At almost every inflection point in my career, I knew at least one designer who was convinced the new thing was the death of the art form.
Photoshop was going to end traditional illustration. Web-based builders were going to make designers obsolete. Drag-and-drop tools were going to commoditize everything. Stock photography was going to kill original visual thinking. And now AI. AI is going to end creativity itself, replace human designers entirely, produce a world of machine-generated sameness from which genuine artistry cannot survive.
None of the previous ones were right. I don't think this one is either.
The Rise of Fast Design and What We Lose Because of It
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A client’s guide: practical answers for people hiring a designer or building a site.
What human design offers that AI can’t replicate
Making your website work harder, for your business and in search
The craft: what makes things look and feel right
The why: how design makes people think, feel, and trust
There’s a moment I’ve noticed happening more and more in conversations with potential clients. They’ll mention that they looked into using AI to build their site. Sometimes they did it. Sometimes they got halfway through and stopped. Sometimes they finished it and something still felt off — and they couldn’t quite name what. That feeling […]
When a client asks us what platform we recommend for their website, the answer is almost always Showit. Not because we have a financial relationship with them, not because it’s the only option, but because after building on a lot of different platforms over the years, it’s the one that consistently does right by the […]
One of the most common things that delays a website project isn’t the design. It’s the photos. A client will have everything ready — clear on their brand, clear on their goals, excited to start — and then pause because they don’t have professional photography yet. Booking a photographer feels like another project. Another expense. […]
the designer
Nicole has been in design for thirty years, across television, advertising, academia, and now this. Every Kismet project runs through her from start to finish.
It was always going to end up here. It just took thirty years to figure it out.
