Design | Passenger or Driver

More often than not these days I have seen a lots of visuals generated by AI and I wanted to address a few things that I think are getting lost in a sea of glossy pictures.

The Title is the question that keeps coming up in my mind when I see AI generated content

Driving a design is deliberate, it is purposeful, making decisions large or small to push an idea toward some instinctive outcome you have seen or felt within yourself, you might look at something and think, That still doesn't feel like the idea I had yet, and then you make a change to it until it does, That is deliberate, Considered and it is "Design" it is a process, rarely is it immediate , rarely is the immediate the best outcome.

when working with AI the primary issue is that your a passenger to the idea, you are not following a process that cultivates a better design you are simply going from 0 to 100, Design is a process it is Iterative, it is cognitive and deliberate, good design has saved lives, won wars against the nazis, put people on the moon, made icons in entertainment and inspired generations.

Being a Passenger to design is when you think of an idea you would like to see but don't have any deliberate idea of an outcome, you think id like to see a "green high tech motorcycle" this is not design you are not changing the radius on an edge or adjusting silhouette or posture or shape language or even livery you are a passenger to the outcome, it might take you to a destination your ok with, but you are not the driver, and its creatively devoid in a lot of ways, there's a lot of cheap design work that disappeared overnight because it turns out people did not care THAT much about what was being made they just wanted it to look OK, but let me be clear that nobody has ever won any praise for ok design, nobody will ever make anything iconic with an AI precisely because its very recycled, nor will anybody ever get any praise for a design they used AI to generate because people don't see it as talent, so if you want the credit you have to be the design driver, you have to be the one making the decisions, sometimes that turns out really badly "Cough Jaguar Cough" and other times people write books about how you think and interview you because you thought radically about things in a way nobody else did.

None of your favourite things were designed by a machine 0% of them were generated, the car you dream of, the spaceship toy you had as a kid, the phone or laptop your reading this on all designed by humans, Design fundamentally did not have a problem AI addresses , the only people who had a problem with design were people who wanted it to be cheaper, for it to cost a few dimes to come up with something they could sell.

I would like you to think about that for a moment, they are the people who don't want to pay for creativity, they don't consider your individuality important, they don't care if you have a soul, and they don't want to pay you a penny if they can avoid it, they are the same people that make airplane seats smaller and less comfortable, they are the same people that make your clothes last 4 washes before they fall apart, they are the same people that make your car or fridge, or washing machine break after 5 years, they are the people who mix horse meat in with your ground beef, they are corporate, they don't want to democratise design, they want you to be reliant on something so they can monopolise it because they are in it for money, and power and control, if you don't need them then they have nothing to sell you, if your reliant on them then they will price things however they like, don't be fooled by the first one being free but the next one will cost you.

Now its true that the world has a lot of irrelevant design in it that is already lost to machines because it was never really that deliberate in the first place you know the kind I speak of its available on Temu and Shein and breaks or falls apart after a few uses, but the world also has exceptional, recognisable, fantastic design that our culture celebrates, id like to thank anyone who read this article especially to conclusion, and implore you to cultivate your own abilities, your uniqueness , your soul.