story
In today’s design community, the topic of AI replacing designers is discussed constantly, especially in graphic and presentation design. I want to share a very concrete case that clearly shows how I see this situation in practice. Before New Year, an old client — an Austrian logistics company working across Europe — asked me to urgently create a key cover slide for an investor presentation. The slide was critical, and the client even provided a rough PowerPoint sketch to explain the idea. Due to tight deadlines, I decided to test modern AI tools: ChatGPT, Gemini Pro, MidJourney Pro — tools I’ve actively used since 2021 and still use daily as part of my workflow.
client's sketch
ai design
results
The results were quite revealing. On the positive side, AI delivered reasonably good icons, illustrations, and even photography, and in many cases it handled color choices surprisingly well. However, the real limitation became obvious very quickly: the output is completely flat and non-editable. Neither the designer nor the client can truly work with it — layouts cannot be adjusted, elements cannot be refined, and the design does not translate into an editable presentation system. Composition is another weak point: even well-trained, paid AI tools still fail to understand layout rules, visual hierarchy, and spatial logic in a consistent way. Branding also remains fragile — despite providing official logos and brand assets, AI tends to reinterpret or redraw logos and symbols at its own discretion, which is unacceptable for real client work.
conclusion
The slide was fully built in Adobe Illustrator / Figma and carefully imported into Google Slides / Power Point , so the client could easily edit content themselves — something current AI tools simply cannot understand or execute.
In the end, while AI can assist with visuals and color exploration, it cannot deliver structured, editable, and brand-safe design — and that gap is exactly where human designers remain irreplaceable.The conclusion is simple: AI is a powerful assistant and accelerator for designers, but all claims that it is already replacing designers are, at least for now, greatly exaggerated.
p.s.
Beyond a single slide, I also created a full presentation series supported by a set of illustrations, most of them built in vector format. This approach allows almost unlimited editing, color adjustments, and adaptation for different contexts and audiences. For clarity, I’m also sharing several final slides from this presentation together with the illustrations to demonstrate what a fully human-designed, production-ready result actually looks like.
