’s in the thinking that leads to it.”
So what does that look like in practice? “I make it clear to every potential client that they’re not buying a logo,” he says. “They’re investing in expertise, strategic thinking, experience, and a proven approach to solving a problem.”
3. Develop your judgment
But if taste and judgement are becoming all-important, how do you actually develop these skills? “They’re built through repetition, through naming what you did and why,” says experience designer Nuria Quero. “Every time I make a decision, I write down the reasoning. Do this enough times, and you’re not ‘a designer with good instincts,’ you’re someone with an articulable process.”
Experience design director Nural Choudhury follows the same approach. “The ‘developing judgement’ course does exist; it’s just unglamorous,” he stresses. “Try writing down every call you make and why. Six months of that and you have something no model has: a record of your own taste.”
You don’t have to do this alone, though. “The best way to learn is from people with experience,” says Richard Pay, owner and creative director of Moksi Creative. “As a freelancer, that can be tricky, but it’s definitely not impossible.
“Try to surround yourself with people who know it and love it,” he advises. “Ask for some mentorship. Most people love getting asked for help. You’ll quickly learn more, have a sounding board, and you might realise you’ve already been doing a lot of it. And start before you’re ready. You’ve been doing it long enough to know what good and bad look like.”
As part of that, brand identity designer Ben Flay recommends stepping away from the screen. “Get away from the laptop sometimes,” he says. “Spend time with artists, printers, photographers, craftspeople, film photographers, sketchbooks, museums, and creative communities. Develop your creative eye and your taste. That’s what gives your work depth and originality; software alone never will.”
This approach also resonates with Gem Perkins. “There’s a very long answer to this, and then there’s a quick example,” she says. “Go and spend time at an incredible independent letterpress. Tactile design and engineering, remembering the level of craft, the stories, the monumental effort that goes into all the things we use. It’s the first post that made it on my Instagram grid in months.”
4. Start small and experiment
All sounds like a bit much? Then don’t worry: you don’t have to do everything at once. “One thought is to start small with directing, and don’t overwhelm yourself,” says designer Anna Barton. “I’ve started my own work by beginning with smaller projects, for causes and small businesses I care about, with people I know and trust. This has let me test the waters on directing a project from start to finish. And then you can allow those initial trials to grow into something bigger.”
Graphic artist and designer Owen Waddington emphasises experimentation. “Keep trying new things,” he urges. “Constantly question what a design tool is and how you can keep learning, expanding, and evolving your practice.
“I think the best way to create meaningful change in our industry is to keep questioning how we make things,” he adds. “Treat every project as a work in progress. Most experiments won’t succeed, and that’s okay. Many of my unsuccessful experiments become the foundations of work that eventually turns into something much stronger.”
5. Remember the role craft still plays
All this is sound advice for navigating the AI era. But it’s not the be-all and end-all, and it’s equally important not to throw away your years of making.
As brand designer Michael Bullamore puts it: “Don’t give up on the craft. Although anyone can generate something that looks finished now, fewer people can tell if it’s right. Fifteen years of making still shapes your eye. It’s just not the whole job any more. So instead of billing for hours spent producing, start billing for the judgment behind what gets made and the skill that turns a rough idea into something usable.”
AC Seventhree, creative director at D8 Studio agrees. “There’s still room for the making and the doing. I just see AI as software: another tool in the box to be used if it gets the right result. But it should never be an automatic go-to. Clients are paying for your thinking as well as your doing. As long as you’ve always explained the thinking, the transition should be easier.”
Key takeaways
The shift from hands to eyes isn’t something AI forced upon you. It’s something the market has been moving toward for years. AI just accelerated it.
How to respond? Make your thinking visible through case studies and storytelling. Understand your client’s actual problem, not just their stated brief. Seek mentorship and surround yourself with people doing work you respect.
Spend time away from the screen, with tactile, handmade things. Start small with directing. Document your reasoning so you can articulate it to clients. Keep the craft, but recontextualise it as grounding for your thinking.
Above, don’t stress. In many ways, this is not a crisis: it’s an opportunity to finally be valued for what you’ve actually been doing all along.
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