the take

Everyone is saying designers are cooked right now. I think they have it backwards.

AI has not eliminated creative work. It has eliminated creative work that requires no judgement. The bits you could do on autopilot. What is left is the part that was always the actual job: knowing what good looks like.

the scarce thing

When anyone can generate a thousand variations in minutes, the person who chooses one becomes significantly more valuable. Not because they are faster. Because they have taste.

Most AI-generated work is mediocre. Not because the tools are bad, but because there is no human layer. Without someone directing it, AI produces the statistical average of everything it has seen. It produces the most likely thing, which is almost never the right thing.

The job was always curation under constraint. The ability to say "this, not that" and mean it.

the promotion

Designers used to spend 80% of their time executing and 20% directing. Now they can invert that. They are not being replaced. They are being promoted from executors to directors.

And they can now build. Ship products without engineering teams. Without raising capital. Without waiting for someone technical to say yes. I could not write a line of backend code a year ago. Now I am building and shipping products from my studio in Lisbon.

what I keep seeing

AI-only creative workflows converge. The outputs start looking the same. Human creative input is the only consistent counterweight I have found.

Founders without taste should be worried. They will ship AI-generated mediocrity and wonder why nobody engages.

I’m building Aran Labs around this. Working with clients who understand that taste is not a nice-to-have; it is a competitive advantage.

The real question is not whether designers survive. It is whether founders without design judgement can compete when everyone has access to the same tools.

When production is abundant, what do you think becomes the value?

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