The Production Designer

2024 | Printed Booklet

The Production Designer is a somewhat satirical piece about the fear of job annihilation stoked by the release of generative AI tools like DALL-E and Chat-GPT. It continues to be a hot topic of debate ever since — to embrace AI in design as an inevitability or fight it like the plague?

I asked Chat-GPT, "Will AI replace the Graphic Designer?" The response, which is printed on the light pages, are set next to photos from the Library of Congress depicting bygone labor practices and their modes of production. AI's threat to today's graphic designer are just the latest in a long chain of automation innovations from the digital revolution to hot metal type machines to Gutenberg's printing press and everything in-between. The folded pages prompt the reader to contemplate historical parallels as we assess modernity's latest inventions and human costs.

Special thanks to J. Dakota Brown's course, de-centering the designer on historical transformations in labor and technology.