Why AI won’t replace us brand designers

A few weeks ago, I received an interesting email from a fellow designer who asked:

What are the highest-value problems in branding right now?

and

Which problems do you think brands are increasingly willing to pay more than usual to solve?

Now, these are smart questions because understanding the answers is exactly what allows you to charge more, work with better clients, and stop competing with other designers on “affordability”.

See, it really is as simple as this:

Solving high-value problems = working with high-value clients = getting paid a lot of money.

But the reason I think this is interesting today, is because of the times we live in.

With every new AI update, we see people posting “AI just replaced/killed <insert job title>”.

I remember people freaking out when Anthropic launched Claude Design, essentially saying it was the final nail in the coffin for designers.

Funnily enough, it was around the same time I closed one of the biggest brand design projects of my career.

Now, I’m not saying AI won’t replace some people’s jobs at some point. Who knows…

Yuval Noah Harari (author of the book Sapiens) said something that's stayed with me:

Throughout history, humans have been saying that no one knows the future. For the first time, it’s actually true. No one knows what the future will look like.

I know it sounds a bit dystopian, but good news is, AI is not replacing strategic brand designers. Not yet.

That’s why I want to slightly reframe the question I was asked to:

“What problems have I seen brands pay a higher price for, even though cheaper resources like AI are available?”

And in today’s newsletter, I’m going to answer it.

I think AI has shifted where the value sits in branding.

Traditionally, the value came from the designer’s skill and the quality of the output they could achieve (including the ability to manage and take on bigger projects).

Producing something good was genuinely hard, and clients paid for that expertise.

Now, because of AI, business owners can create something that looks reasonably professional in an afternoon, even without any design experience. (Take the phrase “reasonably professional” with a pinch of salt, I know there are still a lot of awful AI logo generators.)

What I’m trying to say is that the floor for “good design” has risen.

Because of that simply making something look good isn’t as valuable as it once was.

The value has moved to what’s always been underneath the craft: the thinking, the direction, the judgment about what a brand should be and who it should speak to.

See, there are 3 overarching problems that high-value clients value more than the final design (and they flow into each other):

#1. Helping businesses understand how they should be positioned

Positioning is about where a brand sits in the market relative to everyone else, and it’s the foundation everything else gets built on.

When a new client comes to me, one of the first things I want to understand is:

• What does this business do, or believe, or stand for, that the others don’t?

• Who else is operating in their space, and what are those brands already owning?

• What’s the gap?

Because if a brand doesn’t have a clear position, the design has nothing to hold onto.

You end up making decisions based on what looks nice rather than what communicates something specific. And “looking nice” is something AI can do in seconds, it’s not a reason for a client to pay you $5,000 or $10,000.

A well-positioned brand gives a potential customer a reason to choose it.

#2. Helping businesses understand how they should be perceived

Once you know where a brand sits in its industry, the next question I ask them is:

when your ideal client lands on your website, sees your packaging, or scrolls past your ad,

what do you need them to feel or believe in that first moment?

And does every visual decision we’re making actually create that feeling?

Take a luxury skincare brand that wants to feel premium and trustworthy. Their founder might love bright, bold colours.

But if their ideal customer is a 40-year-old professional who associates luxury with restraint and calm, then bright and bold is working against the brief, regardless of whether the founder personally loves it.

That’s the perception work.

It’s a conversation with your client, not exactly a “deliverable.” And it’s also one most clients

have never had before, because they’ve never worked with a strategic brand designer.

#3. Translating all that into a creative direction that supports their goals

I think strategy and creative direction are massively underpriced.

Helping a business understand where their brand should go before designing anything is incredibly valuable, yet many clients still see it as an optional extra.

I’d even argue there’s a growing opportunity for designers to offer strategy and creative direction as a standalone consulting service. Sometimes helping a client see the problems and direction their brand should take is just as valuable as executing the design itself.

Think about it.

This is where we make decisions that answers questions like:

• given everything we know about where this brand sits and how it needs to be perceived, what does that mean for the visual identity?

• What logo types, fonts, colours, etc make sense, and why?

• What visual language will consistently attract the right people and repel the wrong ones?

Doing this work allows you to explain to a client exactly why you made a choice, how it’s helping the business, and how it connects back to the foundations you uncovered together.

This is what makes the work feel completely different to anything AI can produce.

Beyond these problems, as a bonus, here are 3 patterns I keep seeing from my inquiries

I want to share these with you, because they should help you make better decisions for your design business.

#1 D2C brands »»> any other business

D2C aka Direct-to-consumer brands (like skincare, food, lifestyle products) have one thing in common.

Their customers make buying decisions based heavily on visual perception.

A customer in a shop or scrolling an online store has no relationship with the founder, no sales call, no conversation. All they have is the packaging, the logo, and about two seconds of attention.

The branding either earns the sale or it doesn’t.

These clients have felt that in their revenue.

They’ve watched a competitor with a sharper identity outsell them on a shelf where the product is almost identical. They don’t need convincing that branding matters, they’ve already lived the cost of getting it wrong.

That’s why they’re willing to invest significantly more than businesses where design sits in the background.

If you’re finding yourself constantly defending your rates, it’s worth looking at who you’re working with, not just what you’re charging.

#2 Clients who come to me after working with other designers end up being my favourite projects

These are brands who have worked with a designer or an agency but still aren’t happy with where their brand has ended up.

I know many designers would see this as a potential red flag (myself included), but I actually think these are some of the most valuable enquiries.

After digging into what happened, the issue is rarely that the client is difficult.

It’s usually that they’ve never experienced strategic branding before.

Often, they’ve worked with people from freelance websites (or even big agencies) who focused on delivering the required assets, but never took the time to uncover the strategic foundations that should be driving those decisions.

Exhibit A:

The client often doesn’t know that’s what’s missing. They just know the branding never felt right.

But once they experience a strategy-first process, they realise this was the missing piece.

#3 COVID-era businesses that have grown but whose branding is stuck in 2021

A lot of businesses launched between 2020 and 2022 with DIY branding.

They had to move fast, budgets were tight, and the priority was just getting started. A Canva logo, a quick colour palette, whatever got them off the ground.

Now, four or five years later, these businesses have grown but the branding hasn’t.

They’ve evolved, their audience has changed and their ambitions are much bigger, but they’re still presenting themselves with branding that was created when they were just starting out.

I’ve seen that a lot of such businesses are beginning to realise that outdated branding isn’t just an aesthetic issue anymore. It’s holding the business back and making it harder to compete with brands that have invested in how they’re perceived.

These clients are arriving ready. They’ve lived with that gap long enough to know it needs fixing.

To sum up…

The highest-value branding problems right now are the ones clients can already feel, but haven’t been able to name.

And it usually boils down to the absence of strategic thinking: about who the brand is for, what it needs to communicate, and whether the visual identity is doing that job.

The designer who can walk into that conversation and name it clearly is the one being approached, instead of being replaced with AI.

That’s where the value is.

Chat soon,

Abi 😊

PS. If you want to learn how to do this work- the positioning, the perception, the creative direction, and charge what it's actually worth, check out Strategic Brand Identity Lab.