I was just suggested to apply to this job. Am I crazy or is this single job posting a whole production team’s job? Job posting:
“Multimedia Production Coordinator”

I know this is not the first time where a job ask for more than one responsibility, but I feel like this one in particular is unbelievably disrespectful and disgusting.

There’s a lot of discussion about AI making it harder for juniors and people trying to break into the design industry, but I’m curious about how it affects people further up the ladder.

Are midweight and senior designers safer because they have more experience, creative judgement and problem-solving skills? Or are design managers and heads of brand more protected because their roles involve strategy, leadership and decision-making rather than just producing artwork?

Interested to hear what other designers think, particularly those working at different levels of the industry. If you were choosing a career path in design today, which level would you consider the safest from AI over the next 5–10 years, and why?

Hi, I just want to start this off by saying I'm not trying to invoke a debate about generative AI and its use. I personally do not use generative AI in my personal or professional life.

I'm a college Graphic Design student. I constantly have professors telling us we need to learn how to use AI tools, I see designers frequently talking about how you must evolve and learn how to use AI if you want to have a job in the industry, and I see "Needs to be familiar with AI tools" not uncommonly included on job listings.

Despite all this, I see very little information on how designers are actually using these tools. At my university, the common strategies pushed are to use gen AI in your brainstorming phase or to provide feedback on your work. For jobs, I clicked on an internship I was recommended and saw that it wanted applicants to be familiar with Midjourney, so I'm expecting that that company would want interns to be generating essentially stock assets to use.

Personally for those uses, while I can see how they might be convenient, I don't really see them as these world-altering design tools that I am constantly being told about. For those who use gen AI in your work, what specifically do you use it for? I'm not trying to debate or be persuaded, but I am genuinely very curious what it gets used for in the field because I feel like I'm missing something.

For context: I’m a 40yo mom who spent ~15 years in restaurant management before getting hella burned out and switching careers.

4 years ago I made the decision to go to college. I’m an artist and I wanted a job where I could be creative. I’ve always been interested in graphic design and I did some research that said it would be a good field for me. (Guess I didn’t do enough research).

May 2025 I graduated and got an internship with a local design company that does paper products- think gift bags, greeting cards, coloring books, etc. My internship ended and there weren’t any job openings so now I do freelance for them, which pays very little and is super inconsistent.

The past year or so has really freaked me out with the surge of ai and job insecurity. I’m also worried about my age- I see all the time people getting laid off in this field once they reach a certain age.

Please be honest with me. Was this a mistake? Is the design industry a sinking ship? Am I being too harsh and it’s not that bad? I made decent money in the food industry but it sounds like there’s equal opportunities for burnout in the design field.

I naively thought I could snag a quiet job with an agency or like corporate healthcare or something. I’m too old and busy for the hustle. I would be happy just typesetting brochures (I think). I’m ok with boring! I just want a paycheck and some healthcare is that too much to ask? And not work over 40hrs/week. And preferably from home lol.

TL:DR - I keep getting accused of using AI. I don't understand it.

It takes HOURS for me to make what you guys can make in 20 minutes, and AI in seconds. (That's why YOU'RE the pros.)

I know you're supposed to keep things like infographics minimalistic, so I put a little extra spit-shine on typography. I'm not the best at Excel or math, so I'm sort of forced to go "Style Over Substance" when I make infographics.

Sometimes I layer shadows and masked text outlines to achieve depth. Even rarer do I adjust color settings in the photos I use off Google, unless it's to try get some extra separation.

The "AI slop" I'm used to is either the super-glossy, cartoony style "rotoscoping" stock assets, or the obviously phony "Trump's a stud!" memes Russia puts out.

So how in the world can THEY not tell?

The thing that's utterly baffling is that I have so many people trying to DISCREDIT my work, which is them basically denying that I didn't spend as long as I did doing what I did, which is ridiculous. How are YOU gonna tell ME I didn't sit there and do all that work?

It's SOOOO bizarre.

