AI Will Not Replace Web Designers Doing These 2 Things

Key Takeaways

If you're in web design right now, there are high chances that you're not getting enough sleep every single night because of AI. And personally, I've had some of those by running a really, really big design studio. And I've figured out that some designers are going to get replaced, but mostly because they were [music] so easily replaceable beforehand. In this video, I'll show you exactly that. So, where I see AI replacing us are two places. First, for startups and for anybody wanting to do kind of really hyper growth, like for anybody getting into the industry, they're new and they're just getting started out, they're probably going to be using AI first. They're going to be building websites with AI. They're going to be building their businesses and maybe even product design with AI. And they're just going to want to go to market and they're going to want to literally figure out can anybody pay for their services? Because development and design is becoming a commodity in a way. I see more and more people starting to do the beginner type of work on their own without hiring anybody. And that in that case, if you're maybe positioned to do that low entry work, you can either go for volume so that you can do a lot of those websites really, really fast, or you might get replaced with AI in a long term. And the other type is the type where you're just doing pure execution. So, if you're getting, let's say, instructions from your customer and you're doing just pure execution, you're you don't have any partnerships, you don't have any strategy, you're not consulting them on how they should do specific things, I do believe that with time those roles are going to be less and less valuable. I know, it sounds harsh, but I just think that that is the direction the market is going to currently. But I also think that there are really, really good news. With all that power, people are going to get overwhelmed. In the end, we're just people. And there are websites which are not responsive, but moreover, people don't know what to do. So, that busy sooner might start their business by using AI for product design and product development and web design, but if they start getting any sort of traction, they're going to need to hire an expert. So, because of that and because the volume of softwares are going to be getting produced are higher and higher, the volume of businesses hopefully is going to be even bigger by democratizing kind of all of the technology to the everyday user, that's also going to mean that you're going to have more work for mid-type and higher-end clients. And because of that, if you're slowly, let's say, position yourself to startup owners that have the MVP instead of you building the MVP, if you're positioning yourself to businesses which have gained a little bit of traction and they need a trusted design partner, well, in that case, you're probably going to be in a place where you have so much more work than you had previously. And that's what we see in our studio as well, is like even though there is AI, it cannot do many things. It's done in many different cases, it's over hyped if you ask me, and you need somebody to instruct it. In many cases, if you do a one shot of something, it's going to be bare minimum, I would say, and then you need to have real industry expertise and you need to prompt it to get to a place where it's actually delivering any sort of a good work. So, because of that, you just need to up your skills. And there are specific skills that I believe are really, really important for 2026. The first one is discovery. I personally believe that the more people can build, the more it's going to be important to know what are they actually building. Because if you can build anything in the world, well, everybody can build anything in the world, and discovery and strategy because of that is becoming more and more important. So, if you can position yourself as a consultant in 2026, which can help your customer decide how do they need to position in the market, how should their brand be positioned, what should they have on the website, how to differentiate from their customers, well, exactly that conversation is going to be worth maybe even more than the website itself. Then, when it comes to the overall creative direction, I do strongly believe that that's also going to stay human. I know people are maybe giving you a like idea that like you can do something with AI. We have not been able to do that even though we have 12 designers like working full-time on websites every single day across our companies. And the reality is that the better you are as a creative, the better you are as a creative person in the end, the more you're going to get paid. So, the more you have your skill of in general art direction and in general the creative aspect of creating a unique brand, the better you're going to be paid long term. Because again, if people are building if there is a higher production of websites online, the thing which is going to be paid more is if you're able to create something unique and something which is going to differentiate in the market. So, how to actually get started? Again, unfortunately, it's not something really really quick. I would suggest reading books. Is actually reading books about positioning like positioning Jack Trout, like reading books about kind of how to do discovery. I know AJ Smart has a lot of design facilitation courses as well. So, in general, anything you can do to get a skill of facilitating, get a skill of management, and get a skill of consulting that can allow you to run better conversations, to run better discoveries, to run better strategy sessions with your customers, and in the end to be able to go inside of a room with a customer and tell them, "Hey, you know what? Based on everything that we discussed, I believe this is what you need to do." And [music] in the end, they're going to be probably really really relieved that they have specific, let's say, guidance from you and that they can have a trusted design partner which is going to help them in this AI world. So, what do you think? Are we getting replaced this year? Drop a comment down below and we can discuss more about the topic.