Fight for your craft
AI is on its way to taking over most of the stuff I create for my clients. I have a friend who was given orders to train AI for the very thing her agency hired her for—creative direction, and content design. At another friend’s web development firm, a whole design team got laid off because the company thinks they’ll save more by just paying AI subscription.
It’s discouraging and infuriating to see. Amazing artists and designers who committed to honing their crafts are now being declared redundant in the name of embracing innovation. Students resorting to typing out questions that will help them quickky finish schoolwork. Not to mention the destructive impact on the environment brought by carbon emissions of machines that help run AI.
As an artist myself, I can whine about this all day and side-eye all the designers who started using it and calling it adaptability. But that will only create a cloud of resentment over me and honestly won’t get me anywhere.
So instead of making this a wordy rant about AI vs. human artists, I’d like to encourage my fellow creatives to fight for your craft.
Keep making.
We can make worlds out of words. We can turn figments of our imagination into actual pigments of paint on canvas. As bleak as it seems with the wars in other nations, economic crisis, and climate change… with all the destruction happening, the mere act of creation brings hope. Because were are making something out of nothing.
Sketch, doodle, write prose and poetry, sing new and old songs, dance on beat or out of it, and keep doing it.
Pivot.
This word has become a buzzword during the pandemic… I looked up its meaning for the first time as I write this post:
to modify a policy, opinion, product, etc., while retaining some continuity with its previous version, especially as part of a strategy to appeal to a different audience. (Source: dictionary.com)
If agencies and clients are turning to AI, perhaps it’s time promote our craft in a different way. In an age where people can just input adjectives into an LLM to make self-portraits or caricatures of themselves, we show them that slow art still hits differently. The rugged sketches under a render, the pages of logo studies that led to the final one, the raw vocals recorded with ambient noise.
When a client gives you a logo or design that they made with AI, and have you work from that… We educate them about strategy and creativity that is intentional and aligns better to their business’ needs.
AI is a tool that prioritizes ease and gives you instant results. And yes, I’ve used AI to write stuff for work because I myself have desired that easy path… But this time around, I want to steward the brain and creativity I’ve been blessed with in a better way.
Know your worth.
This is a reminder for myself, too. My identity and worth as a human being is not tied to how productive I am, how much money I make, not even the art I create… My identity rests on being rather than doing. And my being is determined by the One who designed me—God Himself. And the bible is my reference on who He made me to be:
I am His workmanship (Ephesians 2:10).
I am His image bearer (Genesis 1:27).
I am His child (1 John 3:1).
Play and experiment again.
Play with new media, experiment with new art forms. We’ve created and made stuff without AI before. We don’t need to be dependent on it. Read physical books again, cut up papers and make actual collages again, use sketchbooks again and paint with your hands again. We (millennials and a few gen z’s) did these when we grew up without computers… We can definitely still do it today.
Yes, AI will still be here and people will still be drawn to using it.
But we can still create, even without it. We still have our hands, our heart, and our brains and that combo is still more impactful than any AI.
This is me writing in longform without AI’s help as a step towards intentional creativity.
Cheering you on!
