A website that takes digital accessibility features seriously reaches a wider customer base, performs better for SEO and reduces legal risks for the business. Recognising this, world-famous restaurant chain Benihana asked us to deliver a fully up-to-date website that adheres to WCAG 2.1 guidelines.
A website that takes digital accessibility features seriously reaches a wider customer base, performs better for SEO and reduces legal risks for the business. Recognising this, world-famous restaurant chain Benihana asked us to deliver a fully up-to-date website that adheres to WCAG 2.1 guidelines.
Our extensive accessibility work on the Benihana website helped improve its overall accessibility score.
We reduced instances of vague and ineffective link text, replacing them with clear and descriptive alternatives to make navigation more intuitive for users.
Identified and replaced ineffective alt text with accurate descriptions, ensuring that information is accurately conveyed to those using screen readers.
The work we conducted on the new Benihana site significantly improved accessibility, ensuring compliance with WCAG 2.1 AA standards. The changes allowed Benihana to reach a wider proportion of its customer base, providing excellent user experience features for those with accessibility needs.
The accessibility improvements also strengthened SEO. By adding features that enhance usability, such as semantic HTML, clear navigation, and descriptive links, Benihana’s fully accessible website achieved a noticeable boost in overall SEO performance.
From 18th-century hoaxes like The Mechanical Turk to today’s over-hyped “AI automation,” history shows our fascination with machines that seem smarter than they are. This post explores how illusions of intelligence—from chess computers to chatbots—reveal both the progress and persistent limitations of artificial intelligence, and why skepticism remains essential.
In 1770, the world’s first chess-playing machine was created. Known as “The Mechanical Turk”, it toured the world for almost 90 years before being destroyed in a fire in 1854. A few years later, it was revealed by the inventor’s son that the machine was a hoax. Instead of being operated by some form of mechanical computer, it was in fact a man sitting inside a box playing chess.
With the benefit of hindsight, this should have been obvious to everyone at the time, but the allure of seemingly impossible technology continues to blind us today. Amazon Fresh’s “Just Walk Out” technology, which appeared to use AI to track shoppers automatically, relied heavily on human reviewers in India to process transactions. Similarly, Builder.ai promised automated code generation but employed teams of human developers behind the scenes. Like the chess-playing automation of centuries past, these modern “AI Turks” demonstrate how easily we can be deceived by the promise of technological magic.
As we move into the modern era, chess computers have become a useful benchmark for measuring technological progress. The turning point came in 1996 when IBM’s Deep Blue managed to win 2 out of 6 games against World Champion Garry Kasparov. The following year, an improved Deep Blue won the rematch 3.5 to 2.5, marking the end of competitive human-versus-computer chess. The gap has only widened since then. The processing power that IBM needed an entire room to house in 1997 now fits into everyday devices. Any computer, smartphone or even smart appliance can now outplay the world’s best human players. Even the great Magnus Carlsen, who held the world number one ranking for over a decade, has said his iPhone consistently beats him at chess.
Chess makes an excellent benchmark for technological progress due to several key factors. For this article, we’ll focus on four main advantages:
Chess also benefits from a remarkably efficient notation system. An entire game can be condensed into a single paragraph that captures every move. Take the decisive final game from the 1997 Deep Blue versus Kasparov match:
1.e4 c6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 dxe4 4.Nxe4 Nd7 5.Ng5 Ngf6 6.Bd3 e6 7.N1f3 h6 8.Nxe6 Qe7 9.0-0 fxe6 10.Bg6+ Kd8 11.Bf4 b5 12.a4 Bb7 13.Re1 Nd5 14.Bg3 Kc8 15.axb5 cxb5 16.Qd3 Bc6 17.Bf5 exf5 18.Rxe7 Bxe7 19.c4 1–0 (Resignation)
You don’t need to visualise the board position, but loading this notation into any chess program reveals how the game unfolded. Modern chess engines show that when Kasparov resigned, he was trailing by approximately 5.1 pawns’ worth of material and positional advantage. This was a crushing disadvantage that the 1997-era computers had correctly identified.
