When I am not working on Future Brief Club, I am usually collaborating with the team at Wizardly as an art director or building new skills through The Design Gym, which has become one of my favorite places to learn.

Outside the digital world, I am very much in my return to craft era. I am learning to sew my own clothes, make jewelry, knit, crochet, work with clay, paint, and basically try anything that gets me away from a screen. These projects help me reset so I can come back to my work with a clearer mind instead of the burnout that comes from being online too much.

I enjoy the team I get to work with, and I finally found the type of design work that feels right after years of searching. Most of my work revolves around brand consistency, building websites, shaping user experiences, adding motion where it makes sense, and leaning into strategy. I am also exploring how AI fits into both our internal workflows and client work in a way that supports creativity rather than replaces it.

I recently shared a full breakdown of my toolkit in the article Navigating the Creative Toolkit Overload, Here is the short version.

Figma is where everything starts. It is where I brainstorm, explore ideas, and build early directions before anything gets moved into a more rigid tool like Powerpoint or Google slides for deck projects.

Illustrator is still part of my workflow, but I am testing Affinity to see what it can replace.

I use Jitter most of the time and Lottie Labs for certain animations. There’s a few different ways to use these tools when collaborating with developers that I covered in How to Use Jitter to Communicate with Developers.

GPT is my primary tool. I like having one main system instead of jumping between a dozen apps. For image generation, I still use Midjourney when the project calls for it. I am also excited for Figma Weave and the node based image and video generation that is coming.

For motion design project, the biggest time saver is doing most of the early planning in Figma. My motion skills are something I am actively building, and I learned quickly that it is much easier to make big revisions in Figma than inside Jitter. If the project is story driven, I outline the entire storyboard in Figma. Once the client approves the direction, I move everything into Jitter with the plugin and set it up cleanly so revisions are manageable.

For AI image or video generation, I separate my threads. I keep one thread for shaping the creative direction and another for testing prompts. It keeps GPT from picking up details it should not and makes the process way smoother. Even when I move over to Midjourney, I still start in GPT so I have a clear direction before generating anything.

It has taken me a while to land in a healthier place with AI and it’s impact on our industry. A lot of what gets shared online is fear driven, and it’s loud. There were plenty of times when the fear was controlling my decisions, and it felt paralyzing.

Some are choosing to go with the flow, while others are pushing back. For me, I’m choosing to lean in. Learning these tools feels better than avoiding them. It gives me a sense of direction instead of feeling stuck. I am also fortunate to work with a team that has a calm, balanced approach. AI never leads our work. We do. It supports the process, helps us explore ideas faster, and helps us work within the limits of real projects.

Our clients in health tech and biotech are also using AI in ways that feel useful and hopeful. Because they already integrate it, they understand our approach and trust that the creative decisions still comes from us.

I feel more settled now than I did a year ago. And yes, I have a plan B if design ever shifts more than expected, but it is not coming from panic. It is coming from the slower, hands on creative work, outside of the digital space, I already enjoy and know I want more of eventually.

I think AI will continue to take over more of our workflow, but I do not see it replacing creatives completely in the next few years. Maybe we will see smaller teams or roles where one person leans into a broader set of skills, but that person still needs a strong foundation in whichever parts they take over: creative, copywriting, development…etc.

AI can learn information, but it cannot replicate the lived experience we bring into our work. Things like interpreting feedback, guiding clients, understanding cultural context, and applying our own perspective. Those skills come from real projects and real people.

I do think people entering the field will have to build that foundation faster. New roles will also emerge as the landscape shifts, and that could lead to exciting things!

Predicting longer than a year is tough, but if I imagine where things could go, I hope we move toward more natural collaboration with AI. Less prompt wrestling and more directing. Being able to expand brand assets faster. Being able to guide motion tools with more control instead of watching them decide things on their own. More creative direction. Less technical friction.

I also think we are in a phase where brands feel pressure to use AI because it signals innovation. My hunch is that we will eventually crave more human touch again or at least a clearer blend of human and AI.

For now, the best approach is to stay curious, pay attention to what is actually sticking, and keep adapting without letting the noise dictate the narrative.