INDUSTRIAL DESIGNERS: what happens when you industrialize creativity?

I just heard a really interesting take on creativity and AI. Daniel Kwan, director of Everything Everywhere All At Once, said in a recent interview that we're industrializing creativity the same way we industrialized food - cheaper, faster, more abundant. And just like industrialized food destroyed our relationship with eating, AI has the potential to destroy our relationship with design thinking.

What's the diabetes for creativity? Clients who think Midjourney prompts are design work. What's heart disease for imagination? Startups generating a hundred concepts in an afternoon that solve nothing.

The industrial food system gave us cheap calories that make us sick. Industrialized creativity gives us cheap aesthetics that make bad products. Beautiful surfaces with no

structural thinking. Form generated without understanding constraints. Products designed without understanding user problems.

The defense isn't gatekeeping the tools. It's knowing the difference between documentation and thinking. Between aesthetic output and design judgment. Between making things just look good, and making things work.

This craft has depth that takes years to develop. Don’t mistake the AI Skittles, for a crafted meal.