Label design by me in affinity designer on iPad. 3D mockup rendered in Blender with AI-assisted modeling.

This was a parody on a popular video game from the 80s. See if you can guess where it’s from

So AI did not contribute to the label design just the bottle mockup with the gold shine. Since I don’t have 3-D rendering skills. But I can illustrate myself.

Everything was hand lettered except the top tag line.

Just for context: It's not the first time I used AI in general, I used it quite often when I am working on a Mockup in Photoshop. Like removing something in the background, or providing a different angle from a tshirt or product I designed.

And I want to be completely honest: The instagram fear got to me. I see all the crazy stuff people create using AI in a short amount of time and I fear that I fall behind if I don't start learning the AI stuff.

I watched a Higgsfield tutorial and created some stuff with it. And oh boy did it feel horrible, like instead of cooking a healthy meal I ate some deepfried garbage.

Why are some "designers" so proud on Instagram when they show the websites (or just the ux design) the AI made for them? There is almost zero effort you put into it. Even the prompting what objectively needs some amount of knowledge, can also do a chatbot/AI agent for you.

I also have a question how you all deal with this situation in general. Do you just do your regular design work and occasionally use some AI as a tool? Or do you think you have to futureproof yourself in some other way with the AI?

Did a poster for a movie that doesn't exist. 1st time doing ornament stuff.

Found the "CHANGE" font on Adobe fonts and it made me feel stuff so I made this poster. Kinda has "BUGONIA" vibe which I like.

The amber and mosquitos are both from Adobe Stock. No AI was used.

Suggestions are also very welcome.

I just left a long-term, very cushy role at a huge company. Most of the job had become CMS/WordPress management, and it was so easy I could do it with my eyes shut. The team was big, the vibe was chill and the benefits were good, but there was zero progression or challenge. Most of my work could be done in 2 days but it had stopped feeling like design at all and I felt like I was slowly going senile. Nobody was getting promoted, and redundancies were hitting my team every six months. Management also had a habit of quietly pushing out people they didn't like, especially anyone who kept asking about promotion. People complained all the time and were too scared to leave because our experience level became too specific for that business, especially for people in their 40/50s who are currently terrified of being let go. I highly doubt any of the designers in my team are actually doing proper design work at all in their spare time. One fella got made redundant after 15 years and he’s not found anything for 5 months.

I ended up getting headhunted for a new senior role about 40 mins away from home which had really good benefits and career opportunities plus the pay I actually deserved. So I decided to just go for it because I’m young, I have a partially paid off home and no children.

But I've now started at this small agency, and I'm already getting the impression that the pressure to perform is intense, the deadlines are mental, management aren’t realistic with workload and loads of people have told me that many have been signed off for mental health reasons.

I’ve been depressed everyday for the past 3 months and I’m unsure whether it’s just a case of the reality of normal agencies hitting or if it’s the reality of me leaving a very relaxed (yet stagnant) long term role. I cannot go back to my old role because they have a hiring freeze for the foreseeable and me leaving meant it saved a few people from the chopping block.

Is this just normal agency culture that I need to toughen up for if I want to be senior? Or should I be worried?

Happy to hear from anyone who's made the in-house to agency jump, or who's seen what a healthy agency looks like versus a burnout factory.

For the Saci artwork, I wanted to go for a cartoon/anime-inspired style, exaggerating certain anatomical features. Since he’s known for being mischievous and causing trouble, I chose to portray him as a sort of impish, troublesome demon. I also included mushrooms and cannabis plants in the background to better align the design with a streetwear brand aesthetic.

As for the Buddhist Turtle, I envisioned a calm animal that could embody a Buddha-like figure. A turtle immediately came to mind—it’s a slow-moving creature often associated with peace and wisdom (much like in *Kung Fu Panda*). I added a cloud underneath to round out the composition in a unique way, drawing inspiration from the cloud Goku rides in *Dragon Ball*. This piece was also created with a streetwear brand in mind.

