The Value of Creativity
For much of my life, I grappled with the value of design. At times, I even prioritized business acumen over my creative skills.
I came up in a world that was comfortable discussing things in terms of logic and numbers, disregarding emotions as irrelevant, indulgent, and inferior. The clarity of logic provides a sense of security while emotions are changeable, intuitive, and complicated. Generations of parents have told their creative children to pursue "smart careers" for stability and prosperity, shunning them for being foolish if they chose to pursue their art. The starving artist is a very powerful archetype.
No wonder so many professional creatives struggle with their worth.
Most designers are comfortable estimating the cost of a project by the number of hours required to complete it. But determining an hourly rate means determining a subjective value for something that can't be easily measured with numbers, and for most professional creatives that's dicey territory. Cost follows a logical formula, and value is emotional.
But the advent of AI is turning this age-old way of thinking on its head. AI will soon be faster and more efficient than humans at solving and producing things in the realm of logic and numbers. The number of roles and jobs it will replace is paralyzing to consider. Even STEM jobs are at risk – for math or logic-based jobs AI could replace humans and likely will do so. Roles that commanded high salaries will be done cheaply.
But designers excel in an area where AI can't overtake us – emotional intelligence.
Sure, AI can create adequate images at an astonishing rate but they quickly feel flat. Meh. That may be adequate for some things, but they're cheap because they don't really mean anything. And there has always been a market for low-quality design that no one aspires to. A lot of my fellow designers are scared because they view their value solely in the execution of design work, as a commodity. They view peers who incorporate AI into their work as traitors, or sell-outs. But they're missing our true worth.
Professional creatives rely on our gifts of intuition, discernment and empathy to connect with our audiences on an emotional level. Our talents are rooted in how we see and perceive the world in unique ways. AI can only create iterations of what has come before, it can't innovate on an emotional level. History may inform and inspire us, but we envision the future.
I believe there's a great opportunity for designers to use AI as a partner, not a driver. It depends on us to feed the ideas, prompts, and objectives. We focus on the bigger picture and provide insights, while it can help us iterate and explore. It can’t make critical creative decisions, we do.
The true value of creativity has never been in the mechanical execution – it's in the emotional resonance that makes people feel something. When I create a brand identity that makes a client truly feel seen, that's not just pixels arranged on a screen – it's an emotional connection made visible. When I design an environment that makes people want to linger and engage, that's emotional intelligence at work.
In this new world, perhaps we'll finally recognize that the ability to understand, interpret, and evoke human emotions is not a "soft" skill to be undervalued, but the most essential human capability we possess. As AI handles more of the logical and technical aspects of creation, our emotional intelligence becomes the differentiator – the thing that can't be algorithmically generated.
So I'm no longer grappling with the value of design. I now see clearly: my worth isn't in the hours I log or even the technical skills I've mastered. It's in my uniquely human ability to feel, to understand emotions, and to create work that makes others feel something too. And that, no matter how advanced AI becomes, remains invaluable.