WHERE DOES DESIGN RESIDE NOW?

Summary from the TLDR Design newsletter

Design work has fragmented across three destinations: template-driven tools like Canva, individual employees using generative AI, and constraint systems governing model outputs, dissolving the traditional design department. Two divergent futures compete—design roles shrinking into obsolescence as prompts replace brand books, or elevating designers into systems architects who govern AI-generated output quality. DesignOps is emerging to address resulting brand-consistency chaos, mirroring Digital Asset Management's 2010 fragmented-market trajectory, while smaller agencies lose entry-level work permanently to internalized, AI-assisted production.