Can you write a painting?

I can prompt a painting - does that make me a painter?

Most designers are wired to think in visuals. We see in shapes, colors, and moods. Design isn’t born fully formed — it’s the result of testing, layering, failing, and evolving until something clicks. Which makes me wonder: is it really possible to prompt that entire process if your brain doesn’t work this way? 

Because here’s the truth: you have to be able to imagine it before you can generate it with AI. Design doesn’t just pop out of a single command; it comes alive in the messy, winding process. 

You have to be able to think it before you can generate the idea with AI, instead of the ideas evolving from the process. 

When I was a student at the Royal Academy of Art — many years ago — my teacher wouldn’t even step foot in the computer lab. She refused to look at work on a screen; everything had to be printed for feedback. Times have changed, radically. 

So what happens when you ask a very visual person to prompt a design? Many designers struggle with words. Their medium is their hands — sketching, building, experimenting. Ideas don’t fall neatly from a brief; they emerge through detours, wrong turns, and playful accidents. Strip that process away, reduce it to a string of prompts, and I suspect much of the output will start to look the same. After all, how many words can really capture the exact hue of longing, or the sly curve of a logo? 

And yet… AI does have a role. It can sit in the room like a collaborator, a sparring partner for ideas. It can accelerate mockups, generate quick variations, and open doors to possibilities we might not have time to sketch ourselves. 

But back to the painting: would Picasso, Pollock, or Da Vinci have been able to write their work? I doubt it. Perhaps Andy Warhol could — his method was closer to design, with repetition and system as part of the art. But for most, creation isn’t linear. The spark happens mid-process, mid-brushstroke, mid-shower-thought.

Designing a logo, picking a color, finding the right typeface for a brand — these are not trivial decisions. They’re acts of storytelling, of giving voice and identity, weaving heritage into form. That’s not something you can shortcut with prompts. It’s something you live through as you create. 

Below: A Sora mashup of Pollock, Picasso and Warhol – is it art? Yes of course, but does it make me the artist?  

The Future of the Designer 

So where does that leave us? Will designers still be needed, or will the role dissolve into a kind of professional prompter — someone who shapes with words instead of sketching with hands? Perhaps. The future might split in two directions: mass-produced, AI-generated design for speed and scale, and then — at the other end — the niche, the “feinschmecker” work, like a handmade ceramic cup or a custom-designed kitchen, crafted slowly and deliberately. 

And of course, I’d argue passionately for the latter. This is what I do, what I love. I can’t imagine AI truly replacing the intuition, the lived experience, the small sparks of insight that come only when a human mind is at play. But then again, I think of my teacher at the Royal Academy — who insisted every sketch had to be done by hand, on paper, long before touching a computer. Before that, she believed in drawing everything by hand and using repro machine to create the final product. She was certain that using a computer to early in the process would diminish the craft. 

This identity was created with prompts like illuminate, scandi style, and grotesk font type. Does it look nice? Yes, but with no story. Just branding that says nothing and will sell nothing. 

Now here I am, catching myself sounding exactly like her: cautious, protective, maybe even a little afraid of what’s next. But perhaps that’s just part of being a designer — to care so deeply about the process that every shift feels like an earthquake. The truth is, design will keep evolving. The tools will change, but the need for thoughtful, human storytelling through form, color, and identity will remain. 

Because in the end, no matter how clever the prompt, it’s still us — the designers — who give brands their heartbeat.