I saw a video on IG last week. A guy showed how to make the “human aesthetic” with AI. Scanned paper, wobbly type, lo-fi grain, hand-drawn feel. All from a prompt.

This is the problem. The aesthetic everyone calls “anti-AI” is already easy to fake.

The human aesthetic always worked as a trust signal, a way to say designed by a human. When polish gets cheap, imperfection becomes the proof. The moment AI can copy the imperfection, the proof stops working.

What survives is the proof of a human behind the work. The trail.

Here’s what I think we should do about it as designers.

Strategy 01

Film a short vlog from one day at work and drop it into your case study. Adam Syed does this well through his work at Twitch, it's a great share of reality. If you could show more of how you actually work, that would be even better.

The point is to make it concise and relevant for your project story. Coinbase did it on a bigger scale with their behind-the-scenes video of their campaign.

Strategy 02

Share the working Figma file, the one with the mess still in it. The clean portfolio visual file shows the outcome, the working file shows the thinking. You engage with the conclusion, but you convince with your thinking.

Drop the link in your case study and let recruiters click through. Many don't do it, but I've already seen posts on LinkedIn from hiring managers requesting Figma files instead of polished portfolios. This will get even more popular I think.

My strategy: think about your job application like a user flow. Design the paths for hiring managers, those who will just skim, and those who will dig deeper. You don't show everything on the same level. Use progressive disclosure here.

Strategy 03

The surprising ones, things you haven’t read in any other portfolio. Generic praise about “delightful experiences” reads like AI now, trade-offs read like a real designer project situation. Cause we both know that design projects in business context are never ideal, there’s always “option A over B because X”.

Pick one per case study. One real trade-off is worth more than a paragraph of polished, happy designer path.

Strategy 04

Build something outside your day job and put it in your portfolio. A weekend project, a redesign you weren’t asked for, a tool you made for yourself, a tiny app that solves one small problem. The work nobody hired you to do says more about you than the work you were paid for.

This is the hardest level because it costs time you don’t owe anyone. Cause of that, it’s also the strongest signal. Side quests show taste, curiosity, and the kind of energy that no case study template can fake.

Strategy 05

People need to see patterns in your work, and the only way that happens is if your work is online, in more than one place. Contra, X, LinkedIn, your portfolio site, IG, TikTok, wherever your people are. Social media is powerful. It’s overwhelming, but for me, it’s still been the best thing that ever happened to my career.

Same project, many surfaces, many cuts. That’s the trail, and that’s how people start to recognise your work before they even know your name.

Tools I actually use in my workflow. Some links support this newsletter.