Design Trends and Predictions for 2026

Hey, everyone. Welcome to another episode of the CreativePro podcast, where design professionals like you come for real-world insights, practical tips, and inspiring conversations. At CreativePro, we help you thrive by design, and we really appreciate you being here.

I’m Theresa Jackson, the CreativePro program manager.

And I’m Mike Rankin, editor-in-chief of CreativePro.

Fantastic, Mike. It’s always good to hang out with you.

Same.

We did one of these podcasts late last year. One of the first ones we did.

Yep.

And it’s been a few months. We’ve been busy. I thought we would start off by sharing a little bit about who we are and who CreativePro is for whoever our new listeners might be.

If you’re here, if it’s your first time listening, welcome. We’re really happy to have you.

Absolutely.

So I’ll start, and then you can build on whatever I miss. CreativePro is here to help you stay current and work smarter, love your job, continue to grow. We offer membership and a welcoming, creative community.

We also have events. That’s my role. I program events.

And then we have a whole bunch more content.

Yes, we do.

Mike, why don’t you fill us in on all the stuff that you do?

Yeah, so CreativePro has been around since 1999. You have this website with just thousands and thousands of articles on everything for graphic design and production. We have a monthly magazine, CreativePro Magazine, and lots of other offerings covering things like mostly the Adobe products, but also just general design topics, other applications and services and issues that designers need to stay on top of to do their job well.

And you are responsible for what part of it?

All of it. All of it? Yes.

No, not all of it. I’m responsible for the content on the website, our YouTube channel and in the magazine. So lots of written content and video content as well.

And some downloadables as well. We also offer downloadable resources.

So we’re going to talk a little bit about what you have planned for this year.

Yes, we are.

In a nutshell, Mike, you do all the content that isn’t events. And I’m responsible for the content that’s event related. That’s kind of a quick summary.

It is, but I don’t want to say like I produce it. Like I just sort of like oversee it. We just have a galaxy of like rock star authors, video producers, speakers and so forth.

So it’s just I get the fun part of my job is I get to like choose the stuff and work with people and develop the ideas and then see them published. But like it’s really the talents of the people we work with.

It’s the same in my role. I think about how fortunate I am that it’s my job to connect with really impressive people.

Yeah.

How lucky are we?

It’s crazy. It’s crazy. But I yeah, I appreciate it.

I love it. This is a good opportunity to let everybody know that just for being here, you can save $100 off of any of our upcoming events. I’ll go through what those are.

We have a discount code podcast. That same discount code will get you $15 off membership. So both membership and events.

Upcoming events include the first one of 2026 is the presentation design conference. I’m super excited. I just have received all the outlines from all our speakers for the sessions.

And oh, my gosh. It’s going to be an amazing event. I can promise you it’s going to be awesome.

And that runs online February 17th through the 20th. This is the first year we’re doing four full days because there’s so much good presentation design content. In April we’re coming back with design and AI summit.

It was so successful in the fall of 2025 that we’re going to run another two-day event in April, April 9th and 10th. And then, of course, we have CreativePro week that we’re working hard to put together now. That’s always a huge event.

It’s our favorite time of the year. That will be in Nashville June 29th through July 3rd. And we really hope you can join us there.

All right, Mike. Let’s talk about New Year. New Year’s goals, plans.

What do we see coming? But I wanted to start with a little maybe give ourselves a little credit for what we accomplished in 2025. I always like to start the New Year reflecting and then looking forward.

Do you do that too?

Oh, of course. Yeah. You sort of use that last week of the year, that time in between, like, you know, the holidays and New Year’s to just sort of kick back and just say, like, what just happened here?

Where am I going? Who am I? What’s my purpose?

Highlights of 2025 for me, we did a pretty major pivot to video. So now we’re just like full on producing YouTube videos on a consistent basis every week. And we published about 150 videos to our, right, to our channel.

Yeah. And they’re just great. Again, the content and the presenters is just amazing.

And getting that all up and running with the people that we get to work with internally in CreativePro has just been fantastic. And then the other sort of like goal checkoff achievement for me was we passed issue 50 of CreativePro Magazine. So, you know, in addition to the video content, we still have all the amazing written stuff, 50 issues in the can of CreativePro Mag.

And then if you add those to the 150 issues of InDesign Mag, now as a whole enterprise, we did 200 magazine issues, which just feels like, wow. You know, that’s a lot of stuff.

That’s a lot.

I’m very proud of that.

You should be.

Thank you.

You should be. That’s fantastic. I like to reflect back to, I just was thinking about this idea of starting the new year fresh.

