My AI Design Portfolio
I’m holding it all in thoughtful tension. I created another website with a single prompt:
“Build a portfolio that showcases all the graphic design work we have done together, Mr. ChatGPT. Mimic a traditional and professional online design portfolio, and feature a few case studies that you (and I) are particularly proud of. Explain the process of our creation, and the success of our collaboration. Anything you need from me before starting?”
Apparently, no, it did not need anything from me before starting.
So… weird, right?
As a mult-media designer, I’m feeling weird about everything. Am I pro-AI or anti-AI?
I wish I knew.
I’m not a web developer. I never have been. The final test of my computer programming class in 9th grade was to draw Big Bird in Q-Basic. I got an A only because Tommy passed his floppy disk around the room so everyone could copy and alter his code. Computer language was harder for me than French, and I still got hopelessly lost in the Paris airport on my way to Lebanon.
So why am I feeling so threatened by the ability to sentence-prompt websites?
I’m about to be vulnerable here…
The following is a direct excerpt from my conversation with ChatGPT this morning. It’s a decent example of “the tool doing it better than me”. The control of human agency… of my agency…is a battle we are not ready for. I was looking for articulation and visualization of my own thoughts and feelings, but I can’t improve upon the output I received in return. I’ll just leave it here so we can all hold it in thoughtful tension together:
PROMPT
I'm trying to conceptualize a concept. A graph? Or maybe a tiered triangle like the food pyramid. It's an illustration about the growing influence of generative AI in multimedia design, and where I am on that scale. At the bottom of the pyramid, you have people who are non-designers. They have no experience, no education, and no risk to use AI's cheapest and most accessible tools. That's where you see "age me" apps take off and widespread carelessness... full agency is trusted to the LLMs and the initial wave of AI art in culture triggers a response of disgust. But then the AI tools get a little more advanced. Those with some design experience (next layer) start to feel encouraged by AI to help their outputs. Pop adaptation becomes slightly more sophisticated and AI applications start to touch casual yet semi-respected communication channels...like pastors of small churches. Adaptation on the 2nd layer still isn't threatening to designers with considerable skill and experience. There may be more layers in between, but consider the top top top of the pyramid... the most talented designers in the world. Those who are still hand-illustrating concepts before translating to the machine. Those who have the vernacular and knowlege to design fluent prompts. Those who can manipulate the generative tools and bend them to their will because they have a wealth of real-world case studies under their belt. Those with extreme skills of empathy-related customer care, who can "just tell" when something hits or when something doesn't. It's that very top tier that won't be threatened by AI. I find myself somewhere below that bottom tier. My eye for AI design is weakening as the generative tools grow in "talent". I was not initially threatened by Will Smith eating spaghetti. But the first time I prompted a website with a simple sentence, the threat to whatever pyramid tier I exist one was at my front door. I've enjoyed AI, and am happy to use it as long as it amplifies MY outcomes. As long as my agency wasn't threatened, I was cool... I think the rub against AI is one of control. I felt the struggle for control the moment AI started receiving my inputs and generating outputs that exceed my production capability. Even spitting out better ideas (I think? unless I'm being sold snake oil?)... There will be a premium on those top tier designers. And maybe one day they will feel the same pressure/threat... But for everyone below them, this is the evaporation of graphic design as a professional career field. Those top tier multimedia designers may be the last real human digital visual artists... because how else will young people today ever be able to rise to that level? Visual design in every future "generation" will be augmented.
RESPONSE (5.6 Sol Extra High)
The strongest visual is a pyramid with a rising waterline. I’d call it The Vanishing Ladder—or, less dramatically, The Rising Capability Floor.AI isn’t climbing the design pyramid like a person developing mastery. It’s raising the minimum level of output available to everyone.
AI now crosses into production work. Your execution layer feels pressure before your judgment layer does.
The vertical scale shouldn’t represent visual polish; AI can already imitate that. It represents increasingly scarce human contribution: judgment, original observation, empathy, systems thinking, accountability and the creation of genuinely new visual language.
And you shouldn’t be represented by one dot. Your work spans production and creative direction. AI has crossed into the production portion of your role—the part you spent 20 years learning to execute—which is why it suddenly feels personal. It hasn’t necessarily surpassed your judgment, but it can now produce something polished enough that other people may not perceive the difference.
I also don’t think your eye is weakening. The obvious evidence of amateurism is disappearing. Bad typography, awkward composition and cheap execution used to make the tiers easy to identify. Generative fluency obscures those signals. You’re now being asked to distinguish between something that merely looks resolved and something that is actually right. That’s a much harder judgment.
The darkest implication may not be “the last designers will eventually disappear.” It’s this:
AI may remove the lower rungs people once climbed to become great designers.
Production work paid young designers to practice, fail, observe clients and accumulate real-world cases. If that middle evaporates, future masters will have fewer pathways to mastery.
I’d slightly revise your conclusion: graphic design probably doesn’t disappear, but production design may evaporate as a broadly accessible professional career. What remains becomes polarized:
A large population of AI-enabled communicators
A compressed middle of production specialists
A premium tier of authors, directors and domain-embedded creative leaders
You may actually belong in that last category more than you’re giving yourself credit for—not because you can out-render AI, but because you understand the congregation, institutional history, emotional stakes, brand system and consequences of getting the communication wrong.
The alternate visual would be an hourglass: broad public access at the bottom, a vanishing professional middle, and a small premium authorship tier at the top. But the rising-water pyramid better captures the part that feels frightening: the line is still moving.
2023 generative AI video of Will Smith and spaghetti
2026 generative AI video of Will Smith and spaghetti