Deep Blue was a specialised computer designed for a single purpose: winning games of chess. Over the decades that followed, chess algorithms became more efficient whilst computational power increased dramatically. We eventually reached the point where, as mentioned before, an iPhone can defeat the world number one chess player at the very game that earns him millions.
When ChatGPT was released in November 2022, after spending a week recreating rap songs in the style of Shakespeare, the internet quickly discovered something interesting. ChatGPT was terrible at chess. Despite chess being the perfect game for a computer, and despite millions of chess games being part of its training data, ChatGPT failed at a fundamental level. The AI couldn’t follow basic rules, often creating new pieces from thin air or jumping over defences to capture pieces illegally. Its strategic play was equally poor, regularly leaving queens undefended for easy capture.
This reveals a fundamental limitation: despite their impressive language capabilities, Large Language Models lack basic logical reasoning. They cannot consistently follow rule-based systems or systematically evaluate multiple options. Remarkably, despite being trained on vastly more data and computational power than any previous AI system, LLMs struggle with logical problems that were solved decades ago by much simpler algorithms.
Having limitations within a system is perfectly acceptable. I don’t expect Excel to help me edit videos, nor do I use After Effects for expense tracking. The problem with LLMs isn’t that they have limitations, but that the companies promoting them oversell their capabilities whilst the models themselves confidently attempt tasks they cannot actually perform.
I tested this by playing chess against Claude Sonnet 4. The model broke the rules within 2 moves by making an illegal bishop move, then from move 8 onwards kept using a queen to capture my pieces despite the fact that I had already captured that queen. When I tried Claude Opus 4.1, another model from the same company, it performed better initially but still eventually violated the rules later in the game.
Some developers have achieved better results by essentially rebuilding chess logic through prompting. This involves re-stating the complete board position after every move and explicitly listing legal moves for the model to choose from. But this isn’t the LLM playing chess independently; it’s the human prompt engineer providing extensive scaffolding at every step. Without this constant intervention, the underlying model still cannot maintain basic game state, such as remembering which pieces remain on the board.
The most dangerous aspect isn’t that these tools fail; it’s that they fail whilst appearing successful. A calculator that occasionally returns 2+2=5 would be quickly discarded. But wrap that same error in an eloquent explanation about mathematical theory, and people might question their own understanding rather than the tool’s accuracy. The Mechanical Turk fooled audiences because they wanted to believe in the magic. Today’s AI LLMs can fool us because they speak with such conviction that we assume competence.
This confident incorrectness has already caused real problems. Multiple US newspapers published AI-generated “Summer reading lists for 2025” that included entirely fictional books with plausible-sounding titles and authors. The articles read professionally, referenced current literary trends, and seemed thoroughly researched. Only when readers tried to purchase these non-existent books did the fabrication become apparent.
The lesson isn’t to avoid these tools entirely, but to understand their proper role. LLMs excel at reviewing and refining existing content, catching grammatical errors, suggesting alternative phrasings, and identifying inconsistencies in documents. They’re powerful assistants for discrete, well-defined tasks where their output can be easily verified. But when asked to build systems, maintain logical consistency across complex problems, or generate factual information without verification, they become unreliable narrators of their own limitations. The tools work best when we use them to check our work, not when we’re checking theirs.
As part of ADLIB‘s ‘Design for All‘ series, they speak with Martin Underhill, a digital accessibility consultant with a background in user experience design and frontend development. Until recently Martin was Accessibility Lead at Sage, a FTSE 100 company where he where he built a thriving accessibility discipline from scratch.
Here he shares how accessibility became central to his career, how he promotes inclusive design at scale, and practical tools that build empathy and capability across teams.
My name is Martin Underhill and I am a digital accessibility consultant. I help organisations embed accessibility in their teams, products, and processes so it becomes a lasting part of how they work.
