There Will Always Be Someone Faster, Cheaper, and Better

My feed is mostly designers talking about AI, and the temperature of all of it is the same: Something is coming. You need to get out in front of it. You need to be the one doing the changing rather than the one being changed. I don’t disagree with most of the individual advice. But read enough of it in one sitting and what surfaces underneath is competition — ordinary competition, of the kind that has always been there. The worry takes two shapes. Either the client no longer needs a designer, because the tool supplies the design. Or another designer, holding the tool, takes the job you would have had. Both are worth taking seriously. Neither is new. The Permanent Condition There has always been someone faster than me, someone cheaper than me, and someone better than me. This was true the day I started my career and it will be true on the day it ends. It describes a market, not an era. Designers — actually, all in the professional services — have a folk theorem for living with this…