A personal perspective / 2026
What do I think
about AI?
AI is a very fast intern: technically skilled, full of potential, and still in need of real direction.
I’ve been using AI since 2023, when a professor introduced me to prompting in my last year of university. I was fascinated straight away by what it could make visible and how quickly it could open a new direction.
I use it constantly, but not as a shortcut to make something from nothing. I use it to explore, test, and accelerate. It can understand hierarchy, contrast, and white space; what it still struggles with is choosing one specific direction and keeping it consistent.
In practice / Verve
Finding a photograph that doesn’t exist yet.
Verve has a very specific photography language, and finding it in image banks is difficult. AI helps me test and create image directions for mockups, then I adjust every result so it belongs to the brand.
We also use Claude Design while developing presentation decks. It is not the final tool, but it gives the marketing team a strong draft to react to, and then I retouch the slides that need a designer’s eye.
AI can support the process; it cannot decide what the message needs to feel like, who it needs to reach, or which visual detail makes a direction specific rather than generic.
In practice / Restaurant mockups
Visualising a place before it opens.
For a restaurant that had not opened yet, I used AI to create realistic mockups of how the brand could live in the world. The direction, the choices, and the consistency still came from the brand system.
Design is far more than arranging type, images, and vectors. It is finding a visual language that says something to a specific audience. For now, we still need human brains to make work that connects with other humans.
AI changes quickly. What worked six months ago can already feel dated. Curiosity is the useful constant: testing new tools, trying new ways of working, and asking how they can make the work better instead of replacing the thinking behind it.
Use the tool.
Keep the judgment.