Every profession, when it feels the ground shifting, reaches for whatever feels most solid. For designers, that’s been “craft” and “taste” (which I’ve used too in my writing). I get the instinct. When the tools you’ve mastered get commoditized, you want to assert that the real value was never in the tools. It was in you always: your eye, your sensibility.
But I’ve watched this play out for over a year now, and I think it’s less strategic positioning than grief response. Nicole Alexandra Michaelis makes the case that designers should be thriving, not panicking, and that much of the panic is self-inflicted. The whiplash:
Seniors are telling juniors to count themselves lucky if they’ll ever find a job. Design leaders are jumping from one AI-tool hypetrain to the next in mere weeks.
Monday, it’s all about prototypes. Thursday, it’s vibe coding. Friday, we’re preaching that output no longer matters (everyone can design now!) and that we should be brilliant strategists instead. By next Monday, we’ll be half-heartedly debating which soft skills are absolutely vital to survive.
Survive. As designers.
A profession trying on new identities in a dressing room. Nothing fits so we keep grabbing the next thing. “Craft” is the one people keep coming back to because it feels the most like home.
Michaelis is blunt about why that doesn’t work:
And listen, I’m not knocking craft. I love writing poetry, painting, throwing pots at the wheel. All that takes craft and skill, just as my designs at work do. But craft should be so obvious to us as designers that we should not make it our main selling point. Obviously, we develop incredible craft as our experience builds. Obviously, individual designers have different styles. Obviously, we put thought and care into what we make.
Craft is the baseline. That’s what we want the executives to know. By debating it and what it even means, we’re again undermining our authority.
She’s right, and I’d push it further. The fixation on craft is a tell. When a profession retreats to arguing about what makes it special instead of demonstrating it, that’s a group reaching for identity because it’s lost agency. The creative class version of quiet quitting.
