On April 17th, Anthropic unveiled Claude Design. The internet promptly reacted. Non-designers were thrilled; finally, a way to turn an idea into something visual without a design background (think Canva on steroids).
Designers had more mixed feelings. Some excited about the speed. Others pointing out what we’re seeing too: without real creative direction behind it, the outputs look identical. Same fonts, same layouts. Reddit said it plainly: without your own design tokens or reference screenshots, the result “screams I just used one Claude prompt.”
That tension is exactly what Viveka has been sitting with. As one of our Graphic Designers and Creative Directors at Captiva, she has one of the sharpest eyes for what works (and what doesn’t). Her timing is chef’s kiss. Here’s Viveka.
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You Can’t Prompt Your Way into Good Design
By Viveka Galindez
As a designer, I’m not ashamed to admit that I use AI tools regularly. They’re genuinely impressive and they’ve changed how fast I can move in certain parts of my creative and design process.
But here’s what I’ve been noticing lately.
In brainstorming meetings, everyone is bringing the same ideas. Not because people lack creativity, but because they all prompted the same tool with roughly the same brief and landed in roughly the same place. The outputs look polished, competent, and identical.
That’s the thing about AI: it’s trained on patterns. It gives you the most probable version of something. But “most probable” and “most right for this specific client” are two very different things. The gap between those two phrases is where design judgment lives.
Two camps. Know which one you’re in.
Here’s a framework I’ve landed on, and I think it’s useful for anyone making decisions about creative work right now.
The first: AI-generated is perfectly fine, and everyone knows it. Use it when you’re visualizing a concept that doesn’t exist yet, exploring ideas quickly, or creating something abstract where realism isn’t the point. Nobody expects it to look human or even real, and that’s okay. It doesn’t need to be.
The second: you need something elevated, custom, sophisticated. Something that actually represents the uniqueness of your brand, your audience, your mission, your story. This is where a trained, experienced designer is the better call. Getting there requires judgment and skill built over time, through real creative risk and in-market experience. That’s not something you can prompt your way into (for now).
Think about stock photography. Most people have a visceral reaction to bad stock (we sure do!). It’s stiff, staged, stale, somehow both too perfect and completely wrong. That same thing happens when AI-generated imagery has no creative direction behind it. It doesn’t feel authentic and it fails to connect.
Knowing which camp you’re in — and why — is a skill. Most people skip that step.
The part AI can’t replace is the part that actually matters.
As a designer and creative director, my job isn’t to push designs out. It’s to understand what a brand needs to communicate, to whom, and why, and then make decisions accordingly.
That requires reading people. Sitting with a client long enough to understand not just what they say they want, but what they actually need. It requires judgment and taste built from practice, failure, and real-world experience.
AI doesn’t have that. It has patterns.
What I bring to a project — what any strong creative professional brings — is a trained eye and a unique point of view. A sense of when to follow the brief and when to push back on it. A filter for what’s on trend versus what’s actually true to a brand. A discerning eye that knows what works and what falls flat and can tell the difference fast.
The real skill right now is knowing how to brief.
The better you are at understanding a client, the better you are at using AI. Because the most valuable input you can give any tool isn’t a clever prompt. It’s accurate detailed context. The nuances of who the brand is, what the audience actually feels, what problem you’re really solving.
If you can’t read your client, you can’t brief the tool. And if you can’t brief the tool, you’re just generating pretty generic noise.
Client listening — really listening and interpreting the client’s vision — has always been a foundational creative skill. AI just makes it more obvious when you don’t have it.
AI doesn’t replace design principles.
These tools are fast at creating endless outputs. And that speed can fool you into skipping what actually matters: teaching the tool what “good” looks like for your brand. What’s on brand, what’s not, what works, what doesn’t. That takes time and clarity. Most people skip that part too.
Claude Design makes this especially clear. Hand it a vague direction and you get vague results. Hand it a clear design system — your principles, your hierarchy, your rules — and it delivers. The tool doesn’t replace principles. It just shows whether you have them.
My prediction: designers and creators who will thrive in the era of AI are the ones who bring enough skill, clarity, and strong creative direction to make the output actually mean something. Creative that is unique, authentic, and unmistakably on brand.
That’s always been the job. AI just raises the stakes for doing it well.
Viveka Galindez is a Graphic Designer and Creative Director at Captiva, and Co-Founder of Spicy Creatives. She specializes in art direction, branding, and visual communication.
