Typesetters, AI and the Roles Designers Might Keep Doing Anyway

What Typesetters Can Teach Designers About AI

Christian Crumlish's conversation with the UX Collective uses his early years at the publisher Sybex to trace how a book once passed through five jobs before reaching print, and how desktop computers collapsed that chain. He then links that history to the current pressure on designers as AI blurs the lines between roles. The piece is candid about identity: designers often define themselves by craft, and that makes shifting scope feel like a loss even when the title stays the same. It also includes the author's own experience of inheriting a colleague's vendor duties without a change in title or pay.

For brand builders and design leads, this is a grounded way to think about career risk without sliding into doom. The lesson is less about machines replacing people and more about what happens in the uncertain stretch before new job titles settle. Designers who want to stay relevant will find useful prompts about which core skills to protect and where to expand. Strategists and managers who plan team structures should read it too, because the way roles are cut shapes how the work is valued.