The World Through AI-Colored Glasses

An open letter To Those Creatives & Clients Who Still Value Good Work, Welp, here we are again.

The design industry is facing yet another period of devaluation and realignment.

Whether you're an ACD at a 40-seat brand factory, a marketing team lead working to keep your brand fresh, or the freelancer duking it out on the reg with that ACD's brand factory, we all have some hard truths to face @ AI and it's growing infringement on our sacred space.

Living somewhere between the ACD and the lone gunman, I see a tit-for-tat playing out as the era of bots rises and falls.

We can rail and proselytize all we want about the value of ideas and the nuances of human creativity with all its intuition, inspiration, and filtration – and we will… and we’re right – but we’re not the ones in control of this wave.

It’s being driven by small business owners, struggling team leaders, and corporate bean counters so blinded by desperation to take over the world on a dime that they mistake presence for performance. And that means it’s coming no matter what we do – no matter the volume of truth & logic-riddled tantrums we throw. It’s coming because they aren’t looking through the same lens as us – and they never were.

Sad as it is, we, the stalwart, old-school creatives who insist on valuing talent over technology, pen & ink over prompt will take some new lumps. Not necessarily direct blows, but passive, industry-level lumps akin to those landed by Guru, Fiverr, 99designs, and the rash of stale stock design resources thrown at corporate America over the last decade or two.

The median value of our product will once again fall.

But with this devaluation comes a counterweight.

And if we approach it right, a net-positive.

Most of us, now or in the past, understand the reality of the small client world. I’m sure I’m not speaking out of turn when I say the majority of us would rather avoid fighting in that ring. I know I’ve priced more than one red-flag prospect out of the engagement based on the initial brief meeting.   

While every freelancer and growing boutique agency is always on the hunt for the precious gems among the small business community. Fun, open minded and reasonably flush… the start-up with a killer product and a culture we all want to be a part of.

These opportunities are, as the monicker suggests, a rarity. Unfortunately, more often than not, the small business is single-minded, hurting for cash, and doesn’t understand the difference between their brand, their logo, their flyer, their website, et al.

They expect the world. And like a reality show hoarder, once delivered, they will do their very best to make that world a cluttered and unsanitary place. Then, to add insult to injury, they want to trade you an old deck of cards and half-used pack of bubblegum for it.

If I could recoup all the wasted hours and lost dollars I’ve sacrificed in the name of the hastily agreed upon contract over the years, I could cross most of my dream destinations off my bucket list.

The positive here is those prospects are proving to be the first to believe in the AI savior. That they no longer need to consider the expense of hiring good talent – or any talent for that matter. They are materializing as the first to succumb to the growing bot licker’s syndrome.

"Why engage with outsiders who think they know what’s right for their business when I can just work the prompt until I get exactly what I want? Besides, designers have egos – and they want far too much money for their little doodles!"

It's as simple as that. No need when Claude or GPT or one of the other clankers out there will do everything they need for pennies on the dollar. (At least that’s what the LinkedIn SEO guru with 328 connections and no discernible work history told them)

The silver lining?

Many of those folks will be removed from the prospect pool.

No more cartwheels trying to get the start-up craft brewery or the local art festival to engage only to find three meetings – or three rounds – in that the engagement was a mistake. Those prospect will have already removed themselves from the landscape and when approached, will politely tell you “Thanks but no thanks.” Who am I kidding? You’ll just never hear from them so won’t have to expend the thankless effort of vetting, pitching, or presenting to them.

Because this is what I believe, I’m going to do my best to leverage this period of upheaval as an opportunity. An opportunity to rededicate myself and my “small-is-the-new-big” agency to the craft of deep dive thinking, bringing value to the table, and building relationships with clients who actually value what we offer.

If the range of dialogue out there in the creative sphere – from adaptive apologist to FTW – represents our collective reaction to this latest scourge, then those of us who do re-root in the value of 100% human creativity will benefit even further.

Large tech-friendly conglomerates and cost-cutting account-forward teams will suffer the pains of more volume, less money, and mediocre outcomes.

In an effort to take something good from all this, I’m choosing to hold my team’s work up in contrast to the AI materials flooding the marketplace and bet they more than stand up. All of us in the professional creative community should do the same – recommitting to the passion for human-originated ideas and putting forth the best possible ideas on every job we touch.

And we should do that as hard as we possibly can. 

'Cause this too shall pass. That is all.

[  Yes, I’m aware the blog image is AI. That was intended. ]