When I started working in digital design, the tools were far more limited than they are today. Producing strong work often meant doing things manually, experimenting with techniques, finding workarounds and sometimes inventing methods simply because there was no ready-made solution.
That difficulty was also part of what made individual skills stand out. You could often see the difference between someone who understood the craft and someone who did not. And there was a particular satisfaction in finally seeing something work after hours of experimentation, problem-solving and pushing beyond what the tools were originally designed to do.
Today the landscape is very different. Templates, stock libraries, website builders, ready-made components, automated tools and now AI can handle things that once required specialist knowledge, considerable production time or several different people. Creating something reasonably polished has become faster and far more accessible.
I do not think there is much value in fighting that change. The tools will continue to become easier and more capable.
But creative judgement was always important, and I think it carries even more weight when access to polished execution is no longer the main differentiator.
The tools were never the constant
I came into digital design during a very different era of the web.
Flash was one of the tools that shaped me most. It allowed us to combine typography, imagery, animation, video, sound and interaction into experiences that could feel like small digital worlds.
Coming from a fine art background and already being fascinated by games, comics and interactive media, I loved that freedom. It pushed me beyond one discipline and forced me to experiment constantly. Designing, animating, understanding interaction and working alongside developers became part of the same creative process.
But that freedom also taught me something more useful: just because you can do something does not mean it belongs in the work.
Not every website needed animation. Not every interaction needed sound. Not every project needed to follow the latest visual trend or become an experiment.
We still had to understand the client, the audience and the user. We had to think about usability, journeys, engagement, conversion and what the experience was ultimately meant to achieve. Most importantly, we had to be able to answer a simple question behind the decisions we made: why?
That was judgement then, just as it is now.
From making things to making decisions
Earlier in a design career, it is easy to measure progress through execution. Can I make this look better? Can I create that effect? Can I use this software well enough?
Those skills still matter. Craft matters enormously to me. But experience gradually changes the questions you ask.
What should this actually be? What deserves attention? What should disappear? Why should something work this way rather than another way? What fits the audience? What supports the brand? What looks impressive but adds very little?
Working across very different projects forced me to think this way quite early. A microsite, a corporate website, an entertainment campaign, promotional content, a game interface and a financial product should not all receive the same creative treatment.
Leadership reinforced that further. Once you are directing designers and developers, working with managers and partners, or presenting to clients and stakeholders, instinct alone is not enough. You need to understand the reasoning behind a decision and communicate it clearly.
It is something I have always tried to teach the teams I have led as well. If we cannot explain why a design decision exists, there is usually more thinking to do.
Structure became part of the craft
As my work moved further into UI, apps, games, fintech and larger digital products, structure became another part of the creative process.
Components, reusable patterns, shared rules and design systems helped me think beyond individual screens. They made it easier to prototype flows, test ideas, make changes and maintain a coherent visual language as products and experiences grew.
The underlying principle remained familiar: understand the problem and the goal first, establish the larger flow and structure, then work down into the details.
For me, that is still craft. It is simply craft operating at another level.
AI is the latest shift
My first reaction to generative AI was cautious and, at times, negative.
I disliked seeing designers jump directly into prompting work without developing the hands-on skills that help form an eye. It felt too easy to bypass parts of the learning process that had taught generations of designers how to recognise quality in the first place.
My view changed partly once I started using the tools seriously.
AI can accelerate exploration, create assets, help prototype ideas, generate alternatives and take care of repetitive production work. It can also remove limitations that once required considerably more time, budget or additional specialists.
But acceleration is not the same thing as craft, and generating possibilities is not the same thing as deciding which possibility is right.
The experienced eye still matters. So do taste, exposure, understanding people, emotion, context and the thousands of decisions accumulated through years of actually making things.
AI can challenge my thinking, expose weaknesses in an idea, suggest alternatives and help me stress-test decisions. I find that extremely useful. But I still want to challenge its conclusions, reject something, change direction, combine possibilities and sometimes follow my own instinct when I have a reasonable creative case for doing so.
That human judgement is not something I want to remove from the process.
If anything, AI has made me more aware of its value.
What still matters
The easier it becomes to produce polished work, the less meaningful polish becomes on its own.
What remains difficult is knowing when something needs restraint and when it needs energy. Understanding hierarchy, atmosphere, clarity and emotion. Recognising when an idea genuinely has character rather than simply looking professionally executed.
Taste matters. Context matters. Craft still matters.
Creative judgement develops through practice, exposure, mistakes, comparison and making thousands of decisions over time. Knowing the foundations also gives us the confidence to break them deliberately when the work benefits from it, rather than simply breaking rules because we do not understand them.
This matters particularly for emerging creatives. Learning the tools is useful, but learning why things work, where creative principles came from and how to form your own eye becomes even more valuable in a world where increasingly polished output is available to everyone.
A tool can help with logic. It can challenge assumptions and identify things worth considering. But design is not only a mathematical problem waiting for an optimal answer. Sometimes an experienced creative will deliberately choose the less obvious direction because something about it feels more human, memorable or appropriate.
The important part is being able to stand behind that choice.
After two decades
I have watched digital design change several times already, and I expect it to keep changing.
I do not think experienced designers should protect old ways of working simply because they are familiar. I also do not think emerging creatives benefit from handing the entire process to whatever tool is newest.
The stronger position sits somewhere between those extremes: understand the foundations, keep developing the craft, remain curious about new tools and use them without surrendering the judgement behind the work.
Software will change. Production will become faster. Skills that feel specialist today may become ordinary tomorrow.
But understanding the problem, seeing possibilities, knowing what belongs, removing what does not and giving work clarity, character and purpose still requires something more than access to the tools.
After more than two decades in digital design, that is the part of the work I value more than ever: knowing what the work actually needs, and being able to make the decisions that take it there.
This same focus on creative judgement also shapes my Design Mentoring & Portfolio Guidance for students and emerging creatives.
