Artificial intelligence is pushing the boundaries of creative work. It demonstrates how crucial strategic thinking and attitude have become in design. After all, real design begins where decisions are made. In order to actively shape social development, designers need to move away from their service role and into the boardroom.
By Oliver Herwig
From head to toe, we live and breathe design. Once it was about products and services; today it encompasses social networks and human interaction itself. It is hard to imagine a connected world without professional design. Yet if designers truly want to live up to ideas such as inclusivity, collaboration, sustainability, human-centredness and participation, they must dare to take on more responsibility. “Proven recipes for success are dangerous, and dogmas are simply untrue,” warns Andreas Diefenbach, Managing Director of Phoenix Design. “Especially in design, we tend to be self-righteous and arrogant. It is worth rethinking – with head, hand and heart.” Rather than letting themselves be consumed by the daily grind of service work or overestimating their role as world-saviours, design must take seriously its potential as a connecting discipline within politics and business. It must aim for decision-making power at the highest level and confidently help steer social development. In short, design must become a matter of leadership.
The Service Illusion
Artificial intelligence exposes how fragile the foundations of many designers’ skills really are. Those who relied purely on craftsmanship must now face the fact that machines can do the same. “I believe that design as a profession is facing the greatest transformation of the past hundred years, due to cloud computing, AI agents and the new possibilities of visualisation and data use,” says designer and VDID delegate Andreas Enslin. “Design-doing – not just the tools – is now being automated within workflows. And beware: creativity itself can be simulated through sheer computing power and smart processes.” It therefore makes sense to embrace AI as a tool and to position oneself as the conductor of one’s own AI orchestra. Skill, taste and experience alone are no longer enough.
The illusion of design as a service is upheld from both sides. The first mistake is that many clients still fail to understand the true value of design. To them, it is mere styling – the art of giving a finished product, service or process a pleasant appearance. The second mistake lies with designers themselves: when they accept this role, they become creative butlers – professional, yet replaceable. If clients order packaging instead of perspective, they will receive precisely that: mediocrity.
Paradoxically, designers thus anticipate the function of AI itself. Speed replaces analysis and reflection. What does it say about our time when tools can generate slides, logos and half-finished campaigns at the touch of a button? Above all, it shows that supposed design performance now appears effortless and infinitely available – and therefore, worthless.
The problem runs even deeper. AI does not only produce dazzling results; it also generates hidden costs. The phenomenon has a name: Workslop – AI-generated content that looks impressive but is not worth the data used to produce it.
“What does it say about our time when tools can generate slides, logos and half-finished campaigns at the touch of a button?”
Workslop: When AI Produces Beautiful Rubbish
A study by the BetterUp Lab in collaboration with the Stanford Social Media Lab estimates a monthly productivity loss of €186 per workslop – roughly two hours of rework for clarification, fact-checking and follow-up discussions. Already, about 15.4 per cent of all work output consists of beautifully packaged data rubbish. The supposed help of AI therefore comes at a higher price than the loss of entire professions or manual skills. “Artificial intelligence in the workplace produces high-quality junk in massive quantities,” summarises Michael Linden on ‘Golem’. What sounds professional is often pure rhetoric – persuasion without substance – and costs valuable time and energy to correct.
AI merely accelerates what has long defined software and product development: the unfinished dominates the market. Errors are corrected through updates and iterations, and costs are offloaded onto users, who also pay with their data. AI is simply the next step. Anything that can be standardised will sooner or later be handled by algorithms. Those who reject AI today will find themselves crushed beneath its wheels – or its circuits, to stay with the metaphor. Used intelligently, however, it can help us reflect and create meaningfully. The new does not arise from endlessly recombining what already exists. Everyone wants to think outside the box, yet few succeed. Designers, by contrast, are trained for precisely that – to explore the unconventional, the unexpected, the unsettling. Even Nobel laureate Simon Johnson sides with the heretics: “If you pit a universal truth machine against a diverse group of people, the humans will win.” (FAS, 28 September 2025)
“Already, about 15.4 per cent of all work output consists of beautifully packaged data rubbish. The supposed help of AI therefore comes at a higher price than the loss of entire professions or manual skills.”
The World-Saving Illusion
How, then, should this progress look? What kind of world do we want to build or preserve? Are designers somehow responsible for the smooth functioning of systems – even for health or the climate? Of course not. This notion merely seeks to design away society’s guilty conscience.
Good design can channel daily consumption but not eliminate it. Designers are neither lawmakers nor CEOs, nor activists with billion-pound budgets. They do not have to save the world every day. But they can influence it: by questioning materials, embedding circularity into products, showing alternatives and shaping positive ideas of the future.
For the design profession, this means moving away from the daily frontline of pixel pushing and towards greater decision-making competence. Design has the opportunity to position itself as the conductor of an AI support orchestra and to prepare for leadership roles – setting the tone, defining direction and rhythm, and contributing to or even making strategic decisions.
Some have already taken this path. “During my Bachelor’s in Communication Design, I realised that my strengths lay not only in the creative side but also in organisation,” says designer and account manager Seraphina Schidlo, who is now pursuing a second degree. “With AI increasingly shaping our field, I deliberately chose an MBA in Management and Business Strategy. My aim was to broaden my profile and complement my design expertise with solid management competence.”
“The value of new design lies less in doing and more in conceptualising and deciding.”
From Design to Meaning Creation: Design As a Management Task
It is high time to reconnect with the role of Peter Behrens at AEG or Dieter Rams at Braun, who sat on the company’s board. If laws, standards and export regulations shape the world, design must become more active – perhaps even activist. Designer Claudia S. Friedrich identifies three developments that will define the profession in the years to come: the evolution from designer to meaning-maker, the positioning of designers as strategic partners on equal footing, and the growing responsibility to drive sustainability and accountability. Here too, the pattern is clear: more responsibility in design means greater social participation. Designers ultimately create value for both the economy and society. The new role of design can only be that of CEO design – one that goes beyond surface and spectacle, ideally reimagining the world itself. Designers’ core competence lies in leaving familiar paths and exploring the unexpected. What machines cannot do is ask questions that lie beyond data or perceive human desires. The value of contemporary design lies less in execution and more in conception and decision-making. The decisive skills are, paradoxically, ancient ones: integrity and personality. The future demands mediation and dialogue more than ever.
Even if design cannot save the world, it still determines what kind of world we will live in tomorrow. Those who cling to old models and focus solely on craftsmanship should view their work as an artistic practice that values human imperfection as a mark of quality. Hollywood offered a glimpse of this already in 2013 with ‘Her’, in which the tragic protagonist earns his living writing “handwritten” love letters to make ordered emotions appear authentic.
Design in Business
A new study by the German Design Council.
With academic support from Prof. Philipp Thesen and the Institute for Design Research at Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences.
About the Author
Dr. Oliver Herwig, journalist and presenter. Design expert for AD, FR, FAZ QUARTERLY, nomad, ndion, NZZ and SZ; design theorist at the University of Art and Design Linz and the HfG Karlsruhe. Winner of the Karl Theodor Vogel Prize for outstanding technical journalism and the COR Prize for ‘Living and Design’. Has worked and studied in England, the USA and Norway. He has been a science journalist in Tübingen, guest editor at *wallpaper in London, and editor-in-chief at nomad. Author of around three dozen books on architecture and design, including Michele De Lucchi, Flying Buildings and Entertainment Architecture.
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