I’ve just finished up as Accessibility Lead at Sage, where I spent five years working with about 11,000 colleagues across 23 countries and more than 40 flagship products, as well as internal platforms and digital communications. I led a team of six, spanning auditing, design focused accessibility, code specialists, community engagement, and generalist support.
I started my career as a freelance designer and frontend developer, and I quickly learned to simplify the user interface so I could deliver on time and give clients value; in doing this, I improved the overall user experience. That habit of starting with a minimal viable design before adding complexity led me naturally toward accessibility.
Later, as an interaction designer in UK government, I helped teams meet WCAG 2.1 AA. I worked from accessibility audit reports, coached developers to write more semantic markup, and demonstrated screen reader use. That is where my design and frontend skills came together and set my path in accessibility.
Inclusion sits at the centre of everything I do; accessibility is part of inclusion, but my goal is broader. I want everyone to feel they can engage with accessibility, even when they’re unsure or resistant. The door stays open because inclusive products are in the best interest of every user.
At Sage, my role was as an internal consultancy across many product teams and disciplines, including design, development, content, QA, product ownership, and project management; that approach informs how I work with clients now.
Because our core team was small we grew a network of Accessibility Champions and a wider community. We ran:
A recurring challenge is misconception and fear. People often worry about saying the wrong thing or think accessibility is brand new and impossibly complex. My approach has been to focus on a welcoming culture where questions are safe and mistakes are part of the learning process. If someone uses unhelpful language, for example “people suffer from disabilities,” I follow up privately and tactfully and introduce the social model of disability, explaining that people experience barriers created by poor design, not by their impairment. But I also think it is important not to write someone off just because they start from a problematic position.
If we want an inclusive culture in the broadest sense, that means including people we disagree with, even those who might initially be dismissive or ableist. Often, those people are worth talking to the most. You do not change minds by shunning people, you change them through conversation, respect, and showing them real world examples of barriers and solutions. Some of our strongest allies began as sceptics, and seeing that transformation is one of the most rewarding parts of my job.
During my time at Sage, we introduced Empathy Labs to give people a safe and structured way to understand different experiences. Labs included visual impairment goggles, motor impairment gloves, and software based colour vision simulations such as red green colour blindness. These sessions could have been controversial if they trivialise disability, so we were sure to frame them carefully; the purpose was to understand barriers and improve design.
For this year’s GAAD our Champions network ran a day of Empathy Labs across seven or eight offices, including Newcastle, Dublin, London, Manchester, Barcelona, and another office just outside Barcelona. We invested in simulation kit and licenses for all offices. Getting them shipped into Europe, even to Dublin, was surprisingly hard, but worth the effort. Engagement jumps after these sessions and we see membership rise in our channels and groups. Champions can now mobilise labs for next year’s GAAD and for awareness moments such as International Day of Persons with Disabilities and Purple Tuesday.
That experience showed me how powerful empathy exercises can be when they’re framed correctly, and it’s something I now draw on when helping clients build their own awareness activities.
I learn best by doing. I use CodePen to write small HTML examples, then run a screen reader to check whether what I hear matches what I see. Books, articles, talks, and conference sessions are valuable, but hands on learning sticks. An at home empathy lab, even a simple one, helps you build real intuition for barriers and better design choices.
Inclusion is about openness. The more you engage people, through empathy exercises, hands-on testing, or conversation, the more they’ll want to be part of the solution. That’s when accessibility stops being “someone else’s job” and becomes part of the culture; something I’ve seen in government, at Sage, and now in my consultancy work.
ADLIB’s Accessible Design Resources
Following the insightful recommendations from our Design For All participants, we’ve curated an extensive collection of tools, guides, articles, books, blogs, and videos. This resource is specifically designed to support accessibility and inclusion specialists at every stage of their journey.
View Accessible Design Resources
This blog previously appeared on the ADLIB Blog.
Weston College and University Centre Weston are looking to work with creative businesses to shape delivery, curriculum and skills alignment to provide your industry with a talented and work ready future workforce.
