When Creativity Becomes Performance.
What happens to creative practice when the ability to generate images, text, music and code is no longer limited to humans?
Original event artwork
The ability to produce creative work is changing. The responsibility to judge it is not.
On 17 March 2026, Carlos Simpson spoke at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, as part of the D&AD Dead or Alive? event series.
The session was developed for Graphic Communication Design students at Central Saint Martins and examined how creative practice is changing in an environment where artificial intelligence can generate images, text, music and code at increasing speed and scale.
The question is not simply whether machines can generate creative outputs. The more consequential question is what happens to human creative practice when production itself becomes abundant.
When production becomes automated, what becomes valuable?
The proposition explored through the session was that judgement becomes increasingly important when the ability to generate outputs is no longer scarce.
Production and creative judgement are not the same capability.
Generative systems can expand the number of available options. They do not, by themselves, establish which option matters, which is appropriate or which should be rejected.
Production
Images, language, music, code and variations can increasingly be generated rapidly and at scale.
Judgement
Creative professionals still need to interpret context, establish criteria, evaluate alternatives and take responsibility for the choices they make.
Dead or Alive?
A D&AD event examining creativity, technology and the changing role of creative practitioners.
Creativity is being performed under new conditions.
Creative professionals increasingly operate within systems that reward visibility, frequency, speed and continuous production.
Generative technology intensifies this condition because production capacity can expand without a corresponding increase in strategic clarity.
More output can create more possibilities. It can also create more noise.
The challenge therefore becomes one of selection, interpretation and responsibility: understanding what deserves attention, what serves the problem and what should never move beyond possibility.
Three forces are changing the context.
Performance culture
Creative work can become inseparable from the pressure to remain visible, productive and continuously present.
Algorithmic visibility
Distribution systems influence what is seen, repeated and rewarded, shaping creative behaviour as well as audience attention.
Generative tools
Artificial intelligence increases production capacity and makes the ability to evaluate, direct and reject outputs more consequential.
Creativity is not defined by how much we can generate, but by what we choose to make meaningful.
From creative pressure to decision leadership.
The Central Saint Martins discussion developed into a broader proposition about the role of design when production becomes increasingly abundant: the strategic value of design moves upstream, towards judgement, direction and decision-making.
Read Design as Decision LeadershipDesign should help determine direction.
Carlos Simpson Design Studio works across strategy, identity, communication and design systems to help organisations translate complex questions into clearer decisions and coherent outcomes.