There Is A Future As A Creative Professional, And Being More Human Is It!
Workshop on my creative retreat
I've been thinking a lot about the anxiety AI is creating in the creative industry, for people who have built careers around something they love. After 15 years working as a designer, I understand why people are questioning where their value lies, and it's something that comes up in my work mentoring creative professionals too. I don't think those concerns should be dismissed. The industry is changing, with difficult implications for creative careers. But I'm tired of the conversation being framed as a battle between humans and machines, as though we must resist AI or compete with it. I'm more interested in whether this moment gives us a reason to reconsider what we value about creativity in the first place.
One of the things I've always loved about design is that the best ideas rarely arrive fully formed. They emerge through trying things out, following directions that lead nowhere, making unexpected connections and occasionally discovering something by accident. When we see a beautifully executed piece of work, we don't see the discarded concepts, terrible sketches or conversations that changed its direction. We see the result, but not everything that made it possible.
That's why I find the speed of AI-generated work both fascinating and slightly unsettling. Moving quickly from an idea to an outcome has advantages, but I wonder what happens if we start placing less value on the exploration in between. For me, mistakes aren't obstacles to good design. They're part of how we discover what works and develop the judgement to recognise it.
Through my work as a counsellor and creative mentor, I've become interested in how our relationship with creativity changes when it becomes our profession. Many of us begin because we enjoy experimenting and making things, but once our income depends on it, there are clients to satisfy, deadlines to meet and expectations to manage. It can become difficult to separate the pleasure of creating from the pressure to be good at it. Conversations with creatives often return to confidence, comparison and the feeling that they should be achieving more. AI can intensify those feelings, when we see what technology produces in seconds. Yet measuring our worth purely through output risks overlooking what drew us to creative work in the first place.
In mentoring, I often encourage people to make room for creativity without attaching an expectation to the result. That might mean trying a different medium, working with their hands or following an idea simply out of curiosity. For someone who's spent years being paid to make things, giving themselves permission to make something badly can feel surprisingly uncomfortable.
Finding our own creative value in the age of AI
I'm not suggesting we reject AI. I can see how these tools might support creative work, and I don't think pretending they can't produce original or surprising results is particularly helpful. What I do think matters is maintaining confidence in our own judgement and perspective. Two designers can receive the same brief and approach it completely differently because of their experiences, humour, interests and the things they notice about the world. Creativity isn't only about producing an outcome; it's also a way of exploring ideas and, sometimes, understanding ourselves. That's a relationship with making that I don't want us to lose in the rush to become faster and more efficient.
When I trained as a designer 15 years ago, one of the most valuable parts of the experience wasn't learning software. It was being encouraged to experiment, question my decisions and push beyond my first instincts. I remember spending hours on ideas that weren't working, but also the satisfaction of eventually finding a direction I hadn't considered. Those experiences shaped my confidence as much as the projects that went well.
I don't know exactly what the future of design looks like, but I hope it still leaves plenty of room for curiosity, play and creative risks. Not everything we make needs to be polished or useful. Sometimes the ideas that go nowhere teach us the most, and sometimes getting something wrong is how we find something better. Good designers aren't simply people who know how to get things right. They're people who have spent years experimenting, questioning and making mistakes along the way. I think that's something worth celebrating.
Feeling uncertain about your creative future?
Through Find a Creative Mind, I offer mentoring for creative professionals navigating uncertainty, confidence and their relationship with work. My approach brings together 15 years of design experience and my training as a person-centred counsellor. Learn more here