AI in everyday designer routine

January 25, 2026 / daria

AI is becoming part of everyday work — but is it really making things easier? And should designers be worried? We use AI daily, and in our new article we talk honestly about what it’s great at, where it struggles, and why human experience still makes the difference. From text and visuals to real-world judgment, AI is powerful — but only in the right hands.

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These days, there are countless AI tools promising to make our everyday work easier. In this article, we want to take an honest look at how much they actually help, how much time they really save, and whether they can replace a designer at all.
This article was written by Daria, our designer, who actively uses AI and neural networks in her daily work.
Just a few years ago, we were laughing at AI-generated images with six fingers, distorted faces, and all kinds of weird visual glitches. Fast forward to today, and AI has made a huge leap. Sometimes it’s genuinely hard to tell what’s real and what’s generated. We’re surrounded by AI-made content more than ever, and it’s easy to start thinking that some professions — designers included — might disappear soon. I don’t really believe that, but let’s break it down with real examples.

Text Generation

I use AI in my work all the time. It helps with a lot of small but important tasks. For example, I often use it to check the wording of my emails — English isn’t my first language. ChatGPT is a language model, and it’s really good at text-based tasks: writing CTA blocks, filling out product descriptions, summarizing articles, and even creating prompts for other AI tools.
Prompts are basically instructions you give an AI to get a specific result. The clearer and more detailed the prompt, the more predictable the outcome. Writing good prompts is a skill on its own — and one that ChatGPT actually helps with quite well.
At this point, you might think this article was written by AI too. But it wasn’t. A prompt like “write an article about…” is very vague, so the AI usually pulls the most common ideas from the internet and generates something generic. It follows a standard blog structure, throws in a bit of humor to sound human — but after a couple of sentences, you can feel that the text has no personality. It might be correct and useful, but it feels empty.
That’s why this article is based on my own experience and my own way of telling the story. AI just helps me polish the text, fix mistakes, and choose more natural-sounding phrases.

Image Generation

Another good example is image generation. Sometimes I need visuals for my work, and AI can be a real shortcut. Usually, I turn to it when a photo needs heavy editing or when the image I need simply doesn’t exist on stock sites and would be very hard to recreate manually.
For example, imagine a client asking for a unicorn inside a shopping mall. Traditionally, this would mean finding a photo of a horse, a mall interior, and then spending hours in a photo editor — cutting things out, matching light and shadows, adding a horn, and trying to make everything look realistic.
Now, you can just ask AI and get a result in seconds. I tried it — and it looks great at first glance. The unicorn glows, the lighting works, and people are even pointing at it.

But then you notice something strange. Where did those people come from? I never mentioned them. This is a simple but important example of how AI works: if you don’t specify something, the AI will just make its own decisions. That’s why generating a good image requires extremely detailed instructions. You need to describe almost everything — composition, object sizes, camera angle, colors, style, aspect ratio, and more.

Pros and Cons

So instead of editing a photo, the job turns into a multi-step process. First, you act like a director and imagine the scene in detail. Then, like a photographer, you think about framing and lighting. And finally, you translate all of that into a prompt the AI can understand. One try is rarely enough — you tweak the prompt, adjust parameters, and generate again.
Yes, the image appears in seconds, but the thinking, preparation, and iterations often take just as much time as traditional editing work. And even then, the final image usually needs manual fixes. If you look closely, you might spot odd hands, strange signs, or completely meaningless banners.
Some of these things might slip by unnoticed, but AI can also make mistakes in much more sensitive areas — like mixing up national flags, religious symbols, or cultural details. These errors are unacceptable in real projects, and only a human can properly judge whether the result is actually usable.

It’s all about context

AI is evolving incredibly fast, and I’m sure it will keep surprising us. But right now, it’s still just a tool. In the wrong hands, it can cause problems. In skilled hands, it can become something really powerful. I’d encourage everyone to try working with AI and learn how to get real value from it — this skill will matter more and more in the future. At the same time, it’s important to remember that AI is just a tool, and even the smartest one can’t think outside the context it’s given.

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