- So not to throw anyone into an existential crisis
or anything, but have you wondered
if design is one of those jobs
that's gonna to be overtaken by robots?
(dramatic music)
Is this a safe career choice for the future?
With automation and A.I and templates
enabling more and more people to create
good looking designs on their own,
will there still be need for designers like us
in years to come?
And if everyone has access to these tools
and everyone can be a designer
does that mean our skills
are becoming less and less valuable?
What can we do about this
and how much should we worry about it?
I got to thinking about all of this last week
after seeing a big discussion going on on Twitter
between designers about free design assets
and whether or not they're helpful
or harmful to our industry.
I want to dive into that today and share my opinion
on the matter as well as talk about the future of design
as a job.
(upbeat music)
Okay so if you don't spend a lot of time
on Twitter, let me catch you up quickly.
So last week a very talented designer
called Pablo Stanley released an opensource
illustration project.
Pablo releases a lot of side projects
so it's very cool
but the response to this one was really divided.
What some people saw as a super handy resource,
others saw as a potential threat to their livelihood.
While I personally am more in the former group
I can totally understand
this reaction from illustrators too.
Because Pablo is providing his illustrations free
for either personal or commercial use,
that means that there will be some companies
who choose to use these super cool, really well made,
free illustrations for their website,
for their mobile app instead of hiring an illustrator
to create something custom, that is going to happen.
But this isn't the first time that something like this
has happened in the design industry.
We've seen this happen before
for web designers with Squarespace,
for graphic designers with Canva templates,
with free icon sets, free UI kits,
free fonts, all of these things give people the option
to DIY a solution rather than hiring a designer
to create something custom.
And I don't wanna make it sound like
it's just the general public
who makes use of these free assets,
us designers use them too,
they can really help speed up our workflow
or stay within budget for a project.
For example, instead of spending my time
drawing custom vector icons from scratch,
I often make use of things like Font Awesome
or Noun Project to just quickly grab the icon
that suits what I need.
If I have easy access to something that suits my needs
in this way, why not make use of it?
It's not cheating, it's just being smart
about where I spend my time and resources.
Of course though there is a major downside
to making use of pre made assets
and that is that anyone else
could be making use of them too, including a competitor.
So when someone chooses to use a pre-made asset,
whether it's a free one like Pablo's illustrations
or a paid one like a stock asset,
they're not just choosing convenience and cost saving,
they're also choosing something generic
over something custom
and I think this is a point that a lot of illustrators
have been trying to make throughout this conversation,
is that illustration shouldn't just be a generic decoration
on a page, it should be an integral part of a brand,
it should communicate a message.
So it seems like part of the reason
that they're frustrated by Pablo
releasing this open source illustration project
is that they feel it treats illustrations
as just a pretty decoration,
as something you can just copy and paste
and fit on a new website.
And they feel like it's devaluing their work.
I think though, that a client who sees no difference
between an illustration that has been custom made
to suit their needs
and one that could just be copy and pasted
from this illustration set
is probably not gonna be a great client to work with anyway
and they're also probably pretty unlikely
to hire an illustrator in the first place.
Geoff Teehan said something similar to this on Twitter,
he said that we've been doing this for years,
releasing free assets,
it doesn't ruin people's careers,
it reduces shit clients.
I agree with Geoff and this is something that web designers
had to deal with when the quality
and ease of templated websites really improved.
When Squarespace became popular for example,
a lot of web designers had to drastically shift
what they were offering
and how they were communicating their value
because now the client who just wanted a very basic website
and who cared more about how it looked
and getting it to look exactly how they wanted
rather than thinking through the user experience
and considering their website as part of a solution
to a problem.
They could now very easily just pick a template
and create a website for themselves.
But that didn't put web designers out of work though,
it just meant that our main value is now more
in the strategy and design thinking side of things
rather than in creating a basic homepage.
Personally, I think that's a great thing,
I think the quality of the web as a whole
has improved with this,
we've got less gate keeping
in who can make a good looking website,
the clients who just wanted something quick and cheap
can do it themselves and it frees up web designers
to focus more on the clients with interesting problems
and who value design more.
As this barrier to creating good looking designs
gets broken down more and more,
which it will, we as designers,
no matter what discipline we're in,
need to continue to show that design
is more than just what something looks like.