And I have the bonus benefit of having a new year’s birthday. So I just turned another year older. It’s not that I want to celebrate being a year older, but it’s a really good opportunity to just do a pause and say, okay, what happened?

And what were my goals a year ago? What did I accomplish? And where am I at right now?

I started working for the team. I’ve been part of the CreativePro community for a long time. I don’t know.

I’ve lost count of how many years, maybe 10. But I started, I joined the team in January of 2025, and I was super excited to join the team because I felt like I was just, like I was already part of the family. I just got to spend more time with all of you.

But I didn’t really know what I was in for. I was open, like, let’s see what happens. But I really didn’t know what to expect.

And, wow, when I look back, what a fantastic year. I am most proud of the last two events that we held. Both of them were incredibly successful.

The survey results that we got from the attendees are the highest average, the highest rated average, I think, that we’ve ever done for events. So I’m really proud of that. And I’m proud of the podcast.

Halfway in the middle of the year, you know, the team said, hey, we want to pivot and do a CreativePro podcast, and you’re going to program it. And I was like, oh, okay.

Yeah. I mean, CreativePro itself has been around for so long, but there’s always something fresh. Like we’re always just continuing to tweak and evolve and, like, build new things on to try to, you know, help people do their jobs better.

And, yeah, it’s just like, oh, that just happened. Like it used to be a totally different podcast and we just pivoted and now just new people, new content.

It’s been so fun, too. I love what you just said about how we pivot and we, you know, come up with new ideas and we grow because it’s not about us. It’s about our community.

And that’s always where the focus is for CreativePro is how can we best serve our community. And that’s what we’re here for. And I love being in that spot.

So we were going to talk about how we feel going into 2026. What are our thoughts about where we’re headed?

How do we feel? I’ve been, I’ve got to admit, I’ve been in, like, this weird phase because I was sick literally for, like, a month and traveling all around Europe and then the holidays and just, like, bang, bang, bang. And so once I got home, I was just, like, feeling this real need to just slow down and pause and take a beat.

And that feels like not only in the context of what I experienced in that month of December, but just in general. Like it feels like a really right response right now. And it’s this paradox that I’m feeling that, like, the only way to keep up with things is to slow down.

Like, is to actually just stop, let things become still around you. And, like, you kind of have this better clarity because you can’t chase everything. None of us can, right?

Like, you can’t watch every video, try out every app, you know, just do all this stuff faster and faster and faster. Like, you might feel like you have to because the algorithm has you, like, scrolling constantly. But when you do have that moment of stillness, like, then you can say, oh, yeah, that’s the thing that I actually care about.

That’s the thing that looks really interesting that I want to try. That’s the thing that I want to do kind of thing. And that’s sort of where I have been at is just finding that little bit of stillness and taking a breath and going, oh, yeah, 26.

That’s what this year is going to be about. Like, where we’re going to look into and the stuff that we’re going to learn. And it’s really nice, actually.

So now you’re feeling good. You’ve recovered.

Exactly.

Healthy.

Yes. Rested and energized and ready to roll.

Yeah, that’s a great reminder. We just got back to, like, full work. You know, the holidays just ended.

And that first day back felt so good. Like, I needed my routine.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah. I mean, once you remember what your name is and, like, your job title and stuff, then it’s all good, right?

What is on my to-do list after all? Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, I’m very excited for 2026. I feel like I have ?? I know what I’m doing. I mean, that sounds really dorky.

Well, you’re coming from that base of experience of those last two events that were just, like, absolutely crushed it. And so that sort of gives you a really confident feeling, like, now what can we do? Like, where can we go from here?

Exactly.

The other thing that I ?? when I started in this role in last January, I really ?? I share this with you and I share this with David. I really wanted to see more ?? help build more cohesiveness in the content from CreativePro across events and membership. And I feel like we’re really doing that.

It feels really good. And I think we’re just going to build on that. Like, everything is supportive of ?? all the efforts that we make for events are supportive of the efforts that we make for our entire content plan and vice versa and the podcast and all of it.

Yep.

And I love being part of that.

Yeah. It’s one vision, but, you know, it gets ?? we approach it from a lot of different ?? Right.

We do all the things. Who else does? Who else out there is doing all the things for the creative community?

The professional creative community?

I don’t think anyone.

Yeah. We have events. We have training.

We have articles. We have quick tips. We have a magazine.

We have a podcast. We’re doing it all.

And who knows what to come, right?

And more, yeah. We’ve got ideas for more.

Yes, we do.

Awesome. Well, I’m looking at my notes for our conversation today. And we have been talking about design trends for the marketing, design and marketing industry.

And both of us have done a little research on that. And we have our own thoughts of whether we agree or not. So, yeah.