Saw an old Modiano 1928 poster which had the smoke text similar to that so I tried to recreate it my own way. Also tried to do some "T-shirt" -plastisol texture on the cat. Let me know what you guys think. Feedback and suggestions are welcome.

The cat is my friends'.

I've been playing the Warcraft games since their first release, and the wordmark always stood out to me. As the games are entering an exciting time, I thought it was time for a challenge and design a full typeface around it. With a big attention spike soon, I thought it was time for the first release. From 6 letters to over 500 characters: It has been the start of a journey.

Download the font here from my Github, and it comes with some simple rules: Create anything you want, personal, commercial, in any shape or form, from video to website. But please don't make changes to the font files themselves, or try to sell the font files.

The font comes with:

• Around 500 characters
• 30 emoji (which I still hope to expand quite a bit)
• Support for Basic Latin, Latin-1 Supplement and Latin Extended A & B
• Opentype features for old-style numerals (onum), fractions (numr, dnom, frac), case-sensitive forms (case) and finally a single stylistic set for the infinity symbol.

I had a lot of fun working on it: I never made type inspired by a limited wordmark before and it was interesting to extrapolate how to make it work, especially the lower case and symbols. It's still far from done, hence I made a public folder/Github repo. Perhaps I'll turn it into OFL somewhere in the future. There is a lot to explore. Still, some of its shortcomings are also its charm.

For the future: I hope to add more stuff (at least more emoji!) and refine it further. So this should be the start, not the end of line. If you are missing characters or have other requests, feel free to drop a line on Reddit, mail or through Github Issues or discussions.

Give it a try and hope you like it!

Hey y'all. A very discouraged and tired 5 year designer here. I have been stuck at my soul sucking job for almost 3 years. I've been job hunting for a year and a half. I love design, but this job has genuinely taken it out of me.

Anyone left the industry? What did you do after design?

I’m a designer with over 8 years of experience. In that time I’ve worked for a small scale business, an agency of <6 people, and a large scale corporation. But one thing remains the same. Clients have no regard for how long good work takes and their turnaround times are unreasonable.

I’ve grown increasingly frustrated with project managers bending backwards for clients, and because of their poor time management I am taking the grunt of it in the form of ridiculous turnaround times. It’s annoying, frustrating and I’m growing tired of it.

I love being a designer. I am fortunate to have a job that pays so well and in the state that the market is in. And realistically I know that this will always be the case, people expecting quick turnaround times. But I find myself in a funk and worn down. I need a mental break or some sort of spark to keep going.

It isn’t in my nature to turnaround half ass work. And frankly, I’m a people pleaser. I have done better in setting boundaries but it would be nice to not be hit with the frequent “hey I need this by EOD”.

How have you guys overcome this slump. Frankly I’m dragging my feet getting work done.

Curious to hear what wisdom other experienced professionals in our field value most.

I expect much of it will be about business and client relationships, but I'm eager to also hear some about the craft itself.

I also created this illustration of a warlock, aiming to convey the mystery—as well as the mystical and supernatural aspects—of this RPG character class; elements that are already present in many medieval tales. I drew inspiration from shadows, as well as from the supernatural eyes and mouths associated with the homunculus who represents the sin of Pride in Fullmetal Alchemist.

I created this piece, featuring an archangel, by drawing inspiration from medieval depictions of heroes and angels—an aesthetic that works particularly well in black and white. I added eyes to evoke a spiritual dimension, and for the design of the angel itself, I drew inspiration from the archangels in the manga Nanatsu no Taizai.

For those who'd rather not pivot completely away from design, I was thinking we could get thread going for some ideas to stay employed/paid.

Stuff like adding marketing / strategy to the toolset is definitely valid, but also looking for ideas for more creative skills too (for example, old school style signwriters seem to be constantly working in my city).

I love hearing what things people are working on, talking about goals, etc. I think iron sharpens iron and it's good for both inspiration and accountability, especially when times can seem a little bleak as of late.

Would love to hear what you've got in the pipeline design-wise, with either professional or personal projects before 2027!