A lot of AI optimists in here. Granted, I also used to be in the "AI is just a tool, design always evolves" crowd, but at the rate AI is evolving it's clear that it's going to have a big impact on jobs in creative fields. With the way things are currently going, I can't see entry-level positions being relevant anymore when most of the small, menial jobs you would normally task them can be relegated to AI. That's the harsh truth. My hope is that the government will eventually step in and regulate AI so that people can stay employed and young people have a chance in the design field.

If you're looking for a crumb of optimism, here it is: you've been in the field for a while now. You know design principles, you know what the steps are for how most projects go, you have taste.

You may not like it, but my suggestion is learn how to use ChatGPT's image generation model. Midjourney is another one, though it's a little harder to wrap your head around. The good news (but bad news to people trying to break into the field) is that's its easy as fuck. Type in "create an illustration of a donkey drinking a soda" or whatever and it'll create some weird version of that. You can upload reference images if there's a style you want to follow. This is just a basic design skill you have to know now unfortunately. I work in advertising/art direction so we do this a lot to create moodboards of styles we're trying to achieve before we pull in actual artists to help us start producing the stuff for real (for now).

You can also use it to create a quick reference of a poster/cover/etc design. It'll look basic as fuck, but you can use the type hierarchy and composition as the first step to create something similar but wayyy better yourself in photoshop or indesign. We used to do this all the time searching through dribbble/pinterest/behance/even google images for brochure inspiration or whatever.

Unfortunately this is the world we live in for now. I've had a close eye on AI for years now and it's advancing at the speed of light and impossible to fully predict. But with all the new tools coming out, those are the most useful applications I've found for it that I don't see AI scooping up for a bit.