Jessica Klein

The Future of Creative Production Is Hybrid: Human Craft + AI + Automation In over 20 years leading creative teams and building production workflows for hundreds of major brands, I’ve seen how traditional agency processes, manual approvals, linear handoffs, and rigid pipelines, can slow delivery and limit potential. The challenge today isn’t choosing between humans or AI. It’s designing a system where they work together. At BIMM, our Creative Services team is delivering exactly that: Human craftsmanship: Brand interpretation, design decision-making brand nuance, experienced review and delivery accountability. AI in execution: generating technically correct, production-ready assets at speed, moving from concept to usable output faster, smarter and safer. Intelligent automation: streamlining repetitive tasks, removing bottlenecks, and connecting workflows so teams can scale without chaos. This isn’t AI replacing creativity. It’s AI accelerating execution, so human expertise can focus where it adds the most value. The traditional agency process isn’t dead. It just needs decluttering. By integrating human craft, AI-powered production, and automation into one cohesive workflow, brands can increase output, reduce friction, and maintain quality at scale. If you’re a CMO, Creative Director, or Marketing leader looking to modernize your production model without sacrificing craft, let’s talk. The hybrid solution isn’t theoretical. We’re already delivering it

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Hey! If you're vexed by AI and the bewildering "expertise" that seems to have emerged from nowhere, there's a very cool FREE resource for folks who want to beef up their knowledge of AI. https://mightyhumans.us/ is a community resource that offers an eight course introduction to AI, from the basics all the way up to what corporate governance of AI looks like. AND IT'S FREE! They're also starting up community meet-ups wherever folks might be interested and could use some help. Let's go!

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I don’t disagree with ⚡️Zander. Super ICs have been carrying a heavy load the last couple years. That said, Super ICs are beasts at execution and ruthless prioritization, and are highly resilient; thrash typically rolls off like water. But all of that results in a vaccine for burnout, not an antidote. It will prolong impact, it will reduce the symptoms, but it will not prevent burnout.

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Does Culture Shape Design — or Are We All Designing the Same Thing Now? Design doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Or does it? A designer working in the San Francisco Bay Area is surrounded by tech culture, venture capital optimism, product thinking, and a constant push toward “clean,” “scalable,” and “disruptive.” Compare that to someone designing in Bozeman, Montana—where pace, community, and proximity to nature might influence a more tactile, grounded, or regional sensibility. The question is: does location still meaningfully shape design outcomes, or has the internet flattened those differences? On a global level, the contrast seems even sharper. German design is often associated with precision, systems thinking, and restraint. Japanese design frequently embraces asymmetry, negative space, and a deep respect for craft and imperfection. These aren’t just aesthetic choices—they’re reflections of broader cultural values. But in an era where designers everywhere share the same tools, trends, and references, how much of that cultural DNA actually survives? Then there’s time. Does where you were trained matter after ten years in the industry? Or does professional experience eventually override geography and education? Many designers start with a strong regional or academic influence, only to find that client work, deadlines, and commercial constraints slowly sand those edges down. Which brings us to brand guidelines. Working within established systems can sharpen problem-solving skills, but it can also narrow creative range. After years of designing inside strict brand frameworks, do designers lose some of their experimental instincts—or do they simply learn how to be creative within tighter boundaries? And what about inspiration itself? Mood boards built from Pinterest, Instagram, and trend reports often pull from the same visual pool. When everyone references the same sources, designs begin to converge. Is this any different from the way global brands like McDonald’s appear in every country—slightly localized, but fundamentally the same? Are we witnessing the homogenization of design, where regional flavor is replaced by a globally acceptable, algorithm-approved aesthetic? Maybe culture still affects design—but more quietly now. Or maybe designers affect culture less than we’d like to believe. The real question might not be whether culture shapes design, but how much friction a designer is willing to preserve against sameness. #design #graphicdesign #branding #freelancedesigner

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She's right that the old design process is dead, but I think she's underselling how fast it happened. Jenny says her September talk already feels outdated. That tracks. The gap between idea and shipped code is measured in minutes now, not sprints, and the tooling is only accelerating. The part about "seven agents constantly running" hits close to home. That's the workflow and when you're moving that fast, the bottleneck isn't design or engineering anymore. It's deciding what actually matters. Taste/signal is key. Jenny nails it: someone still has to be accountable for the decision. The three hiring archetypes are worth paying attention to. Especially the "craft new grad" one. People without baked-in process assumptions are adapting faster than senior folks who spent 10 years learning a workflow that just got obsoleted. Blank slate is an actual advantage right now. One thing I'd push back on: she says Claude isn't hireable as a designer yet. That's true if you're comparing to her deep specialist archetype. But for the execution layer she described, pairing with an engineer and polishing the last mile, it's closer than people think and if you're a designer/engineer its already here.

