Morally Wrong?
Using Generative AI Within Graphic Design
Last week, design stalwarts Pentagram showcased their redesign of performance.gov, a U.S. Government website that outlines and tracks departmental goals and achievements. Needless to say, it’s a rather dry subject that, on any other day, wouldn’t have gained much traction on blogs or social media.
However, one key design choice by Paula Scher and her team at Pentagram sparked significant conversation: the use of generative AI to create a catalogue of 1,500 illustration-styled icons. This decision provoked a strong reaction from the design community.
Some within the creative industry view the use of AI as a harbinger of the industry’s decline. The fear is that replacing the honed skill of the human hand with machine-generated outputs will ultimately leave artists, designers, and illustrators unemployed – or, perhaps worse, relegated to the role of unfulfilled “prompt inputters.”
History Doesn’t Repeat Itself, but It Does Rhyme
The parallels between the rise of generative AI today and the introduction of desktop publishing (DTP) in the 1980s and 1990s are striking. Before DTP, creating any form of layout was a highly manual and laborious process. Designers needed precise scalpel skills, physically placed lettering, and copious amounts of spray glue. A single-page layout could take a skilled designer or artworker an entire week to prepare for a client – and double that to prepare for print.
The arrival of the Macintosh computer and desktop publishing software marked a seismic shift. It accelerated ideation and production while lowering costs for clients. But it also swept away entire sections of the industry in a matter of years, as noted by Pete Goddard. Many had to retrain or face redundancy.
Yet, DTP did not replace human designers. Concepts still had to be developed, strategies needed to be formed, and aesthetic judgment remained vital. The Mac, after all, was just a tool – an enabler, not a replacement.
This reinvention of design methodologies is nothing new. Before drawing boards and manual layouts, there were Linotype machines. Before Linotype, there was movable type. Before that, it was pen and ink. Each shift brought upheaval, but none erased the need for human ingenuity.
Is Gen AI the Next Mac?
Generative AI’s potential mirrors that of desktop publishing. Will it create the creative upheaval that many in the industry predict? Or is it, like the Mac, simply the next tool to get the job done faster and more cost-effectively?
At our design agency, we’ve used generative AI to test, iterate, and present ideas to clients more rapidly. For instance, we recently worked on an identity for the Illegal Wildlife Trade Masterclass at the University of Oxford. With a tight turnaround and big ideas to explore, we leveraged AI to visualize concepts that would have been beyond our immediate skill set or too time-consuming to produce from scratch.
Similarly, we’ve used generative AI to make budgets go further. For the UK Longitudinal Linkage Collaboration (UK LLC), which needed a suite of headshots for participant rights information sheets, there was no scope for stock images or a photoshoot. Instead, we generated “generic” people using AI, ensuring a diverse but non-stereotypical set of images.
More recently, we’ve been working with a local samba band seeking to evolve from a community group into a more professional-looking outfit. To bring our proposal to life, we suggested a band art day where members would create their own linocut prints, which would then be applied to white clothing in bold colours. To sell the concept, we used generative AI to create mock prints en masse. The idea was instantly bought into by the client.
At the end of the day, generative AI is just another tool at our disposal. Companies like Adobe – the same pioneers of the desktop publishing revolution – are now integrating more and more generative AI and large language model (LLM) features into their software. As designer Neville Brody observed in 1995, “As a labour-saving device, [computers] don’t save any time at all. They give you more time to try out more options – more time to do things you wouldn’t have been able to do before.” The same is true of generative AI.
Innovation has always been a vital component of the creative process. Generative AI, like the Mac before it, is helping designers develop new ways of thinking and working. As long as these tools remain accessible to all – and are not locked behind the paywalls of giant corporations – they have the potential to democratise creativity rather than stifle it.
Just as with desktop publishing, it’s not the tool but the hand that wields it that makes the difference.