Our discipline seems to bring together two sides that have less in common than ever:
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One is design as a way of thinking: user-centred methods, service design and strategic work focused on creating value for people and organisations. Work that can be barely graphic at all.
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The other is the design many people picture first: graphic design, editorial design, entertaining campaigns. “Art for brands”, perhaps.
I genuinely enjoyed experiencing primarily that second side at the Forward Festival again: Dancing cats, impressive graphics and a refreshing amount of hands-on making. People came after work to cut cardboard, print on T-shirts with lasers or press buttons. The joy of craft was impossible to miss.
One panel discussion, however, made me think: Yesterday, during a conversation about the »status quo of the creative industry« featuring headliner Stefan Sagmeister, half of the panel had never used AI. Another panelist of the four expressed serious reservations about it.
Critical discussion is necessary. But refusing to engage with a technology that is already changing our profession, and society more broadly, feels irresponsible, especially in front of hundreds of designers. Whatever we believe, this new technology is not going to disappear – and it doesn’t help at all to put people on stage who still struggle with desktop publishing or even the shift to the digital 15 years ago.
Design is strongest when things are changing. We can give change a form people understand and can access. But first, we need to engage with change ourselves. This is view should not be exclusive to the first side of design.
Let’s keep the beauty, the craft and the joy – as one part of design. Let’s just make sure they don’t turn design into an echo chamber for the past.
Because that would no longer be the design I believe in.
This isn't the first time I've run into this fault line. It's close to the tension I wrote about between craft and diversity of perspective — except here it's the two sides of our own discipline that need to talk to each other. Sitting AI out isn't a neutral position either; it's exactly the risk I described in how the role of designers is changing in the AI era. The ones leaning into that shift are the ones leveraging the democratization of production instead of resisting it.
What does “design” mean to you today?
FAQ
What is the Forward Festival?
Forward Festival is a creativity conference held across several European cities, including Berlin, Vienna, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Zurich, Hamburg, and Munich. Each edition combines talks from design and industry figures with hands-on workshops and side events for designers, artists, and digital professionals. This post reflects on the 2026 Berlin edition.
What are the "two sides" of design the author describes?
One side is design as a way of thinking — user-centred methods, service design, and strategic work focused on creating value for people and organisations, which can be barely graphic at all. The other is the design most people picture first — graphic design, editorial design, and entertaining campaigns, closer to "art for brands." The post argues both sides showed up at the festival, but talked past each other.
Why does the author think ignoring AI is a problem for designers?
Critical discussion of AI is necessary and healthy. But at this festival, half of a four-person panel on the "status quo of the creative industry" had never used AI, and another expressed serious reservations — despite speaking to hundreds of designers. The author's point isn't that skepticism is wrong, but that refusing to engage with a technology already reshaping the profession, while addressing a room full of practitioners, is a missed opportunity to help them navigate it.
Who is Stefan Sagmeister?
Stefan Sagmeister is an Austrian-American graphic designer, co-founder of Sagmeister Inc. and later Sagmeister & Walsh, known for typography-driven, often provocative design work. He has won two Grammy Awards for album art direction (Talking Heads, and David Byrne & Brian Eno) and the AIGA Medal, and is known for taking a year-long sabbatical every seven years.
Should designers who are skeptical of AI be worried?
Not for being skeptical — critical distance is part of good design judgment. The risk the author points to is disengagement, not doubt. Designers who interrogate AI's outputs, limits, and implications while still learning to use it stay relevant. Those who opt out entirely risk being sidelined by the same shift they're refusing to examine.