A designer’s guide to engaging with AI
Jessica Hische on informed critique, staying curious, and why community matters more than ever
Talk to a designer about AI and you’ll likely find them in one of two camps: enthusiastic early adopters, or principled abstainers opting out on ethical, environmental, or existential concerns. Some linger in the middle—curious but cautious. But most? They’ve picked a side.
That’s why I noticed when Jessica Hische, someone whose work feels almost definitionally non-automatable, began sharing AI explorations. Her lettering is studied, referenced, imitated. She’s built a career on intentionality. She’s authored books, runs a brick-and-mortar, and built platforms for other creatives. If anyone could justifiably sit this out, it’s her. Instead, she leaned in.
Understanding is not endorsement
“I don’t think there’s ever been a moment in history where it’s made more sense to not learn about something than it has to learn about something,” Jessica tells me. Her stance: You can’t critique what you don’t understand.
Some creatives boycott the tools entirely. Jessica gets the impulse, but believes disengagement doesn’t absolve you from responsibility; it just weakens your ability to shape the outcome. “You have to understand how everything works to give feedback,” she says.
Her advice: Get curious. Try to break the models. Feed them your work, your friend’s, and see what happens. Not to endorse, but to develop the fluency to push back, clearly and credibly.
She remains deeply skeptical of how training data is sourced, especially when companies hide behind legality. Many firms license large stock libraries to train their models, sidestepping consent in the process. “Just because it’s legal doesn’t make it ethical,” she says. “In no universe did those artists ever imagine that this would be the use case.” For those who rely on licensing for income, they’re left with a false choice: opt-in or lose out on that income entirely.
Knowledge is leverage
This goes beyond ethics. If you can’t explain how your process differs from what can be generated with a prompt, you’re not just at a creative disadvantage, but a commercial one. “If a client tells you they got 75 images from another artist in two days using AI, and you’re quoting three weeks for one, you need to explain the difference,” she says.
When copycats started mimicking Jessica’s style years ago, what frustrated her most weren’t the imitators, but the art directors who couldn’t tell the difference. “My work was better, but the people hiring couldn’t tell and didn’t care.” Now, the tools are better and the stakes are higher. If those doing the hiring can’t distinguish between AI and artist, we’re not just talking about software. We’re talking about systems: who profits, who’s displaced, and what gets lost in the process.
Use the tool, don’t let it use you
Jessica’s approach to AI is purposeful, bounded. She’s used Claude as a “superpowered thesaurus,” applied texture to lettering with Stable Diffusion. “I’m not trying to have AI do all the work,” she says. “But I do want to see what it can do to push a piece forward, especially when the alternative is shelving the idea.”
The goal isn’t scale; it’s momentum. But even as she experiments, she’s clear about what she doesn’t want AI to become in her practice. “All of this AI stuff is fun to experiment with, but I do not want that to be my story. I don’t want that to be the work that takes up the majority of this.”
The 10% AI can’t touch
“AI is like 80% of a good designer,” Jessica says. “It can’t take it over the finish line, not if you actually care and have a high level of craft and taste.” Still, she warns against complacency. “It’s dangerous to say it will always be obvious when something was made using AI. That’s just not true.”
In a world awash with AI, Jessica believes the story behind the work is what will matter most. “It’s not just about the object,” she says. “It’s about proof of process.” What began as a natural evolution in her practice now feels like a moat: nuanced systems, custom lettering, brand identities steeped in care and intention. “The more you refine a design, the more you strip out the hand behind it,” she says. “If you want people to feel something, you need to let them see you.” That means showing your steps, working analog, creating physical artifacts—anything that reasserts your presence in the work.
In her practice, that has also meant embracing imperfection, especially early on. “When you don’t know the rules, you make weird decisions,” she says. “And those weird decisions lead to new ideas.”
She worries that the next generation of creatives might lose out on these accidents altogether. “There’s a fun, weird serendipity that you only get from not knowing, from putting weird pieces together and seeing what happens.” She compares it to arguing with friends about a word’s meaning, refusing to look it up. “If you skip straight to the answer every time, you miss the process that gets you to something original.”
Build the body of work you want to look back on
When Jessica held the latest edition of her book in her hands, it sparked a question: What kind of work do I want to fill the next one? “When your time starts to become compressed, both in a daily and weekly way, but also in a lifespan way, you start really thinking, “What are the things that I want to make that are going to be the permanent record of who I was as an artist?’”
Her early sketchbooks were full of physical marks, proof of her presence. These days, she sketches mostly on iPad. “If someone stole my iPad and the cloud didn’t sync, it’d all be gone,” she says. “My old sketchbooks could outlive me.” AI might help with speed or ideation, but she doesn’t want it dominating her legacy. She’s curating for the long term. “Even if the output is good, I don’t want that to be the work I’m remembered for. I want the work I make today to hold value. I want it to last.”
What we lose when we work alone
One of the subtler threats of AI, Jessica warns, is how it collapses collaboration. In the traditional agency model, creative work is layered: You have an executive creative director, an art director, an illustrator, a type designer. AI compresses that stack. If you’re a smart person with the right prompts, you can do it all yourself, but that efficiency comes at a cost.
“The more people you remove, the more perspectives you lose,” Jessica says. Good collaboration pushes your work in directions you might not take alone. “If we don’t push back against efficiency at all costs,” she says, “AI won’t just change how we work, it’ll change who gets to work and what that work can become.”
The margins matter most
As AI reshapes the creative landscape, Jessica sees opportunity in the margins—in the spaces where human touch remains irreplaceable. In a culture obsessed with reach, she advocates for depth.
“You don’t have to shoot for the moon,” she says. “Just impact your block. Your neighborhood. Your corner of the internet.” Her advice is to stay curious, but also rooted. Understand the tools without losing your taste. Remember that the future isn’t just something that happens; it’s something we build, in conversation with one another.
And if you’re overwhelmed? She offers this: “If that negativity does not motivate you towards doing something positive, then it’s not worth engaging with.”
There’s no going back. But there is going forward—deliberately, collaboratively, and with the human hand visible.
—Carly
“When you don’t know the rules, you make weird decisions,” she says. “And those weird decisions lead to new ideas.”
sooo true!!
Simply wonderful.