Are we graphic designers going to soon be replaced by machines. So back in 2013 a research paper by Oxford University outlined the probability of specific occupations being replaced by intelligent machines by the year 2033.
Graphic designer was not on the list, and it seems that this term was too broad for their study but Photographer, Interior Designer, and Art Director were on the list.
Think the probability of art director becoming obsolete by the year 2033 was, well according to oxford it was calculated at 0.023 or 2.3 percent. So that’s a pretty low probability but let’s take a closer look into this subject and see how the future might pan out for us graphic designers. And in this post, you might be surprised to see how close the future is to today.
But first, we need to look at exactly what graphic design is, and maybe you do know what graphic design is or maybe you think you know. The primary purpose of graphic design is to communicate ideas to an audience effectively using standard design principles.
The goal might be to trigger someone to take action or expose them to an idea a concept or information. Graphic design objectives happen through a combination of fundamental design practices strategic composition and a little bit of creativity too.
Principles such as hierarchy contrast and proximity are some of the essential ingredients for successful design. So graphic design is a way to communicate to people as a means to get them to do something. And before the internet splurged into our lives graphic design utilizes media, such as direct mail billboards and print advertisements to achieve business goals.
The designers who existed back then have had to adapt to technology advancing. Otherwise, they would simply fall off the map for the most part and would struggle to find clients today. You see graphic design can at times be a tricky career because designers often have to adapt to the advance of technology and the industry evolving at large. You might have even felt this in your own career.
New tools and new skills are continuously being developed to adjust and navigate this complex progression. So when I was first studying graphic design motion graphics wasn’t really a thing that many people knew about or dabbled in.
But nowadays it’s something many graphic designers can do or aspire to do, but a graphic designer these days often dabbles in many areas of design such as coding 3d design motion graphics, and so on. But what happens when the tools being made are machine-learning artificial intelligence.
designer john gold has been trying to apply machine learning into the graphic design field has a stunning portfolio website and one project he worked on saw that he created a digital 3d structure with the help of an algorithm. and this was to render over 10 000 images of this structure from various angles and vantage points.
The final part of the process was hand-editing the output of the program and making sure each image was sufficiently stunning to be used commercially. So here we see a designer who has knowledge of coding and AI but also has knowledge of core design principles. It’s kind of like a team of designers and robots, which when you think about it isn’t too far from what we’re doing now with adobe software.
A lot of our workflow is pretty much already automated, consider some of these tasks that would have been completed manually years gone by things such as typesetting. But also think about all the automated things that happen in adobe illustrator Aligning, Mathematical Calculations, Duplicating an object perfectly and so on.
Maybe this is just a natural progression of the next step up as the designer evolves with robots, or is it a robot evolving with the designer. Well going back to our friend john field he’s quoted in saying. I’m building design tools to integrate intelligent algorithms with the design process.
Tools that try to make designers better by learning about what they’re doing, what we’re doing augmenting rather than replacing designers. So yeah it seems that the robot is becoming more of a keyhole in the design process but isn’t taking over just yet.
Another example of how algorithms are being more accessible and easy to use for designers is an app that I’ve had a lot of fun with called pixlab. Now, this app is free to download but it’s filled with a lot of ads all over the place. I guess the creator for this algorithm really has a thirst for money.
Anyway, this app allows you to do some really neat things to imagery in a matter of seconds. It can apply some insane filters to images and seen on screen are some examples i’ve been playing around with.
Image
This kind of software wasn’t even envisioned 30 years ago, let alone being free to even non-designers to make use of. We are merging closer with AI with each passing year and like, we said about designers failing to adapt and syncing. I think we will need to move into areas of tech and ai to survive as graphic designers.
History tells us that we shouldn’t be worried and that designers are always in charge. Since the dawn of time, we have been augmenting our limited physical capabilities in one way or another. Even going way back to using opposable thumbs to fashion and grip tools.
With each development in technology, the role of the designer has changed, we’ve likely all felt the pressure to add more strings to our bow so to speak. You know learn to code or pick up some motion graphic knowledge, and as designers, we’re now more involved in multiple areas of creation than ever before.
It’s perfectly plausible that some of the next skills we must embrace are based around machine intelligence. this likely isn’t going to happen overnight, so don’t worry you won’t wake up tomorrow and be expected to write a code for an AI bot.
But it’s obvious to see that this is the general progression for the future. If I had to offer advice to somebody who’s now just starting out in graphic design. It would be for sure to learn some coding most likely python.
But hey neither me or anybody can predict the future. And so this is just all kinds of educated guesswork. Technology is after all an extension of man and the designer will likely always oversee the robots. Or is machine learning going to get to a point where it can teach itself to be faster and more creative than man or is this even possible.