Redefining the Junior Designer in the AI Era.
Date
Nov 14, 2025
Forget the ladder. It’s being rebuilt as you climb.
Once upon a time, being a junior designer was simple. You made tea, resized logos and cleaned up files. Graft equalled progress. You climbed rung by rung until you found your voice.
Now? Some employers are asking juniors to arrive “AI fluent” from day one. The job ads talk about prompts, efficiency tools and new platforms. The irony is tough: the very people meant to be learning the craft are being asked to leapfrog it.
Ben Anthony, Design Director at Dentsu Creative and former Shillington teacher
Imagining the Professional Prompter Problem.
Imagine a world where studios hire people who know how to talk to machines, not people. The result? Work that looks slick but feels hollow. That wouldn’t be a good world to be in.
A student can type “futuristic campaign, neon gradients, empowering women” and get a dozen mock-ups in seconds. But without grounding in typography, composition or critical thinking, the work collapses under pressure.
Ben Anthony, Design Director at Dentsu Creative and former Shillington teacher
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What Juniors Should Really Learn.
Juniors who thrive now are those who learn when to resist the machine. Knowing how to break the grid, when to keep friction in the process and how to critique the output.
AI might be a turbo button but the role of the junior has always been about graft, curiosity and mistakes that teach you. That hasn’t changed.
Amy Prus, Lead Teacher at Shillington
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The Real Premium: A Human Eye.
Studios will increasingly pay for juniors who can prove process, not just outputs. Who can show the thumbnails, the dead ends and the critical reasoning that AI cannot.
At Shillington, we’re not teaching people to become “prompt engineers.” We’re building designers who can think, critique and shape culture. AI is just another tool in the belt.
Because the truth is, there’s no shortcut to creativity. And if you’re ambitious enough to want in, you don’t need to climb someone else’s broken ladder. You can build your own.
So are we here to redefine the title Junior Designer or does the title itself need to change? Maybe we don’t need juniors, mids or seniors at all. Maybe we just need designers.
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