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As a Creative Director, this one practice consistently unlocks better ideas, faster: Every two weeks, I run a 60 minute creative sprint where the only goal is to generate freely without judgment or practical outcomes. Some may see this as an expensive meeting. I see it as how teams build creative confidence. When people are allowed to think freely, without immediately measuring or refining, ideas move faster, and perfectionism loosens its grip. My latest Substack explores why separating making from measuring matters in creative leadership, and practical ways it changes how teams work. Read it here: https://lnkd.in/gkXF4ta8

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Friday's slot machine post had some sharp comments. One question kept coming back: what are we paying AI to do in the first place? We're using AI to make design decisions when we should be using it for actual heavy lifting. Deciding if a button is 24px or 16px is the designer's job. Generating alt text for every image in the file is what AI is actually for. Here's an idea: a real-time prompt cost prediction before sending. This would slowly teach designers when to use AI and when to just do the thing yourself. AI needs guardrails. Turns out the humans prompting it need some too.

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Anthropic just launched Claude Design 🎨 and leading design for an institutional trading platform, this one landed differently for me. The headline feature isn't the prototyping speed. It's the design system integration. Claude reads your codebase and design files during onboarding, then applies your colours, typography, and components automatically across every project. In a context like MarketsOne, where consistency across complex workflows isn't optional, that's the difference between a tool your team actually adopts and one that creates rework. ✅ The handoff to Claude Code is equally sharp. Design packages directly into a bundle, passed over with a single instruction. No ambiguity, no lost intent between design and engineering. 🔗 For institutional platforms, where auditability and consistency matter as much as velocity, brand-aware AI output isn't a nice-to-have. It's the baseline requirement. Early days, but this feels like AI that's starting to fit how design actually works, not around it. 👀 #DesignLeadership #AIDesign #TradingPlatforms #FinancialServices #UX #Anthropic https://lnkd.in/eJ43Mc2u

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"Oh hell there he go again messin with other people's IP!" So many WAN-Animate experiments are rolling through my feed but so few are focused on full-body transformation. Everyone is showing waist-up, hands and face. Why? That has already been out. WAN is better than Act-2 at waist up, but imo the unique part of WAN-Animate is that it can do full body. With unique hair motion! Here is my experiment. One piece of stock footage, body-transferred into 10 different people in 10 different outfits, all wearing the same Nike Vaporfly 4's. The shot was broken into shorter clips, start frames were generated using Nanobanana, run through WAN-animate, and then cut back together in AE with some light comp work (mostly to fix differences in the regenerated bg). I think this would be quite hard to do using any other means: maybe shoot 10 people running on a track and get them all to maintain the exact same body position/foot placement etc through the entire sequence? Or how about reskinning the same CG rig with 10 characters with different hair, skin, outfits etc? Sounds hard. At the end I pulled stills of the Vaporfly 4's and did some Kling start frame / end frame gens to get a kinetic product shot at the end. The logo break / reform at the end is also Kling with AE time displacement on top. ***The Mago beta looks amazing for this stuff, I probably should redo this whole project tomorrow 😭

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Trust is the hardest metric to design for. Waymo just showed us how it’s done. Jonathan Slotkin’s recent analysis of Waymo’s 100 million driverless miles reveals a stunning UX stat: 91% fewer serious-injury crashes compared to humans, and 96% fewer intersection-related injuries compared with human drivers in the same cities. The scale of this gap reframes autonomous driving from a tech experiment into a public health opportunity. What stands out is the consistency of the results. Fewer high-impact collisions, fewer pedestrian injuries, fewer cyclist incidents. The pattern points to a system that follows rules, avoids distraction, and reacts faster than humans can. It solves the "Human Error" problem by redesigning the system, not the user. As UX professionals, we talk a lot about "human-centered design." Sometimes, that means acknowledging human limitations like distraction, emotion, and reaction time. The future of mobility and UX is about removing the burden of operation entirely. #ServiceDesign #UXResearch #Safety #AI #UX