I’m curious. What are your thoughts for trends? Do they matter?

What do you see happening?

It’s really interesting because it’s like trends for who? Trends for what output? What audience?

Kind of thing. And we’ve had that conversation where it’s like, okay, there might be different trends for different industries, different deliverables and stuff like that. But, you know, the larger articles that I’ve seen by Adobe and different other sites talking about design trends is they’re talking about this return to analog aesthetics.

Specifically, as a reaction to a lot of the digital economic forces that we’re all feeling every day. Like people, again, are feeling that need to sort of unplug, slow down, disconnect from all this kind of stuff that’s like pushing them to go ever faster. And I’m here for it, you know?

Like I’m here for that like unplugging, that offline, taking a beat kind of thing. In terms of the visual stuff, a lot of the things that I saw mentioned really go back to the 90s. Like this thing that like maybe AI would have a hard time, like you’d have a hard time writing a prompt to create collages and this sort of z, cut and pasty, multi-layered collage kind of stuff.

Deliberately ugly type, you know? Wavy, like handwritten things like that. So, that’s why I’m attired as I am today.

We both have our 90s grunge plaid. I actually have my vintage 1992 Alice in Chains shirt. Because, you know, grunge is back.

Just don’t ask me to go in the mosh pit anymore. That’s not going to happen. Yeah, we’ve kind of grown out of that.

Yeah, I think I would end up in the hospital. But I really do like that because the idea of analog and ownership over streaming and all this stuff means a sort of decentralized approach where people actually have time to incubate and germinate ideas and not share them instantly on social media. So, everybody all knows the same thing in real time.

And I think that leads to more diverse, more interesting results in the long run. You know? It’s just, again, a more organic kind of thing.

So, I’m looking forward to it. Maybe I’ll get a flip phone. Who knows?

Flip phone.

Yeah, right?

I think we’re losing trust in the content that we consume because of AI.

Yeah.

And the response to that is to create more hands-on, human-generated content. Or at least content that feels that way. That feels more human and more personal.

That’s what we’re seeing in all the design trends. And I totally believe that we’ll see more and more of that in 2026.

Yeah.

I think we saw that at Create-A-Pro Week. We saw hints of where that was going with the hands-on stuff that we did at Create-A-Pro Week, right? We had record numbers of people get up early and go out for photo shoots.

You did two of them with Nigel. And they were both really well attended. And we weren’t really sure, like, when we put that on the agenda, we weren’t sure how many people wanted to get up early and go out and walk around in the desert with their camera.

Oh, no idea. I didn’t know until I showed up in the hotel lobby. And there was just, like, a ton of people there.

And I’m like, oh, are you with me? Yeah. Is this what we’re doing?

Okay, great. But, yeah, I mean, the photo walks, just being, again, these real person experiences. And, you know, the crafts that we made.

Yeah, the creative mornings. We’ve had a creative, well, maybe not an organized lead creative morning session, but we’ve had a craft room at Create-A-Pro Week for four years, I think. And in 2025, we decided to, like, have some type of a lead thing where you did a session and I did it.

And this is, like, early. This is in the morning before the actual event begins. And, again, we didn’t know what to expect.

My session was Zentangles. Like, just grab some markers and doodle. Really.

It was really just about doodling. And yours was creating meme books, like your physical things that you could make and carry around, right?

Yeah, these little weird things. They look like matchbooks, but instead of matches, you just pick out a bunch of memes, like little printouts. Yeah, prints.

I know, right? And personalize it.

And so what happened? We had to bring more chairs in.

Yeah. We had, like, 80 people in the room or something. It was nuts.

And for my thing, we completely ran out of materials. Like, it just all got consumed, which was great. I didn’t have to take anything home.

Well, I hope and expect that we’ll have more of the same this year for Create-A-Pro Week. Because I do think that that’s the trend, is that we’re all a little, a lot fatigued with trying to keep up with the rapid, rapid evolving changes of our tools. And although we’re in the business of helping people keep up to date with their tools, and we’re tired.

Right? Is that fair to say? Yeah.

You need to take a breath, for sure.

Yeah.

But yeah, again, making something physical. Like, I do bookbinding as my hobby to just have a physical thing that I make and I can give to my friends and stuff like that. It’s a great antidote to, like, this sort of just disappearing digital culture where it’s just like, you know, you turn your phone off or whatever and just everything is gone.

But like, if you actually make a physical object that you hang on your wall, or you can hold in your hand, the permanence of that is really nice.

I decided to enroll in a drawing class. I saw Kyle Hamrick had put something on, Kyle’s one of our speakers who teaches After Effects, and he’ll be at Create-A-Pro Week. He put something on LinkedIn about how he was excited that he enrolled in a painting class.