Current courses delivered by us include:
Please join us at one of our events (you can find them all here) and have your say! https://forms.office.com/e/0T1Z42Ey2V
UK digital agency, Torchbox, delivers major website transformation focused on environmental responsibility and inclusive design
Bristol, UK – 14th October 2025 – Torchbox, the digital agency behind open source content management system Wagtail, has developed a new website for World Wildlife Fund-US that demonstrates how sustainable web development practices can work hand-in-hand with improved user experience.
The project helps one of the United States’ leading conservation organisations share its critical conservation message with its nearly 10 million annual users by rebuilding its digital platform.
“Working with a conservation organisation like WWF-US meant sustainability couldn’t just be a talking point, it had to be built into every technical decision,” said Gabi Mamon, Client Partner, Torchbox. “We’ve created a platform that performs better whilst reducing its environmental impact through thoughtful technical choices at every level.”
The new platform runs on Cloudflare’s renewable energy infrastructure and employs modern web development practices, including optimised image formats, efficient content delivery networks using caching to serve all content. These improvements deliver faster page loads whilst reducing the data transfer required for the site’s 30 million annual pageviews.
Accessibility features are integrated throughout the platform, including enhanced keyboard navigation, improved colour contrast, proper semantic markup, and screen reader compatibility. The rebuild also involved thoughtfully reorganising 6,000 pages of conservation content to create clearer user journeys.
“Our website is where millions of people come to learn about global conservation and how it helps both people and nature thrive,” said WWF-US Vice President of Digital Projects Diane Querey. “It’s important that it welcomes users in a way that highlights the important role nature plays in all our lives while conveying the urgency and importance of our mission.”
The project required tight deadline management, with Torchbox working closely with WWF-US’s internal team to migrate and reorganise content whilst building new functionality.
For WWF-US, the new platform provides a foundation for long-term digital growth. The successful delivery demonstrates Torchbox’s capability to meet the complex requirements of large international charities working under demanding timescales.
Visit the new site at https://www.worldwildlife.org/
Every autumn, the air shifts. Shadows stretch, lights glow earlier, and people start hungering for something beyond routine. They want meaning, magic, and connection…a story they can step into.
That’s why seasonal immersive events aren’t just popular; they’re unstoppable. Each year, they grow bigger, bolder, more ambitious, because they speak to something universal, our need to feel part of something shared, fleeting, and extraordinary.
And the truth is, the spaces that haven’t embraced that yet are already behind.
This isn’t about pumpkins and fairy lights. It’s about transformation and turning your existing space into a living, breathing story that people can feel in their bones.
The public appetite for immersive experiences has exploded. Seasonal events are selling out months in advance, driving new audiences, and dominating social feeds. People aren’t just attending, they’re participating. They’re hungry for connection, emotion, and atmosphere and they’re willing to travel and spend for it.
And here’s the thing: the places that already have character, story, or natural atmosphere, the ones sitting dark for half the year, are the ones that often might be the perfect venue.
Seasonal immersive programming can turn a quiet month into a sell-out. It can reframe how a space is seen, pull in new audiences, and create stories that live far beyond the season itself and build brand new audiences.
So the question isn’t should you do a seasonal immersive event. It’s why aren’t you already doing one?
Immersive design is no longer just for purpose-built attractions. It’s the future of how people experience the world around them. Every space has the potential to hold story.
Seasonal events give you a perfect excuse to unlock that, to reveal another layer of your space and make people fall in love with it all over again.
It’s not about building something new. It’s about seeing what you already have differently.
The right lighting design can make the familiar feel mythic. A single scent cue can shift memory. A piece of sound can transport a visitor before they even realise what’s happening.
This is where transformation starts, not with scale, but with imagination.
Emotion is built in.
Halloween and Christmas already carry universal feelings: fear, joy, nostalgia, hope. Immersive storytelling amplifies them.
They drive visibility. They’re PR gold, visual content magnets, and community anchors.
They make financial sense, one strong seasonal programme can sustain engagement through your quieter months.