We need to lean into the strategy side of design
and to use research and using data to inform our decisions
and into our human empathy and artistic talent
with creative problem solving.
I believe that these skills will be valuable
for a very long time and they're the reason
that I personally am not worried about automation
or robots coming for my job.
Maybe this is just naive optimism
but I believe there will always be a place
in the design process for humans making decisions,
for creative problem solving that combines the data
with our cultural context and our human empathy.
These are things that we have over the templates
and over the robots
and that's why I think we need to lean into these things,
to make our careers long lasting.
I didn't want this video
to just be about my opinion however,
so let me bring in some thoughts
of some of my subscribers on this whole free design asset
situation.
- I think that this project is a wonderful idea,
I love the story behind it,
I love the inspiration behind it,
I love the heart behind it,
because this is all about opening doors,
opening those gates up and saying,
"Hey, here's something for you," that's marvelous
and I think more people should do that
if they have the resources available to them,
to pay it back or pay it forward.
That's wonderful and it takes nothing away
from the individual and adds to the collective.
- I love that Patty,
we all learn a lot from resources
that other designers put out there,
that's why I make these videos actually,
it's my way of trying to give back
to the design community that I learned so much from.
I do however think that two things can be true at once,
that we can see that yes, this free design asset is amazing
and helpful but that also it does cause challenges
and problems for a sector of the industry
and that we're gonna have to learn to adapt
as more and more of these free assets come out.
It absolutely doesn't mean
that we shouldn't make them anymore
because I believe overall they do help,
but we should be aware of this side of it too.
- I don't think that there is a one size fits all answer
to the question is free design bad?
Because there's a lot of situations
where free design's super beneficial,
like I'm a self taught designer
and I wouldn't have learned some of the stuff that I did,
if I didn't have a chance to play around with those things.
And you know, like small startups that need resources
and you know just things like that,
but then at the same time you can see people
clearly exploiting free stuff and I really just think
it's a double edged sword, you know.
- This is interesting, Lia is right,
there is always gonna be people who exploit free stuff.
I did someone make a joke actually
in response to Pablo's tweet announcing this project,
that now a bunch of designers are gonna go
and sell these illustrations on Fiverr,
that probably is gonna happen,
but it's a risk you take I think when you put something free
out there into the world,
that some people are gonna be malicious with it,
they're gonna exploit it,
but like Patty said, overall it adds to the collective good,
so it's still worth it.
- As a teacher I do appreciate the free design assets
whether it's for my graphic design students
or for my web development students.
However, the problem comes in
when they start relying too much on them
and not trying to create their content.
So it is a good thing but also a bad thing.
- This is a perspective that I haven't really considered.
I think as more and more free assets are produced,
we as designers have to be careful that we don't get lazy
because of them, we have to be careful
that we're still building up the skills that we wanna have.
I don't think it's just students
who have this problem either,
I think that it can happen for any designer
who's relying a little too much on assets
so we just need to be mindful of that.
- I don't believe free design assets
devalue the design industry
because they're likely to be used by people
who are creating personal projects,
maybe they don't have a budget
so they're likely not gonna be the type
who would otherwise buy design assets
that aren't free anyway
and so I don't see free design assets
as some sort of deterrent for a big budget client
to suddenly decide that they're going to
use the free design assets versus going to an expert
and seeking out a custom solution
for their business problem or their design problem.
- I think Raymond is right
that a big budget client is still gonna hire someone
to create something custom
because they see the value in that
and they have business needs that they need to solve.
However, I do think that a low budget client
is likely to use a free asset instead of hiring someone.
I wanna bring in Justin Mezzel's tweets here
from an illustrator's perspective
because I think that's really important
that you see this too.
He says here that it's dangerous to assume
that there are two different markets here.
He calls out that making it easier
to not hire someone essentially has a negative effect
on the whole.
Now I'm really curious,
I wanna know where you stand on this matter.
What do you think about designers
putting out free assets to the world?
Is it helpful?
Is it more harmful?
Do the pros outweigh the cons, vice versa?
And what about the rise of more and more templates
being produced, the rise of A.I and automation?
Do you worry about the future of design as a career choice
because of these things?
I'd love to hear what you think,
leave your thoughts down below in the comments
and let's keep this discussion going.
Thank you for listening,
thank you for caring about matters like this
and I will talk to you in my next video, bye.
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