And I had taken a painting class early 2025. And I thought, I need to do it again. I need to carve out time out of my week where I’ve committed to making something with my hands.

And I found a class that was offered in the evening. So it starts at the end of this month. I’m super excited by it.

That is really cool. That’s also cool for another reason, too. It just occurs to me that when you sign up for a class, you’re usually in the position of being the instructor.

You’ve been a teacher for a very long time. You work with instructors all the time. But now you get to turn it around and you get to be the student and experience that.

I think that will give you different insights.

It does. I love being in the student role. I love it.

I’m super thrilled by that. I had another thought on design trends that I just want to share. I’m curious if you would agree with this.

But I think we’re going to see more 3D. I think that we’ve been saying that for a few years. And it just really hasn’t really taken hold in our industry with the creative professionals that we work with.

I feel like 2026 might be the year that we see a larger embrace of it. And I think it’s because of AI. We both have a little experience using the Adobe Stager or Dimension tool.

And the biggest roadblock for that is the model. Where do you get the model? How do you find the model that you need to create your scene?

But the ability to create 3D shapes and 3D models is way improved in the last few years. And the AI is just going to make that easier and easier. So I think we’re already at a place where product photography as a profession, to be a product photographer, is pretty much close to extinction.

Pretty much everything in a product catalog is 3D generated. I think the ability to do that work is going to be accessible to many more of us.

Yeah, I agree. As the tools evolve and get easier. Because a few years ago, if you were trying to go from traditional print design or web design and get into these 3D things where you’re using models, it’s like learning a whole new language.

You just drag something the wrong way and it just kind of explodes on you. Or it disappears way out in the ether and you’re like, where’d it go? Oh no, it’s dead.

Start over. But it’s not quite like that anymore. And as the tools get easier to use, it’ll be more accessible.

The other thing is, all the design trends that we’ve been looking at and talking about seem to have completely moved away from that era of flat design.

Exactly, that was totally great. That was the other thing.

Yeah, so when Apple banished all bevel and emboss and glows and drop shadows and stuff like that, and it’s just like, nope, you get a flat plane and that’s it. And that lasted for a while, but people get tired of a certain look. I agree.

So we’ll see. I’d be really interested in getting feedback from our listeners. What do you think?

Do you want to learn more about 3D? We want to know how we can serve you. So if you’re thinking that 2026 is the year that you want to get into doing 3D work, well, let us know and we’ll put together some articles and some tutorials on that.

Absolutely.

All ears.

Awesome. Well, we were also going to talk about Pantone Color of the Year.

Don’t we have to? That’s like an obligation, right? Cloud Dancer, as they call it.

Wow, I think we could honestly do an entire hour just on Cloud Dancer if you want. Where do you want to even begin? Just with the print production?

No, my first question is, be honest, what was your very first reaction when you saw it come across your social media feed? You might not be able to share the same exact words that went through your head, I know I can’t, but what did you think when you read what it was?

I was a little confused, kind of like, really? It didn’t really grab me, to say the least. I was a little confused for a while, I’ve told you this example, where I sort of walked around thinking about this color, and I was like, hmm, where have I seen that before?

And then I was getting dressed in my sock drawer, and I had these handkerchiefs. So we have the crisp white handkerchief, and then we have this sad, wrinkled old one, and it’s like, oh yeah, it’s Cloud Dancer. It’s dingy handkerchief from 2003.

That kind of sums it up, Mike. Right? Wow.

And then, but then, you know, just all snarkiness aside, and then thinking about like, okay, how’s that going to work in print on different paper types and stuff? Like, I don’t even know. But then to take it further and read more, you know, it’s been out for a while, so there’s certainly been plenty of time for people to publish reactions to it.

And then to read some of the articles and watch some of the videos that really critiqued it in a very thoughtful way. And I learned a lot just going back and watching this stuff about sort of the origins in Western culture of minimalism. And how that has some very problematic roots, if you really look at the history of it with some really like racist and bad stuff that we would reject nowadays.

Trying to erase things like color and pattern and ornament that came from different cultures and, you know, replace it with this so-called like cleaner aesthetic. You know, Canton, whether intentionally or not, like really just walked right in there.

Yeah.

And invited that kind of conversation. At the end of the day, I kind of think it’s a good thing because it makes us have those conversations. And if you approach them genuinely and openly, you can learn a lot.

It can really make you more sensitive to the meanings of color in different cultures and across history and so forth. Personally, what it made me do is I went back and reread Nikte Cuevas’ article that she wrote for us on color and culture, which I believe was in CreativePro Magazine 7.