These events are not side projects, they are cultural touchpoints, powerful, repeatable frameworks that keep audiences coming back year after year.
They create loyalty, seasonal traditions make people return.
“We do this every year” is the strongest possible brand statement there is.
Right now, the market is wide open. Audiences are ready. The appetite is proven. Technology and design tools are accessible. The question is who will seize the moment. and who will let it pass?
Spaces that act now will set the benchmark. Those that wait will be catching up.
Seasonal immersive events are no longer a luxury; they’re the smartest creative and commercial move you can make.
The best seasonal immersive events don’t rely on gimmicks or budget. They rely on intention.
They have a clear emotional journey.
They use their environment as part of the story.
They surprise people, not just entertain them.
They end on a note that lingers.
Audiences don’t remember everything they saw. They remember how it made them feel.
And that feeling, if designed well it can shape how they see your space forever!
At Immersive Ideas, we don’t do cookie-cutter Christmas lights or predictable Halloween thrills. We design experiences that transform space into story. Our work blends psychology, design, and emotion to create worlds that connect deeply, memorable, meaningful, and made for your audience.
Wondering if your space has potential? This is the moment to unlock it.
Even if you’re only exploring what might be possible, let’s start the conversation and see where it leads?
Worried about timeframe? Budget? Don’t be. Already this year our clients are testing the waters, preparing the ground work now for going big next year.
Let’s have a chat, reach out at [email protected]
Together, we can shape the kind of seasonal experience people will still be talking about long after the lights go down!
The Royal Navy needed recruits. But the old playbook wasn’t working on Gen Z.
The Royal Navy’s success depends on recruiting thousands of 16–24-year-olds each year. But Gen Z’s changing expectations and behaviours were making that target more elusive than ever. Digital-first, aesthetically driven and authenticity-focused, this generation demanded an experience that a bloated and unfocused website couldn’t deliver.
The mission was clear: engineer a user-centred experience that inspired the next generation to get onboard. Alongside the client, we mapped a watertight site strategy based on doing fewer things better.
Success starts with understanding your audience. From our deep audience research, we knew half of Gen Z valued content they can’t get anywhere else. They’re less driven by patriotism than previous generations. They need to see themselves in the action.
Working closely with experts at the Navy, we defined benefits that few others could offer, such as on-the-job qualifications, seeing new horizons, and world-class equipment. Through rapid prototyping and continuous testing, we put these in front of potential recruits to shape the experience around their needs and expectations.
A digital brand refresh required bold decisions, including using a monochrome logo, a new font sharing angular characteristics with modern ships, and colours drawn from real-world naval touchpoints such as radar screens.
Content was also reimagined for Gen Z, including Stories – a new, bite-sized mobile-first format providing an outlet for unvarnished, real-life insights. It answers Gen Z’s most human concerns like ‘What’s a typical day like?’ and ‘Will I fit in?’
A new technical architecture delivered flexibility, scalability and military-grade security. The process involved migrating to Sitecore Managed Cloud – possible because of our experience with strict security requirements. Complete with headless content delivery and composable page composition, the Royal Navy can now meet short-term goals and long-term ambitions. And as Gen Z’s needs evolve, we can reshape the experience to match.
The impact? Immediate. The new experience naturally filtered candidates, increasing qualified applications while reducing ineligible ones. Industry validation followed, with 11 awards including a Webby, a Lovie and the Digital Impact Awards Grand Prix.
This wasn’t just a website redesign. It was a new blueprint for digital-first recruitment. By putting authentic experience at the heart of every decision, we created a five-star experience connecting with a new generation – on their terms.
From a structural perspective, success might look like this: smooth client onboarding, a fully scoped project, clear timelines, and budgets securely locked in.
Sounds like a recipe for success? But, here’s the catch — even with all these components in place, projects can still derail from time to time.
It’s rarely the project process or workflow tools that fail (especially with AI and automation accelerating efficiency). More often than not, it’s the human side, such as communication gaps, mismatched expectations, or even rising frustrations that throw things off track.
