AI and My Creative Practice

Artificial intelligence is changing the way we all work, including the creative industry. My general philosophy is simple: AI is great for productivity, not creativity.

When you hire me, you’re hiring me for my experience, judgment, and perspective. AI might support some logistical parts of my process, but the thinking and creative work are mine.

How I use AI

I use AI behind the scenes for practical, non-creative tasks, much like I use search engines, spellcheck, and other productivity tools. That might include organizing or summarizing information, troubleshooting technical problems, refining existing language, or handling administrative tasks.

Used this way, AI lets me keep my time and attention focused where they matter most: strategy, ideas, art direction, and design.

How I don’t use AI

I don’t use AI to generate creative concepts or produce finished design work. My clients are hiring me to think critically about their organization, audience, and goals and to translate that thinking into meaningful creative work. Using an LLM to generate something that looks plausible isn’t a substitute for that process.

I also take client confidentiality seriously. I don’t knowingly upload confidential, sensitive or proprietary client information to public generative AI systems.

If a project specifically calls for generative AI to be incorporated into a deliverable, we’ll discuss and agree upon it in advance. Its use will be intentional and transparent.

What I ask of my clients

Creative collaboration works best when the people involved are actually involved. Please don’t upload my proposals, drafts, source files, or other original work into generative AI systems. Doing so raises intellectual property concerns and removes the work from the strategy and context that shaped it.

I also ask that feedback on creative work come from you, not from an AI tool. You know your organization, audience, goals, history, and brand. I bring expertise in interpreting all of that and translating it into visual and verbal communication. The strength of our collaboration comes from putting those two kinds of human experience together.

I’m designing for your organization and your audience, not for ChatGPT. You don’t need to turn your thoughts into polished creative direction either. “Something about this just isn’t working for me” is a perfectly reasonable place to start. Part of my job is asking the right questions to understand why and find a solution.

I’m more than 20 years into my professional design career. I studied communications design in a competitive, critique-driven program, spent a decade at fast-paced agencies in San Francisco and New York, and have since worked with everyone from early-stage founders and research scientists to nonprofit leaders, healthcare organizations, educators, investors, and executive teams.

In other words, I have a backbone. I’m comfortable navigating candid feedback, strong opinions, difficult conversations, and messy problems. I’d much rather hear what you actually think and work through it together than receive a formulaic critique generated by something that wasn’t part of the process.

AI-generated critique can sound authoritative without knowing the conversations, strategy, constraints, and decisions behind the work. It can contradict itself or introduce recommendations that conflict with decisions we’ve already made, creating tension, confusion, and pulling us away from our goals.

AI shouldn’t become a third art director in the room. Our respective expertise, direct communication, and mutual trust are what make the work successful.

A human creative partnership

AI is here to stay, and I’m interested in where the technology goes next. It’s already improving productivity and access to information, with promising applications in healthcare, communication, research, security, and other fields.

What I’m not interested in is using it to replace the parts of my work that require experience, judgment, curiosity, and human connection. I draw a line when AI replaces creative thinking or undermines authorship, confidentiality, intellectual property, or the relationship between designer and client.

Ultimately, the principle is pretty simple: I want the work we create together to come from us.