Let’s link to that in the show notes.

We can link to the article if I get the issue number wrong. But, you know, it was a really great article on how people’s reaction to color is a very personal, emotional response, like based in your upbringing, your history, your culture and all that stuff. And it is absolutely not universal across the world.

You know, colors mean different things in different places, right? The other fun thing about Nikte, as you know, is that she helped us at CreativePro rebrand ourselves, right? And so we made use of her expertise in developing a visual identity that’s like intentionally inclusive.

Creativity is universal. We want to invite and welcome anybody who wants to learn this stuff to our site and help them. And she took our ideas, that brand personality, and translated it into our colors, our logo, the whole approach.

And that’s also detailed in an article, which is in issue 20 of CreativePro Magazine. Nikte and David Bladner collaborated on that. It’s a great read as well.

I remember at the CreativePro Week that it was rolled out. I think that was three years ago. I love that session.

So Nikte and David did a, it was like a conversation like we’re having now, and they just walked through the thought process of the branding. And yeah, that was fantastic.

Um as a reminder we went from CreativePro went from a simple black and white logo to a logo with multiple colors Right.

Yeah, it’s like we’re just going the exact opposite direction of pantone.

Exactly. Sorry I I love color everybody who knows me if you’re if you’re watching the video of this you can see that i’m surrounded by color That’s my happy place and always has been it color speaks to me And so my reaction to the Cloud dancer was like not a positive one at all. Yeah And I didn’t really feel very comfortable talking about my my personal response Because I don’t like being a negative person.

I don’t like sharing negative thoughts and feelings so I really appreciate what you just shared about how the upside of this is that It’s getting us talking about these things and that’s always a good thing So I appreciate that you were willing to go there with it because my initial reaction was like we don’t need more of this in The world right now Yeah, it’s the opposite of what we need um, but maybe I wasn’t Looking at it I I was looking at it just too much on my own personal reaction and not on a You know a bigger a bigger stage of where design is going and trends for that Right, so I don’t know it was really interesting reading how printers were responding to it Because what did you say?

The cmyk mix of cloud dancer is I think it’s like zero One three six cmyk values. It’s like less than 10 ink across all all the process plates. So it’s like okay Yeah, any printer would tell you that that’s just hell trying to to keep consistent on a print run Right, yeah, we’ll get sabine lens on here to to like, you know, give us the the dirt.

Yeah she knows a heck of a lot more than I do about press tolerances in 2026, but but yeah to It just was I was like, oh wow Like what paper are you printing that on and how is that even going to be consistent ever?

The paper could be cloud dancer before you even add any ink to it. And maybe that’s Maybe that’s part of the point of this But I I do think it’s also really worth mentioning that I think this was a very smart marketing move by Pantone because we’re talking about Pantone There we are. Yeah, right.

Yeah and I don’t know You know, I don’t know that we would be talking about Pantone if it wasn’t for the Pantone color of the year.

So That’s true, I don’t I don’t know if it’s going to generate sales for them, but maybe I don’t know again And brand awareness Notoriety is better than none. Maybe I don’t know Exactly.

Um, I also wanted to mention that last night. I was listening to a different podcast the presentation design podcast, um nolan hyams who’s a regular speaker and contributor to CreativePro that’s the podcast he has been doing for over 10 years and They talked about there’s three of them on that podcast and they talked about cloud dancer From the lens of presentation design and you know what? It’s very different than print design and I I hadn’t really appreciated that distinction and they all three of them on that podcast believe that We the design trends for presentation design for 2026 will be more pastel colors more light Less of the you know dark view versus the light view And they felt like pantone got it, right whether they like like it as a color or not wasn’t really The issue it was is this where the trend is going? So I thought that was really interesting. There’s no problem with white and presentation design like there isn’t print, right?

No, and actually I have I have the official uh description here Which was uh a whisper of tranquility and peace in a noisy world And like what what did I lead with when I was describing like how I Felt and what I needed in this moment, and it was just organically exactly that so They they do they are on to something in some way I don’t I don’t know about the execution of it, but like that that vibe I think a lot of people are definitely feeling

Yeah Yeah, fair enough I think they’re got some really brilliant marketers on the pantone team whether whether or not I mean I had a visceral feeling to the Announcement, but isn’t that what you want when you’re doing marketing you want people to respond?

Yeah, and you know nobody You’re not usually going to use just a monochromatic Approach to any design so it’s like what do you combine it with like if you’re combining it with pastels or muted colors and stuff It could in a presentation design. It could be really nice.