That’s why emotional intelligence and soft skills are essential to project management alongside your planning, processes and workflows. Examples such as communication, empathy, adaptability and self-awareness provide the glue that holds projects together, especially when deadlines loom and pressure rises.
In our experience, projects succeed because of the tools we use, and even more so because of how well we connect with clients, stakeholders, and teams, while staying aligned on the outcomes that matter.
Emotional intelligence isn’t just a buzzword, it’s a practical skill set that helps project managers deliver stronger outcomes for both teams and clients.
Here are a few ways emotional intelligence shows up in day-to-day project management:
For small businesses and creative agencies, where teams often juggle multiple priorities, these skills make all the difference. Strong emotional intelligence leads to stronger collaboration, clearer communication, and ultimately, better project outcomes.
Now that you’re aware of emotional intelligence, here are a few soft skills that complement it, providing further clarity and structure across the project cycle:
Soft skills like these may seem small, but in practice, they can determine how projects feel, and how successful they become.
To conclude, projects don’t succeed because of perfectly polished timelines or automated tools. They succeed because of the people involved — from project managers and internal teams to contractors, stakeholders, and clients.
Soft skills and emotional intelligence aren’t just extras; they are the foundation of clear communication, resilient teams, and smoother project delivery.
That’s the core of what we do at Tell ’em Mo: combining both skill sets to deliver people-first project management that creates clarity and structure, so businesses, creatives, and founders can thrive and hit their goals.
Need help with an upcoming project this Autumn/Winter? Let’s have a chat about what you need and how we can support you.
Bristol-based Burleigh Design, founded in 1895, set for a brand new era as directors eye growth following changes at the top of this 130-year-old firm
A new leadership team has taken charge at Bristol’s oldest commercial graphic design agency.
The Bristol-based Burleigh Design agency is set for a new era following co-owner Greg Corrigan’s retirement with Jonathon Galvin-Wright joining forces with co-owner director Fraser Ebbs at the helm.
They have pledged to take the Leigh Court Business Centre-headquartered business forward by building on Burleigh Design’s rich heritage which stretches back to 1895 when it was first established as a family firm of designers and printers based in Park Row.
Corrigan’s move away from the business signals a new beginning for Burleigh Design because he had been a fifth-generation member of the same family to have formed part of the senior team.
That tradition is now set to change as a new management team take the reins with Galvin-Wright coming into the business as a director alongside Ebbs who has led Burleigh Design since 2012 when it merged with his Portishead Press enterprise.
Galvin-Wright said: “I’m proud to have joined Fraser in a leadership role as a director of Burleigh Design which is one of those brilliant, historic businesses which make the Bristol business community so special.
“Burleigh Design’s status as the oldest design agency in town and to have been continuously serving local businesses since 1895, says a lot about the way we like to do business which is based on trust and great relationships.
“Burleigh Design has the richest of histories so there’s a lot to live up to but I’m relishing my new role and really looking forward to working with Fraser to make sure the business keeps going from strength to strength.”
The new management team have promised to stick to the principles that have ensured Burleigh Design has stood test of time.
“In a way we’re going back to the future because we will follow the traditions that have ensured Burleigh Design has thrived over the years.” Ebbs added.
“Everything we do will continue to be based around clients, evolving our own design services around their business needs, and our business-led design philosophy will ensure our design is both commercially fit for purpose and benefits the bottom line.”
The two Burleigh Design Directors have recently conducted a re-brand and are now set to extend the scope of its work.
Galvin-Wright says, “We like to see ourselves as a bunch of ‘business creatives’ and our senior and experienced team will always look at brand and design challenges from a business perspective first and foremost.
“We have earned a stellar reputation for our ability to fulfil hard-working design needs across brand, graphic design, content and marketing activation in industrial, commercial, corporate and manufacturing markets and that won’t change, although we have also always worked within the charity and edication sectors too.”
