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When I first started, I thought I had a pretty good idea of what I was going to do next. The designer makes the design. There is Figma, Photoshop, Illustrator, there is observation, typography, composition, there is a client who comes with a task, and there is an end result that can be put in a portfolio. You can become better, take on larger projects, raise prices, assemble a team and gradually grow within this system. At some point I realized that this system no longer exists. Moreover, she did not disappear on any specific day. For several years in a row, it just became less and less similar to the profession I once entered.
Design has changed more in these six years than in previous decades. And it’s not even a matter of the emergence of any one new tool. Everything changed at once: the market, technology, production costs, availability of development, attitude towards visuals, methods of creating content and, finally, the person himself at the computer. What previously required a small team can now sometimes be done by one specialist in an evening. What was recently considered a separate professional service can now be obtained automatically. And what previously was not part of the designer’s work at all suddenly became his direct responsibility.
I myself resisted this expansion of the profession for quite a long time. Not in the sense of denying technology, but rather in an attempt to understand where design ends. At some point, I started doing development because I felt cramped in the role of a person who just designs the interface. If I came up with a system, I was interested in understanding how it worked internally. If I see that some idea cannot be implemented properly, it is no longer enough for me to simply transfer the problem to the developer. I want to figure it out myself. So design gradually led me to React, backend, databases, servers, my own tools, and ultimately to the development of things that can hardly be called “design” in the classical sense.
And at some point I realized a rather simple thing: the boundary between designer and developer was much more arbitrary than it seemed.
Previously, this division was convenient. One person comes up with the idea, another implements it. One is responsible for the visual part, the other for the technical part. For a large industry it really worked. But the cheaper and more accessible the tools become, the less sense there is in such a rigid division. If one person can come up with a product, design it, write most of the code, build a server and run everything on their own, it is strange to continue to think that they must stop at Figma just because it was once accepted.
And this is where, it seems to me, the most interesting change in the profession begins.
The designer gradually ceases to be a person who produces visual materials, and becomes a person who creates systems. Sometimes visual, sometimes digital, sometimes technical. In some cases, he even becomes the author of the product. And this is much more interesting than the old model, because with responsibility comes control.
I have always been interested in not just drawing a thing, but seeing what happens after it is given away. How a person will use the interface. How will the brand live in a year? How the site will work on a real server. How the system will process the data. How the product will look not on the presentation, but in the hands of the user. The more I do this, the less interested I am in the layout itself and the more interested I am in everything that comes before and after it.
This is probably why I also perceive AI a little differently than usual.
Over the past couple of years, there has been a lot of talk that artificial intelligence will kill the design profession. I think it will actually kill quite a lot of designers' work. It's just not quite the same thing.
If a significant part of your work consists of making variations, adaptations, simple images, banners, resizes, first concepts and other repeatable operations, then AI is already doing this work faster than a person. And every year the difference will only increase. You can talk as much as you like about real art, the author’s approach and human taste, but the market is not obliged to pay a person for what a machine can do in a few seconds.
The market in general is rarely interested in our romantic ideas about our own indispensability.
But it does not at all follow from this that the designer becomes unnecessary...
The opposite is happening. When production becomes cheap, deciding what to produce at all becomes more expensive.
AI can take a thousand images. But it does not answer the question of why the product is needed. Can put together an interface, but doesn't know what problem it solves. Can write code, but doesn't know what kind of system makes sense to build. Can offer a hundred logo options, but takes no responsibility for what that logo will mean in five years.
And this is where the value of the designer begins to shift. Previously, most of the value was in the ability to produce something. Nowadays, more and more value is found in the ability to choose a direction, formulate a problem, see connections and make a decision.
This is a pretty big shift.
Because it becomes easier to produce almost every month, but for some reason no one has yet learned how to fully automate making good decisions.
At the same time, along with new opportunities, the profession becomes much less comfortable. Old skills are no longer a guarantee. You can be a very good specialist at a particular tool and find that the tool itself is no longer a competitive advantage. You can spend ten years making high-quality websites and suddenly see how exactly the same websites are being made just for the sake of one thing to attract clients for development.
That is why now the profession quite strictly divides people.
Someone is starting to expand. A designer learns to write code, a developer begins to understand visuals, an art director understands the product, an entrepreneur learns to use AI instead of hiring a person for every small operation. Boundaries are gradually erased, and a person begins to gather around himself his own set of tools.
And someone is trying to keep the same model and just doing the same thing they did before, only with a little new words in the portfolio.
It seems to me that the second path is becoming less and less viable.
Not because old specialists are bad. On the contrary, among them there are a huge number of people with very strong crafts. The problem is that the craft itself is no longer sufficient. Previously, you could build a career around one set of skills and gradually become an increasingly expensive specialist. Now the ability to constantly rebuild your own set of tools is much more important.
I felt it myself. Over the course of six years, I actually changed my own profession several times, although formally I remained a designer all this time. At first, design was mostly a visual work for me. Then he moved into branding and art direction. Then interfaces and products appeared. Then development. Then own systems and tools. Now AI.
has been added here And I don't think it will end here
Moreover, the most interesting thing is that this constant need to adapt is at the same time the main problem and the main advantage of the new profession.
It’s a problem because it’s no longer possible to master a profession once and live peacefully for the next twenty years. Now you have to constantly retrain, monitor technologies, change processes and sometimes admit a rather unpleasant thing: what you recently considered your main professional advantage has already become a common skill or is not in demand.
But at the same time it gives incredible freedom.
Six years ago, I would have had to depend on a lot more people to make a complex digital product. Now I can come up with an idea, make a design, write code, assemble a prototype, connect services, build infrastructure and get a working result on my own. Not perfect and not always fast, but enough for the idea to cease to exist only in my head.
I came to design for the opportunity to create visual things, and gradually I came to the opportunity to create in general.
It seems to me that this is where the future of the profession lies today. Not in an attempt to defend the old definition of a designer, or in an endless debate about whether AI can make a pretty picture. Maybe. This has not been a particularly interesting question for a long time.
Another thing is more interesting: who will understand what exactly needs to be created, why it is needed, how to combine different technologies and what to do with it after launch.
And here the designer suddenly has a huge space for growth.
Because if previously a designer had to choose between being a specialist or trying to do everything at once, now the environment itself pushes him to the opposite. The more tools become available, the wider the area of responsibility of one person can become.
I don't know what the profession will look like in another six years. Perhaps the word “designer” will become too narrow in general. Perhaps much of today's work will eventually be automated. Perhaps new roles will appear for which there are not even normal names yet.
But I know for sure that going back to the way things were six years ago is already pointless.
That profession is over, and to be honest, I don't miss it very much.
Because along with the disappearance of the old rules, a huge number of restrictions also disappeared. Now I don't have to choose between design and development. It is not necessary to wait for a separate specialist to test the idea. It is not necessary to have a large team to make a complex product. You don't have to sell only your time.
Output
Therefore, over these six years, I realized that design has not become smaller.
It has become much bigger.
It’s just that at the same time it has ceased to be a safe profession.
And, probably, this is a fair price for freedom.
Those who do not want to change will indeed be gradually squeezed out of the market. Not because someone decided to destroy designers, but because the market always gets rid of work that can be done cheaper, faster, or not done at all.
But for those who are able to adapt, perhaps the largest space of opportunities in my entire career is now opening up.
I started out as a person who wanted to learn how to design well.
Six years later, something else is much more interesting to me: what can you create if you no longer limit yourself to the confines of your profession.
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