Yeah, exactly Well, you know the topic that we have somehow Mostly avoided until now which maybe is maybe by subconscious design is is AI because AI is just dominating The entire landscape everywhere. It’s exhausting, but it is our reality.

Yes Well, I I think I took a break for about 20 minutes 20 minutes From it because when I was writing writing next week’s newsletters this morning, of course, you know, there’s there’s plenty of content about Ai in in uh all the articles and video topics. So yeah, it wasn’t a long pause. This is a very short pause We kind of can’t afford to Uh, no, uh, it’s kind of impossible also like what tool are you going to use where?

to escape it, you know, uh, certainly nothing that adobe puts out or canva at this point or You know lots of other things as well So, where do you see?

the CreativePros role in Helping the creative professionals navigate ai

Yeah, it’s it’s actually exactly the newsletter topic spoiler, uh that I was thinking about using for next week, which was um artificial intelligence genuine wisdom was like the You know overall topic and it’s like yeah, we have all these like whiz bang tools that that can like Process data and that that’s sort of the definition of intelligence is the ability to process information But only humans can possess wisdom to evaluate it put it in context use it effectively towards a specific goal right So that the ai tools They they can you know astonish us with the things that they can just you know plop out and um Simulate intelligence, you know simulate this this experience that that people Like us have built up over these decades, but it’s actually up to us to evaluate it and and to say okay Yeah, that makes sense or that’s what I what I actually want Um, the ai doesn’t know anything it’s it’s just assembling it from the things that it’s been trained on but Only only humans know things so

So we’re going to continue to talk about ai Yes produce training content around ai And with the with the understanding that it’s hard and that We feel the same Exhaustion I guess it’s the best I feel i’ve i’ve used this before.

I feel like it’s a speeding bullet train And i’m trying to stay on the track and I keep getting blown off Yeah, it’s just it’s hard and you know, we make it our job. You and I both make it our job to um at least be knowledgeable about You know at least at least have some awareness of everything that’s going on Like you said in the beginning of this it’s impossible to To know it all and to be experts in all of it um, so I think both you and I are more than in a generalist kind of Place where we’re trying to be aware of all the different directions that ai is How it’s impacting creative professionals.

Yeah Examples I can give you from from content So that creator pro puts out little tips like rob de winter Uh talking about using some of the machine learning tools in photoshop to adjust colors without having to make a selection Perfect like amazing great use of ai. I don’t have nobody In the history of ever wanted to make a selection, right? That’s so true I need to change that color Oh, you used to have to select it now before and that was a whole range of skills is making selections in photoshop They’re probably like linkedin learning courses just on making select.

Oh, I have some Right.

Yeah and but now like rob shows it’s These tools where the machine can figure out, you know, how to how to change that color without you doing that So great great use for ai Another thing we have is this video by camille holden one of the presenters at the presentation design conference Who shows like oh, you know sure you can use canva to make this presentation design But actually if you have a collaborative workflow Your colleagues aren’t going to be able to edit the thing And they won’t even be able to make like a tiny tweak to the text without blowing the whole thing up so How do we actually you know make a presentation with the efficiency of ai but actually? That works in a in a collaborative workflow and she shows how to do that in in powerpoint.

So We’ll just keep producing content like that Like yes by all means take advantage of the of the power that the tools give you but at the end of the day You need something that actually works For your workflow and that’s where what i’m focused on with the video and the article content i’m Feeling like there’s a tremendous amount of hype around ai on social media.

There’s all these promises Yeah, and if you’re not using ai Then you know you’re already behind and you’re a loser, you know, that’s that’s kind of the tone, right? Oh, yeah Just don’t listen to any of that No people.

Yeah, right people. It’s salesmen. They’re they’re they’re selling a product.

They’re they’re selling a service They’re trying to keep their stock price high um That it’ll be interesting to see I mean a lot of people think 2026 is a year that a bubble pops because some of these corporations have Valuations that don’t match with their you know business plans like, you know, they’re not even profitable. So It’s like okay. Why are you valued at a trillion dollars if you don’t even turn a profit or have a plan for doing?

So they’re gonna be absorbed. I think there’s gonna be Submerging of some of the ai tools that are out there

Yeah, yeah, and you know companies like microsoft companies like google companies like adobe that already have They’re not ai only like they already had products and services that were well established People that people want and they’re just integrating the power of this stuff into their existing Products and services that makes more sense to me You know just maybe more risky

um companies that only provide that service and maybe they are operating at a loss with the game plan of being Bought out by a bigger larger company like google or photoshop and being absorbed into them Yeah, it’s more comfortable for us creative professionals to access the ai within the tools that we’re already using

for sure

photoshop has definitely acknowledged that by adding the The third-party ai tools within photoshop and the other ones too illustrator has the same things I um, they cost a lot though That’s a whole other conversation. We won’t go into but yeah You just you should know that if you’re using like nano banana in photoshop, it’s Tenfold more expensive for you than using firefly Right.

