#ai-assisted-design

#ai-assisted-design

When I work on something, whether it's at Interfere or my personal projects, I like to experiment a lot. Design engineering is a lot about trial and error, and I often spend hours trying to find the "this feels right" moment. This is where AI helps. Instead of spending hours on a concept that I'm unsure of, I try that concept out in a matter of minutes, and throw it away if it doesn't feel right.

The designers, Dániel Lakos and Míra Majoros, didn't just wake up one day and think "hey, let's make a paper pig." They were working on a project for Red Noses International, an organization that supports clown doctors who work with children in hospitals. The brief was pretty specific: create something that encourages young people to save money and donate, all while keeping the price under 10 EUR with minimal production costs. Not exactly an easy ask.

PLANBUREAU studio designs a metallic piggy bank made of paper, which can encourage people to save up money and donate from a young age. The project is created for the Hungarian branch of Red Noses International, an organization that supports clown doctors who work with children in hospitals. The group needed a product for their charity shop that could help children learn how to save money and how to donate it.

Circa 1450, the creative community was jolted. The printing press had just been invented in Europe. Scribes, typically monks who had spent lifetimes perfecting the spiritual art of hand-copying manuscripts, saw their specialized skills suddenly rendered obsolete. Yet in short order, the disruptive innovation democratized knowledge, enabled the Renaissance, and created entirely new creative roles for editors, typesetters, printmakers, and illustrators.

Launched in 2017 and co-curated by Make Architects, Sir John Soane's Museum, and the World Architecture Festival (WAF), the Prize celebrates the art and skill of architectural drawing across multiple modes of creation. Sponsored by Iris Ceramica Group and supported by ArchDaily as media partner, this year's edition attracted a record number of more than 200 submissions from around the world.

Fast-forward eight months, and 59% of designers and developers are already using AI in their work. But here's what the surveys don't tell you: the gap between AI hype and AI reality in design work is still enormous. After integrating various AI tools into my daily workflow, I've learned that the real story isn't about replacement - it's about strategic augmentation in surprisingly specific ways.