You shall not pass

Dealing with A.I in design education, through analogies with LOTR

Written by Tjerk Jippe Dijkstra after a walk & talk with Esther Wijdeveld

• Location: Leeuwarden
• Date and Time: Around 12:00 on Saturday, April 19, 2025
• Note: No AI was used; autocorrect was used.

Audience: Anyone willing to listen to me rant, thanks by the way.

When having a conversation with my colleague Esther Wijdeveld about the holy shit state of the world and ofcourse the use of A.I, we saw lots of parralels in our shared favorite movie, The Lord of the Rings. Funny enough, we strongly believe a movie trilogy like LOTR would have never excisted without the dedication and love and time that was put into something like this. And we know because we have watched the entire making of DVD probably more than the actual movie at this point.

The friendships on set, the camaraderie, the shared experiences, and the unwavering support that fueled the creation of such a masterpiece. These bonds were forged in the crucible of creativity. Something we should strive for in Design Education.

Inspired by the book How to Be a Design Student (and How to Teach Them) by Mitch Goldstein.

In special this excerpt: "Encourage students to focus on creative practice, process over perfection, and continuous learning"

Now there were the evil A.I ring of power comes in to screw this all up, and we must learn our students to fight against it.

“The world is changing. I feel it in the water. I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air…” — Galadriel (and probably any design teacher trying to keep up with generative AI)

“Instead of a dark lord, you would have a queen!”

Design is a craft. You learn by doing. Iterating. Failing. Trying again.

A.I. offers shortcuts — but “one does not simply prompt their way into good design.” Students need to go through the messy parts: the doubt, the critique, the wrestling with what humans really need. A.I. is seductive.

Let’s be real: A.I. is tempting. It's fast, shiny, and offers power — design power. The Galadriel in me has been tempted more than once to whisper a prompt and watch a whole visual concept appear in 0.6 seconds.

But as she says:

“All shall love me and despair.”

That’s what scares me. Not that students use A.I., but that they start relying on it — letting it shape their taste, their process, even their sense of authorship.

Designers need to know when to say no to power. To resist the easy, polished outcome in favor of the raw, uncertain path. Or, like Galadriel, risk becoming something beautiful but empty — a ghostly echo of what creativity used to be.

“I feel... thin. Sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread.”

Bilbo knew it. And I’ve seen it in students too — that twitchy vibe of someone who’s used A.I. for everything. Their brainstorms? Generated. Their color schemes? Suggested. Their portfolios? Polished by a chatbot. Their process? Just a series of prompts.

Their excuses? Plenty. They say they’re too busy, or they don’t have the skills, or they’re just not creative enough. But the truth is, they’re scared. Scared of failure, scared of rejection, scared of being judged.

At first it seems like a shortcut. But over time, it hollows things out. They stop thinking. Stop taking risks. Stop playing. Their work becomes safe, shallow, and eerily detached.

A.I. has made them invisible. Not in the cool ring-wraith way — more in the I no longer recognize my own ideas kind of way.

“All we have to decide is what to do with the tools that are given to us.”

spoken by Gandalf in The Fellowship of the Ring. It reminds us that while we may not control all the circumstances or resources we have, we do have the agency to choose how we use what we are given.

Be very very critical of the use, get comfortable with being uncomfortable.

I am not anti A.I, who would be, thats crazy, its here we have to deal with it. But I am anti lazy thinking, I am anti effort, I am anti mediocrity. As Miyazaki said, "Whenever someone creates something with all of their heart, then that creation is given a soul." When he was shown some A.I generated experiments he said: "I strongly feel that this is an insult to life itself."

SOURCES

• "How to Be a Design Student (and How to Teach Them)"