We shipped our whole product without a UI designer. I'm not sure that's good news
Our landing page, product pages, design system, even our promo video, all of it came from AI tools plus taste. Five years ago this would have needed at least one designer on payroll and tons of Figma design effort.
Here's the uncomfortable part. The output is genuinely fine. Not award winning, but clean, consistent, and shipped in weeks instead of months. Nobody who visits our site asks if we have a designer.
But I keep noticing what's missing. Every choice we made was basically picking from what the AI suggested. There's no opinion in it. When I look at products that feel special, there's always some human decision that an AI would never suggest because it breaks a pattern instead of following one.
So my honest read is the junior designer role is in real trouble, because "make it clean and consistent" is exactly what AI does well now. But taste, knowing when to break the rules, and having an actual point of view might be worth more than ever. The problem is nobody becomes a senior designer without first being a junior one, and AI is removing the bottom rung of that ladder.
Designers here, how does this look from your side? And founders, would you still hire a designer today, and for what exactly?
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I think at this point, this is just becoming more and more common, and it'll probably continue unless (or maybe until?) designers start using AI to show people what's possible with both genuine design knowledge + the level of speed that AI can produce. And eventually people will hire designers who specifically are good with AI to do design.
At least, that's my theory on what might happen in the future. Might be a few years until that becomes normal.
tbh, designers are coming into a workplace where execution is very cheap. AI can give them a 7/10 website, and they can take it to a 9/10. I would definitely hire a designer, but not to execute but to set the product vision and think about problems to solve.