There's a lot of noise right now about AI replacing junior positions. This is my take (based on my brain), just what I genuinely think is going to happen.

Young people are creative. Full stop.

I just got back from OFFF Barcelona, one of the biggest design festivals on the planet, and I was surrounded by young designers buzzing with ideas. Are they creative? Yes. A thousand times yes. There was this electric, almost contagious energy in every conversation, every brainstorm, every sketch scribbled on the back of a programme. I genuinely believe my generation is more creative than any that came before us, not because we're smarter, but because we were shaped differently. We grew up inside fast-moving algorithms. Adaptability isn't a skill we learned; it's our native language. Change doesn't scare us.

People always say the youngest generation is the most aware: of climate, of injustice, of animal harm. There's something about a naive view of the world that keeps it radically open, open to possibility, open to reimagining everything from scratch.

Naivety = optimism.
And as creatives?
We have to be optimistic.

We cannot afford to lie in bed paralysed by everything that's broken. I see that kind of heavy, inherited pessimism in (not all) older creative circles, a resignation to "how things are." They call it realism. But honestly, what is realistic, exactly? And why would we design for the most likely scenario? If it's already happening, it's not inspiring. That doesn't make me want to create anything.

About those agencies not hiring juniors anymore

Let's be honest: in ten years, those agencies will be deeply, quietly average. AI is already woven into creative processes, and it's only going deeper. And here's something I've noticed: anyone using AI at full tilt has produced slop. I have. You have. Everyone has. Slop is part of the process. You have to generate it to find the gold underneath.

But here's the thing: junior designers understand this moment better than anyone. They think faster. They've never known a different pace. They are, right now, the most adapted humans on earth to this creative landscape. They think faster. They've never known a world without this pace. Not hiring them is a slow, quiet retreat from the future.

Creativity has to go somewhere

Every real creative knows the feeling: the idea that won't let you sleep, the 1am grab for the sketchbook, the urgent need to get it out. That restless urgency lives most powerfully in young designers. And if agencies don't give that energy somewhere to go, it will go somewhere else. We'll see a wave of junior-led studios, independent voices, new creative models that the old agencies didn't see coming, because they stopped paying attention to the people who were building them.

So now I'm asking you,
who is actually more creative? Seniors or juniors?

We need a system change.

Using young designers as image-cutters and basic-task machines was never a great look. AI just made it impossible to ignore. And the agencies choosing not to hire juniors at all? Thank you, genuinely, for telling us exactly who we shouldn't work for.

Here's the future I want to see: agencies that put junior designers' work on a pedestal, supported by senior talent rather than buried beneath it. A creative environment where every voice is heard and the hierarchy of ideas is flatter, faster, and more alive. I don't want AI to replace anyone, not seniors, not juniors. I want a world where we're all chasing better ideas, together.

Go to any graduation show. Look at what young designers are making. Tell me, with a straight face, that talent isn't there. You can't. And if you think you can, you're simply not paying attention.