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Design leaders, are your products speaking the same language? A strong product design language is more than just a toolkit for aesthetics. It’s the strategic glue that holds your brand’s visual, emotional, and functional identity together across every product line. Here’s why it matters: • It reduces design debt and accelerates development. • It creates cohesive customer experiences that drive brand loyalty. • It helps your team scale faster and collaborate more effectively. Developing this crucial foundation early can set your brand apart in an increasingly competitive market. Curious about how to build one or why it’s essential? Dive into our latest blog, where we break down everything you need to know about product design languages—from the core building blocks to the tangible value they bring. Be recognized. Be authentic. Be distinct. Read the full guide here: https://bit.ly/4eaCafT #DesignLanguage #DesignSystems #DesignPrinciples #DesignThinking #EmotionalDesign #MeaningfulDesign #THRIVE — Hello! We're THRIVE, a people-centered innovation firm. We work with ambitious brands to create meaningful experiences that win hearts and shape the future Our work gives leaders, teams, and organizations the clarity, courage, and conviction to move confidently forward and design what's next. Learn more about how THRIVE can help you tackle your toughest challenges: https://bit.ly/4jFhygC

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we’re here to reprogram the city’s relationship to technological authorship. what we’re building at frontiertower isn’t just a makerspace — it’s a functional node for deep experimentation, a testbed for autonomy, utility, and elegance in design. this floor will become a threshold: between passive consumption and sovereign creation. between noise and signal. between tools… and the hands that dare to use them. #SFRewilded #FrontierMakerSpace #RealTech

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Exploring Claude as a designer has been wild, the pace of change is unreal. With a single prompt, I generated a working design system in code this weekend. If you’re a designer, this is your nudge to start learning AI now. These tools aren’t here to replace us, they’re here to amplify our impact but only if we’re fluent enough to use them. I am sharing the prompt: You are a Global Design Director tasked with building a scalable design system for [BRAND]. Brand personality: [MINIMAL / BOLD / LUXURY / PLAYFUL / MODERN / TECHNI-CALI Deliver a production-ready design system including: 1. Color System - Primary, secondary, semantic, neutral palettes + dark mode equivalents 2. Typography Framework - 9-step type scale with font pairing rationale 3. Spatial System - 8px grid foundation with spacing tokens 4. Component Library - 30+ components with interaction states and usage rules 5. Responsive Layout Patterns - Breakpoints and adaptive behavior logic 6. Motion Principles - Transition curves, durations, micro-inter-action philosophy 7. Accessibility Standards - WCAG AA compliance guidance and contrast ratios Export deliverables in three formats: * Design tokens (JSON structure) * CSS variable declarations * Figma-ready component documentation This output will power the visual foundation inside Figma Make. #claude #ai #design #designsystems #wcag #idc

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Something I hear from emerging leaders all the time: "I don't know who I am as a leader yet." When you move from designing to leading, the feedback loops disappear. No Figma files. No shipped features. No obvious signal that you're doing it right. So people start mimicking what they think a leader should look like. And slowly, they lose themselves. In my latest article, I write about why authenticity isn't a soft concept; it's a strategic anchor. When your team is going through change, and they're looking to you for something real. Teams have very finely tuned BS detectors. They don't need you to have all the answers. They need to know you're human. 📖 Read the full piece here → https://lnkd.in/eJbpA8Cv What's one value you refuse to compromise on as a leader? Would love to hear below. 👇 #DesignLeadership #Leadership #Authenticity #EmergingLeaders #TrueNorth

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Just saw the introduction of Claude Design by Anthropic — pretty exciting. You can literally describe what you want, and it generates designs, slides, or prototypes for you. Then refine everything through conversation. What stands out to me is how it can understand your design system and apply it automatically across projects. Feels like we’re moving from “designing screens” → “designing systems + intent” Curious how this will change the way we work as designers 👀 Currently exploring more AI-driven design workflows — this space is moving fast. #ProductDesign #UXDesign #AIDesign #GenerativeAI #DesignSystems #FutureOfWork #DesignWorkflow

