Is AI eventually going to replace Graphic Designers?

In the past Graphic Design used to involve a lot of physical work, cutting out and pasting paper or board for printing, all the time working while bent over a desk to create letterheads, business cards, magazine books and posters.
Not to mention processing film by hand!

This all changed when Steve Job’s ‘Apple Mac’ arrived on the scene in 1984, allowing us access to software that was able to make changes at a click, then suddenly everything moved from the workbench to the computer screen, where nowadays we have access to the amazing world of Adobe Creative suite.

Yet here we are again, on the verge of another revolution as Artificial Intelligence turns Graphic Design on its head once more. We now have websites that can literally ‘create themselves’. The likes of software such as WIX which will evaluate your text copy, business type, images and literally create a site for you based on this content.

However, with all this fuss about AI-driven Graphic Design the results it achieves does really lag behind the big predictions that once existed. Many products will disappoint people expecting miracles from AI.
Disappointing and all as this is, it does allow us time to reflect upon what design work we might want these machines to do for us and more importantly what is left for us humans to do in the design process?

Most of the new web design tools offer AI assisted help but will still require hands-on use. The results can be a great help in particular for novice or small business owners.
On the downside these websites created with the help of algorithms can very often end up looking as though they were made from a multi reproduced pre-set template.

It is worth noting that the industry standard design software Adobe has been using AI for some time now, you can see the results being implemented inside Photoshop’s ‘face aware liquify tool’ which gathers data from the internet to reproduce certain parts of people’s faces, altering expressions or maybe adding hair or teeth!

Graphic designers have always worried about being replaced but AI and Machine Learning assistance will not stop us needing to make aesthetic choices about re-touching a design or maybe the typography used, fine tuning will always fall to designers to complete but maybe we need to take care as the lesser more basic jobs might be under threat.

If you are interested in Graphic Design and want to learn more click here to view our Diploma in Graphic Design which starts this September.

Paul Noone – Graphic Designer

Lecturer, City Colleges Dublin