Prompt. Create. Repeat? What AI Means for Graphic Designers in 2025
- Miguel Martinez
- 5 days ago
- 3 min read
Last week, my feed was filled with AI-generated versions of everyone I know as '90s action figures and Studio Ghibli side characters. Some looked incredible. Others... horribly uncanny.
It made me pause and wonder: Where do we, as designers, fit in this world of endless AI prompts and never-ending change?
Clients now casually reference "AI-enhanced mockups." Interns send over moodboards with more Midjourney than Pinterest. And tools like ChatGPT’s new image model create with the click of a button what used to take a whole afternoon (or even days).
But beneath the viral visuals and tech hype, there are some serious and ethical questions designers need to ask:
What happens when clients start treating us like human Photoshop plugins, Canva Apps or design bots for AI outputs?
Where is the line between enhancing our work or challenging our ideas with AI, and outsourcing our creativity to AI?
Can AI-generated content even be copyrighted or used as the "end product"?
And what’s the carbon footprint of those 100s of variations and iterations you've had to generate to obtain a decent output?
Designing in the Age of the Prompt
AI tools like Midjourney, Firefly, and ChatGPT are redefining ideation. Instead of sketching or moodboarding manually, we now often start with a prompt. It's fast, convenient, and dangerously close to making creativity feel automated.
Designers are finding themselves in new roles: editors, curators, translators of machine output. The design process has become less about the blank page and more about navigating infinite options.
The Copyright Grey Zone
In the U.S. and many other countries, works created entirely by AI without meaningful human input are not eligible for copyright. This raises thorny questions: If your client hands you an AI-generated logo and asks you to tweak it, who owns the final design? And is it even legal to use?
AI x Graphic Designers: A collaborative Future
No AI tool for Graphic Designers understands cultural nuance, personal experience, or emotional resonance the way a human does. Designers bring strategy, empathy, and intentionality. The best work comes not from resisting AI but from wielding it purposefully, just as we would any other tool.
AI can help us validate our thinking process, gather and summarise extensive data and research turning them into valuable insights, and most importantly, it can be used to challenge our ideas and find gaps in our thinking. This is, if we use it with intention.
Sustainable Creatitivity & Production
Training and running large AI models consumes immense energy. As creatives, we’re rarely told to think about our digital carbon footprint, but maybe it’s time. Making 100's of AI variants of a design concept may seem harmless, but every iteration has an environmental cost.
A 2023 MIT study found that training a single large AI model can emit over 626,000 pounds of CO2. That's the equivalent of five round-trip flights between New York and London. And that’s just for the training phase. Every time we generate new images, especially at scale, we draw on data centers powered by electricity that often still comes from fossil fuels.
As we integrate AI into our Graphic Design work, it's worth asking: Are we using it mindfully? Can we set boundaries on the number of iterations we produce? Can we encourage clients to value quality over quantity and efficiency over excess?
Being sustainable with AI isn't about rejecting the technology, it’s about approaching it with intention, awareness, and responsibility.
A more Thoughtful Way Forward
AI isn't going anywhere, but neither is the need for thoughtful, human-centred design. This what we can do, as designers:
Be transparent about when and how we use AI
Guide and educate clients in understanding AI’s limits and its impact
Champion creativity that’s rooted in human insight and a human-first approach
Design workflows that value quality, uniqueness and sustainability, not just speed
We’re not competing with AI. We’re redefining what it means to design in a world where the machine can create. The question is no longer "Can AI do this?" but "Should it?" And if it does, how can we make sure our work still reflects us?
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