Slow design.
It’s a term you hear more and more these days. A return to the art of creating, instead of fast, AI-generated, lifeless imagery.
When I started working on my twelfth children’s book—where the two main characters fall into a painting during a museum visit—I was reminded once again of the value of creating slowly, in peace and quiet. I visited museums and looked at paintings that had taken months to complete.
Every stroke placed with intention.
Now contrast that with contemporary “art”: a banana taped to a wall, or lightning-fast AI-generated illustrations. Publishing a book in a single day—just by feeding the right prompts into a tool that produces both story and images.
I have thoughts about that.
Recently, while wandering through the Anton Pieck Museum, I learned that each illustration took him two months to create.
Two months.
And here we are, oohing and aahing over two-second images, complete with six fingers, because it saves time and money.
But since when did faster become better?
Do you ever wonder what our great-great-grandchildren will see in museums a hundred years from now?
A wilted banana?
An AI print?
A screenshot of a prompt?
There’s one thing I’ve learned, time and again, from the artists in those museums: they didn’t care about the trends of their time. They followed their own path. They did their own thing.
And that resonates with me.
Because no matter what trend comes along, I won’t follow.
I just do my own thing.
Slow but steady.