This post from Carly Ayres breaks down a beef between Michael Roberson (developer of an AI-enabled moodboard tool) and Elizabeth Goodspeed (writer and designer, oft-linked on this blog) and explores ragebait, putting in the reps as a junior, and designers as influencers.
The tweet earned 30,000 views, but only about 20 likes. “That ratio was pretty jarring,” [Roberson] said. Still, the strategy felt legible. “When I post things like, ‘if you don’t do X, you’re not going to make it,’ obviously, I don’t think that. These tools aren’t really capable of replacing designers just yet. It’s really easy to get views baiting and fear-mongering.”
Much like the provocative Artisan campaign, I think this is a net negative for the brand. Pretty sure I won’t be trying out Moodboard AI anytime soon, ngl.
But stepping back from the internet beef, Ayres argues that it’s a philosophical difference about the role friction in the creative process.
Michael’s experience mirrors that of many young designers: brand audits felt like busywork during his Landor internship. “That process was super boring,” he told me. “I wasn’t learning much by copy-pasting things into a deck.” His tool promises to cut through that inefficiency, letting teams reach visual consensus faster and spend more time on execution.
Young Michael, the process is the point! Without doing this boring stuff, by automating it with AI, how are you going to learn? This is but one facet of the whole discussion around expertise, wisdom, and the design talent crisis.
Goodspeed agrees with me:
Elizabeth sees it differently. “What’s interesting to me,” Elizabeth noted, “is how many people are now entering this space without a personal understanding of how the process of designing something actually works.” For her, that grunt work was formative. “The friction is the process,” she explained. “That’s how you form your point of view. You can’t just slap seven images on a board. You’re forced to think: What’s relevant? How do I organize this and communicate it clearly?”
Ultimately, the saddest point that Ayres makes—and noted by my friend Eric Heiman—is this:
When you’re young, online, and trying to get a project off the ground, caring about distribution is the difference between a hobby and a company. But there’s a cost. The more you perform expertise, the less you develop it. The more you optimize for engagement, the more you risk flattening what gave the work meaning in the first place. In a world where being known matters more than knowing, the incentives point toward performance over practice. And we all become performers in someone else’s growth strategy.
…Because when distribution matters more than craft, you don’t become a designer by designing. You become a designer by being known as one. That’s the game now.
