Katie Cadwell, co-founder of branding studio Lucky Dip and The NDA Podcast:
Automation isn’t detracting from design thinking. It’s taking away design time. It’s changing how design is delivered.
Our power has always been in the ability to curate. We used to print everything in the studio, put it up on a wall and critique it. That skill is more important now than ever before, it just looks different.
If clients are generating AI content, especially in rollout, our job is to help them audit it. Our wall is now a Figma board of all the different outputs. We can point out the inconsistencies and highlight where they’re becoming indistinct. Any assets with high conversions? It’s your team’s job to highlight why. And remind them that the algorithm is an unruly beast – that sometimes the success is purely time and placement, not the creative. Giving teams the opportunity to demonstrate their design thinking cements their value, internally and externally.