Two years ago I joined twcreative® in my first full-time role as a designer. I expected to be the one learning. What I didn’t expect was that everyone else would be learning too.

Within design, things move quickly. Methods are constantly shared and tools appear mid-project. The hand-crafted tools that AI can’t quite perfect (such as grid systems and typographic hierarchy) are foundations that need to be learned. It’s the next steps in the design process that are being rewritten. The fundamentals are still in place, but we’re moving at a faster pace.

Early in your design career, you expect to spend a lot of your time absorbing knowledge from those with more experience. That still happens. But there’s now another layer to it. Conversations about new tools, prompts, and workflows are happening across the team. It creates an unusual dynamic where experience still guides the process, but curiosity is shared by everyone.

AI allows you to go further. With a well-crafted prompt, those foundations can quickly evolve into new directions. I’m experimenting with AI while still honing the fundamental skills. In some ways, experience still leads the way. In other ways, everyone is learning together. It’s a moment where experience and experimentation are happening side by side.

The process and rules around AI are unknown. When should you use AI? When shouldn’t you? What skills will still matter in five years?

The answer is simple: fundamentals still matter, taste still matters, and thinking still matters. Tools change. Judgement doesn’t. The tools might be evolving, but the core of the job hasn’t changed: understanding people, ideas, and how to communicate them visually.

Every generation of designers feels like the industry is changing. But joining the industry in the AI era feels a little different… I’m learning a moving target, unpredictable, but full of opportunity.