Transparency Is the New Skill — and Other Monday Truths

Here's an uncomfortable question to start your week: if a studio used AI to make the art that sold you on a game, but every pixel in the actual game was hand-crafted — would you care?

Apparently, a lot of people would. And that tension tells us something important about where design and AI are heading right now.

The Crimson Desert Fallout

Pearl Abyss's upcoming game Crimson Desert is at the centre of a proper dust-up. Players have accused the studio of using AI-generated art in its promotional materials, pointing to telltale visual artefacts — the kind of slightly-off hands and texture smearing that most of us can now spot from across a room.

The community is split. One camp says it doesn't matter if the final in-game assets are made by human artists. The other says using AI art to market a game built on craft traditions is a betrayal.

I find myself somewhere in the middle, but leaning toward the second camp. Here's why.

Promotional art isn't just decoration. It's a promise. It signals what a studio values and how it works. When audiences detect undisclosed AI usage, what they're really reacting to isn't the technology — it's the lack of honesty. And that's a design problem, not a tech problem.

The takeaway for us? Transparency around AI tools isn't optional anymore. It's a reputational issue. If you're using generative AI in your process — even just for early ideation or mockups — be upfront about it. Clients and audiences are getting remarkably good at sniffing it out, and being caught quietly is always worse than being open from the start.

So... Are You Actually Getting More Work?

There's a thread doing the rounds where a designer claims they're getting more work since AI took off, not less. And the responses are fascinating — because the picture is genuinely mixed.

Some designers report that AI-generated output has flooded the market with mediocre work, which has actually made skilled human designers more valuable. Clients who tried the cheap AI route came back wanting someone who could think, not just generate.

Others have lost lower-end production work — the quick mockups, the stock-style illustrations, the templated social assets. That work has evaporated for some, and it's not coming back.

This tracks with what I've been seeing. AI isn't uniformly destroying or creating design jobs. It's reshaping them. The designers who are thriving tend to be the ones who've positioned themselves around judgement, strategy, and taste — the things a model can't reliably deliver. The ones struggling are often those whose work was already close to what AI can automate.

It's not a comfortable message, but it's an honest one. The question isn't whether AI will affect your work. It's whether you're differentiating in ways that matter.

Adobe Wants to Be Your Creator Best Friend

Adobe held its first-ever Creator Live event last week, and the messaging was clear: they're no longer just building for enterprise design teams. They want independent content creators too.

This makes strategic sense. The creator economy is enormous and still growing, and Adobe's been watching Canva, CapCut, and a dozen other tools eat into that space. The event featured hands-on demos and direct creator engagement — less corporate keynote, more community meetup.

What's interesting for us is the subtext. Adobe is betting that AI-powered features will be the bridge between professional tools and creator-friendly simplicity. Whether that means dumbing things down or genuinely making complex tools more accessible remains to be seen. I'm cautiously optimistic but watching closely.

Tool Spotlight: Watching The Scream Slowly Fade

This one's genuinely delightful. A new digital tool can simulate how artworks like Edvard Munch's The Scream will visually degrade over centuries — projecting the effects of light exposure, environmental damage, and pigment decay up to 300 years into the future.

It's built for conservation, but the design applications are immediately obvious. Understanding how colour fades, how materials age, how surfaces change over time — that's relevant to anyone working with physical products, packaging, environmental graphics, or even digital work that references material textures.

It's also a beautiful reminder that AI and simulation tools aren't just about generating new things. Sometimes the most compelling use is understanding what already exists — and what it's becoming.

Your Monday Takeaway

Three things to carry into the week:

  1. Be transparent about your AI usage. The Crimson Desert controversy proves that audiences care more about honesty than perfection. Disclose before you're discovered.
  2. Differentiate on judgement, not output. If your value proposition is speed and volume, AI is your competitor. If it's taste, strategy, and craft — AI is your tool.
  3. Look for AI applications beyond generation. The most interesting uses right now aren't about making new images. They're about understanding, simulating, and preserving.

So basically — it's Monday, AI is still complicated, and the designers who'll do best are the ones who stay honest about what it can and can't do. Including with themselves.