I am Aaron Martin. I create web experiences, mobile products, custom typography, and branding experiences. I provide creative direction by way of design, strategy, and art direction.
I've been having this conversation a lot lately; with our team, with peers, and with myself. AI isn't just hovering at the edges anymore. It's here, in our tools, our process, and increasingly in our decisions.
This memo is an attempt to capture my current perspective. Not just what I think is happening, but where I think we need to lead. It's part observation, part provocation. Use it to reflect, challenge, or build on. That's the goal.
The sky isn't falling. But the air pressure is changing, and as of now, AI tools aren't replacing large parts of the product design workflow. Most are still immature, especially in UX/UI and complex creative tooling. Instead, what we're seeing is targeted disruption:
A great example: Pentagram's recent project where an illustrator helped train a custom model to scale a distinct visual style using prompts. The illustrator didn't get replaced. They became a prompt-illustrator. This is a glimpse into how AI supports creative scale, not creative erasure.
Now let's talk about where this is actually going. Like engineering before us, we'll start offloading routine design work. AI will generate:
The disruption will start at the core: not what we hate, but what we do every day. This won't reduce the importance of design. It'll increase the importance of designers who know how to direct systems, make judgment calls, and define creative and emotional quality. In short, we'll stop being operators and start becoming editors, curators, and composers.
The most valuable skill will be taste — the ability to see, feel, and choose what's right. AI can generate options. Designers decide what works.
Prompting is the new design communication. Translating fuzzy intent into structured guidance for AI systems will become an essential creative skill.
Designers won't just use AI — they'll teach it. That means building design grammars, token sets, and emotional logic that scale across products.
Even as AI capabilities grow, some things are better when they're ours. These are the parts of design that matter more as everything else gets automated. Use this list as a gut check in your work. These are our red lines.
Even when AI can technically generate full products, adoption won't be immediate.
Most users still want a human touch, so there will be an opportunity to drive those conversations. Businesses will also be slow to trust AI-generated UX, specifically larger and more complex products and industries. Teams will still seek meaning in the creative process. That gives us a window — not to delay, but to design intentionally.
This isn't just a memo. It's a launchpad for action. Here's what we're building:
The question isn't what AI will do to design — it's what we want design to become in the age of AI.
This isn't just a phase. It's a shift in how creativity scales. But the core of what makes design matter (insight, taste, ethics, and emotion) are still very much human. They always have been. That's what we will need to protect, evolve, and lead. The growth and change will turn all designers into creative directors, in a shift away from raw craft creators. I believe there will still be room for those of us who want to still do the craft, but I think it will still be different in totallity.