I cook dinner almost every night. To pull this off, I have to plan each meal, shop for groceries and spend an hour or so in the kitchen actually cooking. I’m lucky to have a partner who helps with cleanup, but on nights when I’m solo, I spend another 20-30 minutes doing dishes and tidying. Why do I devote so much time to this ritual? Because it’s the most satisfying way to eat. Takeout is heavy and wasteful, restaurants are fun but expensive, and premade food is soggy and disappointing. Cutting corners in the name of efficiency usually leaves me feeling both overstuffed and unfulfilled. Try as we might, there’s no great hack for dinner other than putting in the work day in and day out. 

I embrace this never ending labor. Sometimes I feel burdened by cooking, but mostly I take pleasure in the hundreds of simple, sensory tasks that add up to so much more than tedium alone: a healthy and nourished life. Effort combined with intention imbues this daily practice with meaning. The same is true of my design practice. The goal is to build a strong body of work, but the real meat and potatoes of creative fulfillment is the ongoing engagement with trying, failing, improving, delighting in finished pieces and then beginning again—all of this embodied in actions that are both mundane and gloriously consuming. 

With this reverence for process, I don’t take pitches for AI shortcuts lightly. I am inundated everyday with gleaming star icons and unwelcome tooltips suggesting ways I should be incorporating AI into my workflow. Generate a new background! Summarize this pdf! Polish this email! It’s easy enough to tune out solutions that I’m not looking for. It’s much harder to ignore social pressure from peers and the culture at large. If I don’t start “playing with AI” and figuring out ways to “work smarter” will I be left behind? My gut tells me that I’m right to stick to my tried and true methods, but as the technology advances, it feels ever more niche to reject a full throttle AI takeover of creative work as a foregone conclusion. 

Of course I can’t predict the future, and I know the tools are getting more sophisticated with each passing hour, but at this moment in early 2026, I’m not seeing a compelling use case for how AI will greatly improve my processes. As a low-profile independent designer, I don’t have a boss passing along their AI anxiety, and I don’t work for a company whose sole mission is to inculcate need for AI products that serve itself first and foremost, so I’m free to integrate new technology at my own pace. I can’t stop the arms race, but I can explain why I think old-school approaches might still endure, and how I plan to redirect the blunt force of big tech energy into a sustainable business that works for me. 

To be clear, I’m happy to incorporate new technology when it makes senes. I started out designing websites in Photoshop, then Sketch, and now I use Figma. I’m no stranger to pushing through learning curves and coming out better off. I’m not afraid to use AI here and there to generate a quick 3D rendering, or to put together a rough mockup for a pitch deck, but these images are rarely good enough to use as is. They serve as mere starting points that I spend time refining with my own hard-won Photoshop skills. Nothing revolutionary so far. 

The most foundational threat to my livelihood is at the idea level. I’ve never pretended to have the best, most original ideas. Like most artists, my ideas come from all kinds of reference points—some lofty, some deeply personal and some ordinary. Even if my ideas are subconsciously lifted from other sources, everything I present on a first round passes through my hands and bears a touch of my unique sensibility. It’s enough ownership to feel invested in the outcome of the final piece. In an ideal project, the client offers their unique touch in the form of feedback, and together we create something we’re both proud of. 

Would it be useful to generate a bunch more ideas than I ever could from my own limited perspective? Or are three original-ish ideas enough to get the ball rolling? I’ve always believed that fewer options are better because they force everyone to take a strong stand about each choice. I can explain every idea that I present. I have no connection to the thinking behind AI ideas, so the only thing propping them up is their surface-level appeal. Just because it’s easy to generate more ideas doesn’t mean we should. I’d much rather come up with my own imperfect but curated ideas than scrape the entire internet for a confusing array of hollow options. 

But how an idea is sourced is not always up to me. Many clients like to generate their own AI mockups. Some do this early in the process as a way to kick things off. Others do this after they’ve been disappointed by my first or second round, they’re searching for ways to supercharge their feedback, or they simply want to replace my ideas with something they like better. This can help dislodge a communication impasse and guide us toward a nuanced final design. But more often, the mockup appears impressive at first glance, and clients get attached. I see the ham-fisted typography and the cliches, but in the mishmash of all the recycled visual material, there’s familiarity, and maybe even a hint of pride. If you’re not used to creating visuals from nothing, it’s nifty to see your idea presented in a shiny package as though it has always existed. 

My job then goes from creator to production designer. I set about recreating something that is fine but not great and providing a bit of polish. So much for AI freeing me from the grunt work so I can focus on higher level thinking! I love grunt work by the way, so I’m not keen on AI replacing this aspect of my work either. My favorite hours of the day are when I’m able to turn off my brain and simply execute. When I’m executing based on my own pencil sketches, I’ve already done the thinking, so I can relax into this flow state and still have a reason for every decision I make. When I’m recreating an AI mockup, it can be fun to try to mimic styles that I wouldn’t have necessarily thought of myself, but I’m completely detached from the meaning behind the design. Here begins the slide into mediocrity as the new normal.

Even when the piece is done and not terrible, I don’t think anyone is served well by work devoid of personal investment. It is empty calories compared to a home cooked meal. The best clients want a guide, a collaborator, a trusted opinion and well-executed finished work. Anyone can generate individual deliverables through AI, but can they create a holistic system of many different pieces that all make sense together? Even if AI advances to create whole ecosystems, do clients enjoy that process? Do they trust that the things they’re generating are good? On a practical level, do they have source files of everything so they can easily manage text edits and print production? I could go on with all the ways I’m skeptical. The point is that the human relationship I provide, even if it involves occasional friction, brings clients into the process as co-creators who can take full ownership of the finished work. 

I know that only some clients will continue to value how well something is made as much as how efficiently something is made. My commitment to pencil sketches and execution within the wonderful constraints of my capabilities will not be for everyone. But I welcome this self-selection. I’m fine being the mom and pop shop, the vinyl record, and the dinner you make from scratch. I suspect that enough other people will care about quality over convenience for me to keep the lights on, at least for now.