Yeah, actually that’s an article that i’m thinking about assigning to someone is is just decoding the whole uh generative credits And and understanding like what’s going to cost you additional stuff and what’s not in in these tools now because it’s more Complicated than it used to be.

Um, yeah Actually, i’m glad you brought that up we are i’m planning a session um on that topic in the design and ai summit that’s going to really Explain like these. These are what your um, your subscriptions there’s now there’s multiple subscription levels, too So it gets really confusing talking about creative cloud So this session is gonna just lay out in a very clear way. These are your subscription plans This is what you get for it.

This is where your how many generative credits you have this is the tools that use those credits because the truth is a lot of the things that you may um grab ai to do you don’t need to Like the remove tool doesn’t need to use ai in every situation And if you don’t use ai then you’re not you know You’re not using those generative credits like if you’re not using generative phil if you’re using the remove tool instead So this session is going to just outline that for workflows. Here’s how to manage the credits you have So that you you know how much you have to work with and you know, uh when and where to use them That’s that’s awesome.

That’s exactly the article I want.

It’s a very practical Knowledge for these but we should work together on on having that content in a couple different places The the truth is all that information is out there, but it’s impossible to navigate It’s there is no one Place that you can go online. That’s just gonna clearly outline it all for you

It doesn’t I seriously think between all the different options I think there’s about two dozen different creative cloud subscription plans now between you know enterprise and teams and individual and pro and pro plus and Mega, you know awesome plan firefly only express only

Yeah, and it’s just gonna get more complex I don’t understand the marketing behind that

Yeah me neither Yeah, but here’s the thing is and is that like where wherever like any of this stuff goes like what? regardless of any tech or trend um Things are going to continue like design art marketing communication publishing all that stuff is going to continue in some form or other CreativePro is going to continue and like we’re gonna exist to help people make sense of it and make use of it So that that’s the great thing.

It’s like we’re not adobe. Like we’re not canva.

We’re not any of these things we’re just That’s right, you know taking a higher level view of it all we can Provide you the real world Reality, this is this is what’s real. This is what works right now. This is where This is where you should focus And if adobe’s putting something out that we don’t agree with Or we don’t see a use for we’ll we’ll say one, you know Yeah, don’t do that do this.

Yeah, exactly Yeah um, I pulled this quote from a forbes article that I thought I would read it’s pretty it’s pretty strongly written and I don’t know that I Fully agree with it except for except for the last sentence It says website design infographics copywriting almost all Almost all content production will be handled primarily by ai within a year or two That’s scary. That’s really scary and I don’t know I don’t know. I think it may be a a little bit I don’t know Of that and see what their ties are to selling that technology Um, but let’s go on because I think it ends I think it ends on the right note it says if you’re playing in tactics land You risk becoming redundant What matters more than ever is strategy what you’re making and for home?

I think that is absolutely a hundred percent right on Yeah, that that that makes a lot of sense to me.

So when I think about it, yeah, it’s like Well, you know if you’re a single service you provide just like one particular skill That can be you know sort of replicated by ai that that’s the danger zone But if if you’re working like I think of it as high and broad so if you’re working at a high level Strategic, you know thinking and if you’re working cross platforms like cross application workflows That’s the stuff that’s actually going to become more valuable as as the lower level and single use stuff becomes like automated and and quicker

Yeah to be more of a generalist that can strategize plans

Yeah, and can and can understand how one thing will affect all the other stuff

Because at at the end of the day a tool is a tool if the tool changes you’re gonna drop adapt another tool, but you know what your strategy is and what your You’re trying to create and for whom

For whom that’s that’s always the thing because that’s why we make the stuff right is for The person who’s consuming it not for us, right?

That’s why we make our training content for those who are consuming it Not for us and for those of you that are designing and creating content. You’re making that content for your consumers Wow, we could talk all day We could are we did we just get started how I know I love hanging out with you Mike Absolutely.

What are we going to talk about next? What do you want?

Well, let’s let’s wrap this up by um, By sharing with us what you’re what you can share about your content plan for 2026. What are you excited about?

um, so I am particularly excited about uh What’s coming up very soon, which is will be in the february issue of creator pro magazine is sort of the announcement Of the before and after collection coming to CreativePro so if people don’t know what before and after was it was this legendary design magazine by john mcquade who unfortunately passed away a couple of years ago and It just provided like an entire generation of graphic designers with like world-class Instruction on how to think about design problems and solve them really effectively With your own your own style as well. Um, just like really Approaching, you know the task thinking it through and creating beautiful and effective work. Um, and after john passed away, we we meaning like david blattner and I just really Wanted to take that content and make sure that it survived and lived on and touched another generation of designers It’s just too good to let it just languish and disappear.

