AI tools I use in my design workflow (and what actually worries me)
I've seen that headline so many times I started collecting them. "Goodbye Figma." Yesterday it was erased by Lovable. Today someone's already shipping the Lovable killer. And yet here we are, still opening Figma.
This time might be different, though. I'm not going to pretend we're safe.
Most of us are probably replaceable, and saying otherwise feels dishonest. If we reduce design to a bunch of components in a UI, we're done. But design is where an idea is born, and every decision we make before that idea finally impacts another human. That thread is harder to automate than a Figma file.
Here's what I actually use, where AI helps, and where it doesn't.
The tools
Claude is my main AI tool. When I'm starting a brand project, I'll dump everything I know about the client into a conversation and use it to pressure-test my direction. "Does this positioning make sense for a fintech audience?" or "Give me ten ways to describe this product without using the word 'innovative'." It's like having a sparring partner who never gets tired.
I don't use the output as final copy. I use it to find the gaps in my own thinking.
For image generation, I work with Nanobanana. When I need visual research and inspiration (the kind of browsing that used to be a Pinterest spiral), I use are.na. It's slower and more intentional, which is the point.
I still rely on Adobe. Photoshop, Illustrator, and After Effects. For brand work and motion, the control you get in those tools is just different. Generative AI isn't there yet.
Figma for everything layout and UI. The AI features help with tedious stuff like layer renaming and placeholder text. I'm a bit obsessed with how my files are organized. Every layer named properly, every element in the right group, consistent naming conventions across the whole project. Most clients never see that, but any designer who opens my file after me can actually work with it.
Notion for keeping everything else together. Project notes, client briefs, timelines. The AI features help with summarizing and sorting through notes, but mostly I use it as the one place where nothing gets lost.
Where AI actually helps
The boring parts. The parts that don't require taste.
Generating 50 name variations for a brainstorm. Resizing assets. Writing first-draft alt text (which I then rewrite, because the AI version is always too generic). Summarizing a long email thread from a client so I can find the actual feedback buried in paragraph four.
Color is an interesting one. AI is useful for picking colors, but more in a usability sense than a creative one. Checking contrast ratios, testing accessibility across backgrounds, making sure a palette actually works in context. That's where it saves time. The creative side of color, the part where you're building a mood, that's still mine.
Speed matters for these things. Judgment doesn't. So I let the machine handle it.
Where I draw the line
Logo design is the big one. I've tried generating logos with AI. They look fine for about three seconds. Then you notice the shapes don't relate to each other. There's no grid, no logic behind the curves, no reason the mark looks the way it does. A logo needs to work at 16px favicon size and on a building. AI doesn't think about that because AI doesn't think.
Every logo I deliver is built by hand in Figma, on a grid, with construction lines I can show you.
Typography. I've been doing this for 14 years and I still can't always explain why a pairing works. I just know. I reference Typewolf a lot, which is a better use of time than asking an AI to pick fonts. AI suggestions tend to be the same five combinations everyone already uses, because that's what the training data looks like. If you want to look like every other SaaS landing page, sure, let AI pick your fonts.
And then there's the final brand decisions. At some point someone has to look at three directions on a screen and say "this one, not that one." That requires knowing the market, the competitors, what the founder actually cares about, why the previous rebrand failed. Context that doesn't fit in a prompt.The real question
People keep framing this as "AI vs. no AI" and I think that conversation is already boring. The better question: are you using AI to skip the thinking, or to do more of it?
I use it to clear the busywork so I can spend more time on the decisions that matter. The logo. The colour system. The thing that makes your brand yours and not a template with your name on it.
If you're a founder looking at AI design tools and thinking "this is good enough," I'd push back on that. Good enough gets you something that looks like everyone else. And that's the most expensive branding mistake there is, because you'll pay to redo it in a year.
What actually worries me
Not our industry. What we're doing to work itself.
Work isn't just economic output. It's how we build confidence, develop judgment, find meaning, become someone. Millions of people are losing that, or having it completely reshuffled, and we're treating it like a footnote.
AI is still a work in progress. The gap between what it demos and what it reliably delivers is real. This isn't settled. We're in the middle of it.
Those fake "one shot with AI" posts are frying people's brains. Founders see that and think good design can be done in five minutes now. So they come to designers expecting a proper site, brand, or video basically instantly. That's not how it works. AI can help a lot, sure. But it still can't one-shot great web UI or branding at a real professional level.
The only people getting strong results with AI are people with actual taste, actual skills, and enough patience to babysit the output for hours. AI speeds up some parts of design. It does not make good design instant.
In the meantime, let's respect everyone's work. Collaboration is what drove human evolution this far. Seems worth keeping.
My setup
Figma for everything visual. Claude for thinking, writing, and research. Nanobanana for image generation. Are.na for visual research. Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and After Effects for the heavy creative work. Typewolf for typography reference. Notion for organizing everything else.
The tools change every few months anyway. I used to use ChatGPT, switched to Claude. Used to use Midjourney, don't anymore. What doesn't change is knowing when to stop generating and start designing.
I build brand identities and landing pages in days, not months. If you're working on something and want to talk, book a free 30-minute call or start a project.
