Figma is no longer Figma. But Graphic Design remains Graphic Design.
The democratization of tools and the designer's responsibility
ReadGiovanni A. Scognamiglio //
Figma is no longer Figma. But Graphic Design remains Graphic Design.
The democratization of tools and the designer's responsibility
Every now and then, a tool emerges that forces a discipline to question itself. Not because it introduces a new function, but because it suddenly makes evident a change that was already underway. The recent evolutions of Figma belong to this category. To reduce them to a simple software update would be to miss their significance. The issue is not about adding AI-based tools, nor about generating images, modifying photos, or producing vector elements through generative models. All of this is merely the most visible manifestation of a much deeper transformation: the gradual shift from software as a tool to software as a design interlocutor.
The relationship between designer and technology
For over forty years, graphic designers have built their relationship with technology through tools that, however sophisticated, remained essentially passive. Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and more recently, Figma, have changed the way a project is realized, but they have never altered the nature of the design process. It was the designer who decided every step: observe, interpret, choose, build, verify. The software executed.
Today, this relationship changes. The new systems no longer just execute instructions. They produce hypotheses, suggest alternatives, anticipate solutions, generate variations. For the first time, the designer finds themselves working with tools that participate, at least in part, in the construction of the project. We are not yet facing design intelligence, but we are certainly beyond the traditional concept of software.
The role of tools in the project
This is probably why many analyses risk being misleading. People wonder if Figma will replace Illustrator, if Photoshop will lose its centrality, if InDesign will become marginal. These are understandable questions, but they belong to a now outdated logic. Every time a new technology appears, it tends to be described as the successor of the previous one. It happened with desktop publishing, with the web, with Canva, and today with artificial intelligence. Yet the history of design shows that tools rarely eliminate those that preceded them; more often, they redefine their role within a broader ecosystem.
In this perspective, Figma does not appear as a substitute for the Creative Cloud, but as the place where different disciplines begin to converge. Interface design, real-time collaboration, prototyping, interaction with code, and today, AI tools coexist in a single operational environment. It is not so much the sum of functionalities that makes it interesting, but the different way of conceiving the design process: no longer a sequence of specialized applications, but a system in which design, production, and review tend to progressively coincide.
The competence of the graphic designer
However, it would be a mistake to deduce from this evolution that the competence of the graphic designer becomes less important. On the contrary, it is the opposite. The more the production of solutions is automated, the more the value of their critical evaluation grows. If generating fifty variants takes a few seconds, the real competence no longer lies in producing a form, but in recognizing which form has design quality. It is a substantial change. For decades, we have identified professional knowledge with the ability to construct an elaborate; today, it is increasingly measured by the ability to select, argue, and above all, discard.
Design curation thus becomes a central competence. Saying “this solution works” or “this solution does not work” requires knowledge that no generative model possesses: the history of typography, visual culture, understanding of context, the relationship between form and meaning, the awareness that every graphic choice produces consequences in the perception of a message. Artificial intelligence can propose a formally correct composition; it cannot attribute intention to it.
The democratization of tools
This is where a distinction likely to characterize the profession in the coming years emerges. Artificial intelligence drastically lowers the threshold for accessing tools. Those with limited skills can achieve results unimaginable until recently. But this democratization makes the value of design culture even more evident. When technical quality tends to become uniform, what distinguishes a professional is no longer mastery of the software, but the depth of their design thinking.
For this reason, the future of graphic design will not depend on the choice between Figma, Illustrator, Photoshop, or any other work environment. It will depend on the ability to use these tools without delegating the responsibility of the project to them. A software can suggest a solution. It cannot assume the cultural, ethical, and communicative responsibility of that choice.
The responsibility of the designer
Perhaps this is the most important transformation introduced by the current era of artificial intelligence. For many years, the designer has learned to use increasingly sophisticated tools. Today, they must learn something different: to direct systems capable of autonomously producing design possibilities, while keeping the responsibility of the idea intact.
The tools will continue to change. Figma, Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign, and software we cannot even imagine today will change again. Graphic design, however, will continue to be based on the same question that has accompanied the discipline since its origins: not how to build a form, but why that form should exist.
And it is a question that, at least for now, no artificial intelligence is yet able to answer.












