Tired of clients treating me like I'm AI

Discussion

Wonder if other designers have been feeling this way, I'd be curious to hear opinions. But my impression is that until recently, graphic design was mysterious to the general public and clients overall trusted designers' vision a bit more. Now I feel like Canva, Pinterest and more notably AI have given the average person the impression that they know better than they do and I'm getting more and more briefs that are written like prompts. In the feedback as well, clients seem to expect me to magic things into existence in a way they didn't do 5 years ago.

Of course there's plenty of good that's come out of these changes and I want to be adaptable, but I'm just seeing a big increase in the 'clueless client who thinks they're an art director' problem, and I'm too often asked to do something that looks like an existing design rather than responding to a brief/problem from the ground up, with all the strategy, research and experimentation it entails. It often leads to design that is incoherent, style over substance etc. I'm seeing an increase in rounds of amends as well, 'do it more like this' and 'add that', which is why I feel like I'm being treated like AI rather than a human worker.

I don't mean to be a cranky old school luddite but I've been feeling a bit deflated, and I'd be interested to hear other designers' perspectives, and how people adapt to this changing landscape.

Posted Dec 1, 2025, 8:20 PM UTC

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