What Skill Is Left When Everyone Can Design?

Colin Dunn says the skill left over, once design tools get easier and everyone can make things, is taste and the ability to tell a story. Prompting is much easier than manipulating layers and the intricacies of design tools today, so more kinds of people will be able to use design software as the technology improves.

The people best at taste and story today are creative directors, art directors, and brand designers. They come up with a narrative, build a world, pick the art direction, the brand voice, the individual elements, and the colors, then assemble a cohesive, recognizable system and execute it across marketing channels. In a design agency studio the order runs creative director, art director, then graphic designer or brand designer. The creative director architects the vision, the art director manages the people implementing it, and graphic designers build it out. The roles are steps on the same ladder, and the definition of a graphic designer is going to change.

AI gives everybody a chance to move one click up the ladder because the tools are getting better. Instead of staying the intern, a designer can direct the tool and treat it as an intern. Instead of staying the art director, they can become the creative director. Output rises, and the customer who lasts is the person with great taste who can tell a great story. The aim is to go where that person already exists and empower them.