What exists without change?
The Future Creative # 74
Welcome to Future Creative, your weekly 5-minute read on industrial design, design thinking, and the role of AI in creativity and innovation. Each issue distills trends, insights, and practical tools that help designers and creators push their process, sharpen their skills, and stay ahead in the future of design.
The Integration of AI into our daily lives has been more gradual than you probably expected. By the time generated images came into public view about 4 years ago, the AI working behind the scenes was already doing the work to keep the internet running. If you speak with IBM, they will tell you its old news.
This doesn’t change how you probably feel about AI, and the sometimes unwelcome influence it has on your work. Many professions are now facing the reality that they are now all but replaced by AI.
But Industrial Designers still face an uncertain future. Will we/won’t we….and yet we wait and see that a new app creeps closer to creating 3D cad that you effectively speak to, like Tony Stark speaks to Jarvis. Especially when this app can consider factors in DFM and CMF that most of us never even considered, thus leaving us hapless.
What we lose in this process is a sense of agency in our future, which I assume is how many in the UI/UX field are feeling right now. So how do we retain our influence? How do we keep ourselves away from the pen stroke on the budget sheet that renders us redundant?
We stay relevant by building on our skill of AI, to becomes pros. after all, its another tool right? We also keep agency by expertly curating and infusing human element into what we create. By doing what AI can’t do, and doing it well, we can retain a competitive edge, and speak as the human voice in the product development conversation.
So stay positive. Change, adaption and commitment are scary things but with conviction we can make it through the gauntlet.
AI Moodboard:
(Vizcom) Sketch of the Week:
Newsworthy
The most important cars in the last 30 years
Gemini can turn a sketch into 3D now
Software to keep an eye on
Other Useful Links
Below are a list of links that I think everybody should keep an eye on for Design/AI
More to come…
Inspiration Fuel
AI Driven -
I have built several agents at this point, each tackling a different aspect of our creative field.
“🔶 HOW WE KEEP DESIGN A HUMAN ACTIVITY
Here’s the key insight:
AI handles information. Designers handle meaning.
1. Protect the interpretive layers
Humans own:
taste
semiotics & cultural interpretation
brand language
ethics & empathy
what “good” feels like
gestalt, proportion, tactile intelligence
narrative & intent
AI can’t do “why this matters to people.”
2. Use AI for mechanical cognition, not judgment
Let AI do:
search
summarization
geometry massing
CMF variants
failure predictions
But humans gate:
quality
coherence
emotional resonance
brand fit
3. Document human reasoning
Embed a “Designer’s Intent Annotation” at each phase.
4. Build critique rituals around AI outputs
Keep:
whiteboards
clay
hand sketches
live ideation
physical mockups
The clay model doesn’t lie.
5. Maintain authorship
AI is a tool, not a collaborator.
You decide what becomes real.”
Have a great week!
(and don’t forget to have fun!)
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