One of the phrases I hear most nowadays is: “Designers are going to disappear.” “Artificial Intelligence will replace designers.” “The future of design will be automated.”
Maybe.
But maturity, the kind that comes with time, with mistakes, and with decades of observing cultural and technological movements, teaches us something important: every great transformation provokes fear before it produces clarity.
I have almost 30 years of career experience, and I have seen this movie before.
I remember the late 90s, when the internet began spreading like dry fire. Websites appeared everywhere. It was the true Wild West of computing. Everyone wanted to learn HTML. Everyone wanted to put a website online. At that time, functionality was everything. No one cared whether something was beautiful, coherent, or pleasant. It was enough for it to exist. And absolutely bizarre things were created before designers decided to occupy that territory.
The “old-school” designer has always been a curious figure. Part craftsman, part artist, part problem solver. A professional often misunderstood. For a long time, we were seen as: the frustrated architect, the artist trying to survive, the draftsman seeking recognition, or simply “the nephew who knows Photoshop.”
Meanwhile, many business owners and marketing and advertising professionals saw designers as children playing in a visual playground. And, in a way, we ourselves helped build that perception.
Over the last few decades, design has slowly been losing strategic depth. In many cases, we traded thinking for fast aesthetics. We replaced intention with trend. We became more concerned with appearing relevant than with actually being relevant.
Yes, important advances emerged. Branding, Design Thinking, UX/UI, and so many other disciplines helped design gain new spaces within companies and contemporary culture. But a lot of smoke also emerged, a lot of discourse, a lot of soulless process.
Today, in my view, there are two major types of designers.
- There are classic designers: those who study artistic movements, understand history, typography, composition, visual philosophy. Professionals who honor the poetic essence of design.
- And there are market designers: those who live in everyday chaos, trying to survive in an industry that is increasingly accelerated, competitive, and superficial. People pressured by deadlines, algorithms, and clients who have learned to compare creative depth with app prices.
And this has brought us here.
Today anyone can open Canva, generate images with Artificial Intelligence, and create a logo in a few minutes. And honestly? This is not necessarily bad. The democratization of tools is a positive thing. It always has been.
The problem begins when people confuse tool with knowledge, execution with strategy, and speed with depth.
A few months ago, my neighbor gave me some old gardening equipment: lawn mower, trimmer, cables… everything working perfectly. At the time I thought: “Great. Now I can save money and take care of my own garden.”
It seemed simple. I imagined myself on a Saturday morning trimming the grass while my wife read a book, the children played in the backyard, and the dog ran through the garden. But I forgot one detail:
I have a herniated disc. After the first session, my back locked up.
What should have taken a few minutes started taking hours. The grass never really looked good. Some parts were higher, others crooked. The weeds began to grow. Small shrubs started to look like trees.
And then came the most important realization: having the tool does not mean mastering the process. I had not considered maintenance, technique, frequency, experience, observation, care. I realized that what I was “saving” financially was being paid for with my time, my energy, my health, and my family life.
After six months of insisting, I gave up. I hired a gardening service again. In a few weeks, they corrected mistakes that took me months to create.
That was when I understood something simple: even cutting grass requires technique, experience, and sensitivity. Because those who work with it understand the timing of the earth, understand growth, understand care. And maybe that is exactly what is happening now with design.
Tools do not replace repertoire. They do not replace sensitivity. They do not replace vision. Photoshop is not design, Canva is not design, Claude, Gemini, or ChatGPT are not design. They are tools.
Design has existed since the beginning of humanity. It is in the choice of a color, in the proportion of a symbol, in the tension between perception and information, in the way an identity makes someone feel something before even rationally understanding what they are seeing.
This requires more than technique. It requires emotion, repertoire, culture, philosophy, the power of observation, coherence, sensitivity, refined intuition, and, above all, intention.
A gardener may never have attended a university, but he understands the timing of the grass, the texture of the soil, the amount of water, the changing of the seasons.
Because experience is also knowledge. In the end, the choice will always belong to each person. I chose to hire someone to take care of my garden. Not just to cut the grass, but so that the butterflies keep appearing, so that the hummingbirds find flowers, so that my children can play in the backyard, and so that I can sit beside my wife, on a warm summer afternoon, simply appreciating the silent beauty of things well cared for.