Bidding farewell to the company, Corrigan said: “Burleigh Design could not be in better hands and both Fraser and Jonnie’s expertise and experience will make sure the business prospers so these are exciting times which will be full of new opportunities.
“Burleigh Design has a proud place in the South West business community which is a real hotbed of entrepreneurial talent and I’m looking forward to watching from afar in retirement as the new era takes shape and Burleigh grows.”
Burleigh Design clients include air conditioning manufacturers Daikin, engineering conglomerate Avon Group, Smith Brothers Stores – the largest air-conditioning merchants in the country – as well as charities and professional services companies including Penny Brohn and Cushman & Wakefield.
For further information visit the Burleigh Design website: https://burleighcreate.co.uk
Written by Tony Allen, this article has previously appeared on the ADLIB Blog.
As part of ADLIB’s series ‘Design for Change’ they caught up with Ken Day-Night, Founder & AI Creator at Create Studio AI.
This blog explores how AI is transforming creative workflows, featuring insights from a design leader who’s helping creators and small businesses harness emerging tools to scale storytelling, boost experimentation, and redefine the future of design.
I’ve spent most of my career in the creative industries. Starting in architectural visualisation, where I worked on high-profile developments, translating complex designs into compelling visual narratives. More recently, I’ve shifted into the world of AI, exploring how creative professionals can leverage technology to scale storytelling and content creation. My focus now is helping creators, entrepreneurs, and small businesses use AI to produce high-quality visuals, video, and copy without the need for huge teams or resources.
AI has reshaped how we approach almost every stage of the creative process. Where we used to spend hours on concepting, drafting, or rendering, AI now accelerates these steps, giving us more time to focus on strategy and refinement. We regularly use tools for image generation, video editing, voiceovers, and automated copywriting. One strategy that’s worked well is thinking of AI as a rapid prototyping partner, producing fast iterations so we can explore more creative directions before locking in decisions. It’s improved speed, quality, and creative experimentation across the board.
The biggest challenge is rethinking how we value creativity. It’s easy to fall into the trap of using AI to churn out generic work, but the real opportunity is using it to push creativity further. Generating more ideas, testing more directions, and reducing repetitive tasks. AI has made it possible to work leaner without sacrificing quality, which is a huge advantage in today’s fast-moving creative landscape. The key challenge remains balance: ensuring that AI enhances creative thinking, rather than replacing it.
Definitely. I look for curiosity over credentials. People who are willing to explore new tools, adapt quickly, and experiment fearlessly stand out. Traditional technical skills are still valuable, but mindset is becoming more important, especially comfort with ambiguity and an ability to guide AI tools toward creative goals. Prompting skills, a good design eye, and the ability to judge and refine AI output are crucial now. Essentially, creative thinking remains the superpower, but it’s paired with the ability to harness and direct AI effectively.
I’m always following the fast-moving creator economy, especially where it intersects with AI. Communities around Midjourney, Veo, Flux, and grassroots indie creators on X (Twitter) and even LinkedIn, are constant sources of fresh ideas and use cases. I’m particularly interested in multi-modal AI, where visuals, audio, and text are seamlessly integrated, causing an explosion of short-form content. It’s clear that AI is lowering the barriers for creators, making high-quality content achievable for almost anyone.
Experiment without fear. AI is moving so fast that the only way to stay relevant is to engage with it directly. Test tools, run projects, and see what works for you. Don’t wait for the perfect tool or workflow; the learning happens through use. But at the same time, keep your creative judgement sharp. The value you bring is in taste (knowing what’s good), what’s impactful, and how to guide AI to help achieve that.
Beyond AI creativity, the rise of no-code platforms has been game-changing. It’s given creative professionals the ability to launch products, build websites, and test business ideas without relying on developers. That shift from being solely a designer to becoming a creator or entrepreneur, has changed how I see design itself. It’s no longer just about visuals, but about using design thinking to solve problems end-to-end, from concept to execution, with AI and no-code unlocking speed and scale like never before.
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