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This is for all my fellow designers out there sending out 100’s of resumes with little to no responses. First off, I know how you feel. I’ve sent out over 150 applications since June to companies that I truly felt I would have been a good fit for based on experience and qualifications. I have gotten only 4 interviews. Two were based off industry connections and two were selected by human recruiters who both said that they don’t use AI to filter applications. I didn’t land any of them, but that’s not why I’m writing this. I am writing this because I found something when I was redoing my resume for what feels like the 30th time this year. This time I was optimizing it (again) for ATS (Applicant Tracking System) formatting. When I ran my new resume (PDF) through ChatGPT for scoring and compliance, it kept saying that sections of my resume were out of place and that I needed to adjust the order to be read properly. I couldn’t see the issue, so I took a screenshot of my resume and asked for clarity. This was the response: The issue I (“I,” haha...) was flagging wasn’t about how it looks — it’s about how the PDF text is ordered internally, which ATS systems read in a different sequence than a human looking at the layout. Long story short, for those of us using resumes in PDF format (as a designer, I cannot fathom the thought of using a Word doc for a resume), LAYERS MATTER! Please see the below for BEFORE and AFTER (100% scoring and compliance) organizing the layers in my Illustrator document. Before this, I’ve run my resume through countless ATS exercises without an issue. For my latest version, I did copy and paste and move a lot of stuff around, so that is most likely where the issue came from. This might be obvious to everyone, but I wanted to share this because with all the resumes being sent, you can eliminate yourself before a human can see your work. Not because of experience… Not because of your design… But because your LAYERS ARE OUT OF ORDER! It may be the difference between being seen — and being filtered out. Please let me know if anyone has had similar issues, or feel free to comment if you just want to vent about challenges you are having with resume writing and job hunting. I FEEL YOUR PAIN!

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Had a great chat with Matt McCue about Humorphism, the design philosophy guiding our recent launches, and what it means to go from operating tools to collaborating with them. The best way to learn is to do, so I built an AI teammate named Alicia. From scratch, on weekends. I'm not a trained engineer, and that's the point. If I can build a thinking partner like Alicia, anyone can. She's one example of Humorphism in practice. We're collaborative at our heart, and somewhere along the way we forgot that. Because ultimately, to make artificial intelligence less artificial, we need to make humans more human. https://lnkd.in/gk5ezYPf

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After 12 years directing creative work, I never thought I'd say this: imperfection is now a strategic advantage. Here's what I'm seeing in 2026. Consumers will pay 60% more for work that feels human-made. That's not sentiment. That's market data reshaping how we approach creative strategy. The irony isn't lost on me. We spent years chasing pixel-perfect, polished, pristine. Now the brands winning are the ones that look like someone actually touched them. I call it the Authentically Artificial paradox. AI handles 75% of our layout iterations, color testing, and rapid prototyping. It's faster, cheaper, and honestly better at the technical grind. But here's what it can't do: add the handwritten note that makes packaging feel personal. Choose the slightly imperfect photo that tells a real story. Know when a design needs warmth over precision. The leadership lesson took me years to learn. Your job isn't to compete with AI on efficiency. It's to direct it. Think of yourself as the editor, not the typist. The creative leader who knows which 20% of human touch transforms competent work into work people actually remember. Three questions I now ask every project: - Where does this need a human fingerprint? - What imperfection would make this feel more real? - Are we optimizing for polish or for connection? Scalability used to mean removing the human element. Now it means knowing exactly where to put it back. The brands that will define the next decade won't be the ones with the best AI tools. They'll be the ones with creative leaders who understand when to let the machine run, and when to leave their own mark. That's not a technology problem. That's a leadership one. #CreativeLeadership #BrandStrategy #DesignThinking #AIinDesign #ArtDirection

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AI promised to level the playing field. Instead, it just raised the bar. If you can’t spot the gaps, these tools don't make you more capable. They help you fail faster at scale. The bar for "great" remains in the hands of people who know their craft.

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