The author argues that artificial intelligence has become the newest design material, urging designers to treat AI models like pigments or wood by running and sampling them directly. By citing personal experience with mother Jean Neeman’s pigment work and historic examples such as Cennino Cennini in the 1390s and Walter Gropius’s Bauhaus workshops in April 1919, the piece highlights a shift toward hands‑on AI experimentation that is already reshaping design practice.
Embedding AI as a core material forces designers to acquire coding and model‑interaction skills, which will reshape hiring, tool adoption, and the economics of design services. This shift also pressures traditional visual‑only tools like Figma and Sketch to evolve or risk obsolescence as firms demand deeper AI integration.