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At a pop-up coffeehouse in Miami, under the chandeliers of the Moore Building, the design world gathered not to celebrate the past but to wrestle with the future. Amid fears of AI taking over creative jobs, one thing became clear: craft can be automated, but true creativity remains irreplaceable.
There’s nothing like a good night out to restore your faith in the human race – even if that night out involves a few terrifying stats about AI stealing your job.
That was the mood at a recent gathering in Miami, hosted by the brilliant folks at design agency Lemon Yellow. To mark its 20th anniversary, they didn’t just throw a party – they opened a pop-up coffee shop inside the Moore Building in the Design District and turned it into a month-long creative salon.
The format?
Think 19th-century penny university meets 21st-century existential dread. Coffee-fuelled conversations. No slides. No script. Just a few humans trying to figure out what comes next.
I was invited to speak, but the truth is, the audience did most of the heavy lifting. It became a kind of focus group – not the clipboards-and-surveys kind, but the eye-contact-and-ideas kind. And what emerged was a vital reminder that even in the AI age, there’s still no substitute for real-world dialogue.
The provocation I lobbed into the room was this: has the design industry confused creativity with craft? Because if we have – and I think we have – we’re in serious trouble.
Let’s start with the fear. Goldman Sachs reckons 300m jobs could be lost to AI by 2033. The World Economic Forum says 14m will vanish between 2023 and 2027. And yes, our sector – the creative industries – is right in the crosshairs.
You don’t need to squint to see it. Agencies like WPP and Publicis are rethinking themselves to make tech a core offering. WPP has poured over $300m into its Open platform. Clients are in-housing like never before. I recently spoke to one who reckons they’ll save 90% on production costs just by automating it all. Meanwhile, Adobe Express, Canva and ChatGPT – with its new functionality that so easily mimics the Studio Ghibli-style – are letting anyone punch out templates, scripts and storyboards without blinking.
We’re not in a holding pattern. The comet is coming. And to borrow a phrase from the movie Don’t Look Up, some in the creative industry are still arranging canapés on the red carpet.
But here’s the thing: I’m not afraid.
Not because I think AI isn’t powerful – it is – but because I’ve seen what humans are still capable of when you put them in a room and give them a proper provocation. Like this: maybe we’ve confused the logistics for the product. Perhaps we’ve mistaken the wrapping for the gift.
The craft of design – like the craft of writing, filmmaking, or photography – is already being eaten alive.
But creativity?
That still lives in us. The real product is the idea. The eureka moment. The surprise. The discomfort. The laughter. The off-the-cuff observation that changes how you see something. And AI doesn’t do that. Not really.
Someone in the audience said, “If you take away the struggle, do you take away the soul?” Another added, “AI can make things look good – but it can’t make them mean something.”
And that’s it.
We discussed how Duchamp’s urinal redefined what we even call art. I brought up Martin Creed’s Turner Prize-winning installation – Work No. 227: The lights going on and off. No budget. No polish. Just a bloody good idea. That’s where the value lies.
The same goes for advertising. In the 1980s, it was all about the idea. That’s what set the ad industry apart from the designers – one started with the visual, the other started with the message. And I’d argue that, in the AI age, the idea is all we’ve got left that’s truly ours.
Brian Collins put it well when I spoke to him the day before the talk. He said, “Design isn’t the product – it’s the act of solving problems. The output just happens to be design-shaped.”
Swap in writing, journalism, music, photography – same principle.
Now, don’t get me wrong, AI will democratise creativity. The blind will create visuals. The introverts will compose. Plumbers will paint. (And creatives will plumb – so those in the trades who believe they will escape unscathed are wrong). The playing field is widening, but it’s also getting a lot more crowded, and we all need to be better at what we do.
Still, that night in Miami reminded me of something important: the human ability to connect a wide range of emotions, experiences, and insights – and turn it into an idea – that’s not going anywhere.
And that is the product now. The idea. That fleeting, elusive moment of clarity. We’ve just got to figure out how to charge for it. But ultimately, while AI may have the answers, it’s still the humans who will have the questions.