If AI Production is Making Production Cheaper, How Can You Sell Design Thinking Instead?

Back to Devoured - July 10, 2026

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If AI Production is Making Production Cheaper, How Can You Sell Design Thinking Instead?

As AI commoditizes visual production, designers must shift from selling execution to selling their judgment, taste, and strategic problem-solving.

What: Designers and agency founders like David Jonathan Johnston and Ian Paget argue that the value of creative work is migrating from the final visual artifact to the underlying strategic decision-making process. They advise practitioners to document their reasoning, focus on solving actual business problems, and maintain a high-level creative direction rather than competing solely on technical output.

Why it matters: This shift reflects a broader market trend where the cost of generating standard creative assets approaches zero, forcing human professionals to differentiate themselves through proprietary insight and high-level taste that AI models cannot yet replicate.

Takeaway: Start tracking your design decisions in a journal or project logs to build an articulable process that you can use to justify your value to clients beyond the final deliverable.

Deep dive

The rise of automated production tools makes execution cheap, requiring designers to pivot to 'sense-making.'
Clients now value curiosity, storytelling, and judgment over mere technical proficiency.
Shift case studies from showing visual outcomes to detailing the problem-solving and decision-making process.
Develop 'taste' by engaging with tactile, non-digital craft like letterpress or film photography to provide depth.
Use AI as a tool for efficiency, but maintain manual control over final outputs to ensure quality and alignment.
Document rationale for every design choice to build a record of your specific aesthetic and strategic instincts.

Original article

As AI makes production cheap, designers should sell judgment, taste, and problem-framing instead—the thinking behind the work, not just its execution.

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