These days people often ask if AI has changed how we work. The honest answer is: not really.
We use it for some background admin tasks here and there, but it has no role in our actual creative process. We tell clients that upfront and we can confidently say that most are relieved to hear it. Lots has been said on the topic, lots of fear mongering and promises of a utopian future. Here’s my take on why AI, at least in its current state, isn’t particularly helpful at solving the types of challenges our clients face and why we are much more interested in real people.
The present tense of human experience
Lived experience isn’t data
There's a quote we keep coming back to from Strauss Zelnick: “AI is data, and data only looks backward, while creativity looks forward”. We’re firmly rooted in the non-profit space, and we work with communities whose experiences are still unfolding, and often their stories haven’t even yet been told. Design that is rooted in the human experience, especially of those in the margins, can’t come from what already exists. So for us, AI will never be inevitable and it isn't about resisting change. It's about work grounded in reality. The human experience we're designing around is still being lived, in real time.
The value of the messy middle
We also push back on the idea that the "real work" only happens once a strategy is devised or a file gets produced. A huge part of what makes a project successful is the process itself. The messy middle is where the conversations, the trust-building and the alignment happens. That's not overhead. That is where people connect, learn and get behind a solution. Arguably, this momentum is much more powerful than the actual solution itself, whatever it may be. You cannot automate a room full of people slowly deciding to trust each other. There are no shortcuts to be had here.
Reliable creativity
Does AI help with work like research and admin? Sort of… Some days it saves real time, other days it confidently produces something so off-base that fixing it takes longer than doing it from scratch. More often than not, it needs close guidance, supervision and correcting. Being professional means being reliable. It means being able to exercise good judgment, knowing your client, understanding the people you're ultimately designing for and that takes experience, empathy, and agility. What we're really offering then isn't "creativity" in some abstract sense. It's reliable creativity. The kind that adapts to new realities, a tight deadline, shifting goals, and still lands somewhere good, over and over again.
We expect all this noise around AI will quiet eventually, and AI will fit seamlessly into certain parts of certain workflows, where appropriate. We're not losing sleep over it. We're just focused on the part of the work that was never going to change.
Post by Roman Lifshitz
Original illustration by Sam Bullis
Every illustration on this blog comes from an artist we love working with, bringing their own interpretation to the piece.