So We got the rights to it and um, the CreativePro editorial staff Has been working feverishly to get it all published up on the website So there’s like hundreds of posts that are active now with the before and after content and i’m, particularly excited about it because it fills A hole that we actually had in CreativePro like so we have thousands of how-to articles But almost all of them had been tied to a particular tool how to do this in photoshop how to do this in indesign Didn’t actually have a ton of content of just how to approach a design problem Now we do thanks to john and thanks to the before and after content Um, so i’m super excited about all that stuff being up on the website Announcing it in the magazine Some of it is free that just anybody can come to the website and pick up a quick design tip Some of it is members only downloads As well, so i’m really excited about that New content categories, so we’re going to start exploring things like video production So we have a video coming up by myra ferguson on getting started in premiere We’re going to look into that We also know that people have asked for more content on The microsoft office apps and integrating those into your workflow and solving problems with those so we’re going to be looking at that Of course everything adobe does Keeping an eye on canva and affinity And supporting all of your amazing events with uh, you know content about ai marketing accessibility and design the whole thing so it’s just It’s just a lot of stuff, but it’s a lot of fun

So it’s going to be a fantastic year and I am most excited about that before and after content, too I’ve i’ve read a lot of it and It’s so awesome that it gets to live on

Yeah, yeah, absolutely it just it feels like it belongs at CreativePro and and it just it feels really right to have it

So yeah, we would love to get your feedback if you’ve read some of them leave some comments on the articles Let us let us know what resonated with you

Thank you.

It helps us when we get that when we get that feedback from our community It really helps us know we’re doing the right thing or maybe we need to do something different Right.

We we are here for you. We’re not right not here to entertain ourselves. We’re here to help Well, we do that pretty well, too.

Yeah, we do entertain ourselves as well. I’m lying there Awesome awesome. All right.

Did anything else you want to share?

Uh, wow, no, I think I think we pretty much covered it.

Um, but yeah, like I said we could go on just uh, As long as you want I I wanted to share one change that i’m excited about for 2026 event related Um, I mentioned that we’re doing design and ai again In april, but what we’re really the reality what we’re really doing is we’re spreading design and ai out Through the year we’re doing two days in april And we’re doing another two days in september. I think it is I should have had that date in front of me um, and the reason is it’s It’s hard to keep up. It’s hard to keep up.

It’s moving very fast. So Doing design doing a design and ai event once a year Just didn’t feel like enough so instead of doing four jam-packed days, um one time during the year we’re doing two days in the spring and two days in the fall and one Pass can get access to all four of those days. So Go to our CreativePro events page And you’ll find um the dates and all the details on that so i’m i’m really excited by that change I don’t create pros never done a split event like that before so It’s kind of you’re not doing it monthly You want to do monthly ai events I just we’ll work our way up to something like that.

Maybe yeah, right That would be a little kooky, but no it makes it makes complete sense. And you know the challenge for me With written content and youtube videos is like oh god, you know what I what I put up in 2024 is like completely Gone now like it’s been completely superseded. So I think it’s fantastic that you’re you’re you know Doing these events throughout the year.

That’s always been a challenge. Um as a as a software trainer I mean, we’ve we’ve always had that challenge that we create content and then at some point it becomes It needs update or it becomes completely outdated or the tool gets Discontinued that happens too. We create training and then the app gets gets dropped but It’s never been as challenging as it is today because of ai those things are just Yeah happening happening so rapidly So, all right.

Well my this we’ll have to do it again sometime. We’ll do it again. Yeah Thank you for hanging out with me for It’s been almost an hour.

It’s been awesome Thank you everybody for listening if you’re still listening you’ve been here through the whole thing we really appreciate you If you enjoyed what you listen To and hopefully you all just love listening to us Give us a five star rating because that really helps it. Uh, our podcasts get shared more widely so we can Reach more creative professionals out there and don’t forget we have that podcast Code podcast to save a hundred dollars on CreativePro events in 2026 And to see our whole event lineup go to creativepro.com events And you can use that same code to get 15 off of membership where membership gives you access to all the member-only Content that Mike is working on and there’s tons of it And until next time keep keep learning keep creating and keep sharing And keep coming back Sharing sharing with us what what you’ve learned and what you want to keep learning Thanks for being part of our community.

Thanks Mike for being here. I’ll see you all again soon Okay.

Bye