{
  "source": "Cooked Index — occupational AI risk register",
  "page": "https://cookedindex.com/jobs/designers-all-other/",
  "methodology": "https://cookedindex.com/methodology",
  "notice": "Verdicts are re-examined as evidence accumulates. Re-fetch before relying on this; the page above always carries the current score.",
  "scored_at": "2026-08-11",
  "model": "claude-opus-5",
  "occupation": {
    "title": "Designers, All Other",
    "soc_code": "27-1029",
    "category": "Media",
    "us_employment": 9480,
    "median_annual_wage": 64950
  },
  "verdict": "EXPOSED",
  "risk_resistance": 35,
  "contested": false,
  "near_boundary": false,
  "dimensions": {
    "task_resistance": 8,
    "embodiment": 8,
    "liability_shield": 2,
    "trust_premium": 8,
    "judgment_accountability": 9
  },
  "reasoning": {
    "task_resistance": "Concept sketching, mood boards, colourway variants, CAD elevations and cut-sheet specs — the bulk of billable hours for an exhibit or textile designer — are now produced at usable quality by generative and parametric tools, which is why this sits at 8 rather than mid-teens; what keeps it off the floor is material selection you can only judge by handling a swatch or a laminate sample and fabricator back-and-forth over what can actually be built.",
    "embodiment": "An 8 reflects that the physical work is real but episodic: site surveys, sightline checks in a gallery, focusing a lighting rig, mock-up reviews and press-check approvals happen in bursts around a load-in or trade-show install date, while the weeks between are desk-bound — not the daily uncontrolled-site exposure of the trades who execute the drawings.",
    "liability_shield": "There is no state license or protected title for exhibit, set, textile or packaging design; ADA clearances, egress and fire-rating on a built exhibit get stamped by an architect or licensed engineer, and product safety sign-off lands on the manufacturer, so nothing in the paper trail requires your name.",
    "trust_premium": "An 8 recognises that repeat clients — a museum's exhibits department, a brand's packaging group, a producer who rehires you across shows — hire you partly on the working relationship and your sense of their house style, but the sale is still the portfolio and the deck, and procurement routinely rebids the work or hands your files to a cheaper studio.",
    "judgment_accountability": "You own real calls — how a visitor is routed through an exhibit, whether a fabric repeat reads at production scale, what a lighting cue does to a scene — but those decisions get reviewed by a curator, art director or producer before spend is committed, and a wrong one costs a reprint or a rebuild rather than anyone's safety or a legal exposure, which places it at 9 rather than the mid-teens."
  },
  "rationale": "This is a catch-all bucket — exhibit designers, lighting and set designers, textile and pattern designers, packaging and display designers — and the modal worker spends most hours on screen-based concepting, rendering, layout iteration and spec documentation, all of which generative image and CAD-assist tools now do at usable quality. What holds is the physical half: walking a gallery or trade-show floor, checking sightlines and materials in person, and coordinating fabricators and installers. There is no license, so nothing legally requires a human to sign the design.",
  "outlook": "Concept and rendering hours collapse over the next decade while the surviving work concentrates in specifiers, installers, and client-facing project leads — expect fewer seats and a sharper split between screen designers and those who own the physical build.",
  "what_would_raise_it": {
    "levers": [
      {
        "dimension": "embodiment",
        "change": "Task-mix shift toward on-site work: if concepting and rendering hours collapse to generative tools, the residual job becomes site survey, mockup review, materials sign-off, sightline and load-in checks, and fabricator supervision on gallery/trade-show floors. Exhibit and set designers whose contracts already bundle installation supervision (IATSE-covered scenic work, museum fabrication contracts) would sit almost entirely in this tier.",
        "plausibility": "already happening",
        "would_add": 5
      },
      {
        "dimension": "task_resistance",
        "change": "Genuine two-tier structure: routine tier (pattern grading, packaging dielines, layout variants, spec sheets) automates; judgment tier (curatorial narrative for an exhibit, ADA and egress-aware visitor flow, material behavior under stage lighting, fabrication tolerance calls) remains. Score rises only in the sense that the remaining hours are the hard ones — headcount falls at the same time.",
        "plausibility": "already happening",
        "would_add": 4
      },
      {
        "dimension": "liability_shield",
        "change": "Code-driven sign-off creeping into exhibit and set work: NFPA 101 / IBC assembly-occupancy egress and flame-spread requirements for temporary exhibits, and Section 508/ADA accessibility review for museum interpretive design, are increasingly required to be stamped by a licensed architect or engineer. If venue insurers or municipal permit offices begin requiring a named design professional of record on temporary exhibit and scenic packages, the designer coordinating that stamp gains a thin shield — full liability accrues to the architect/PE, not the designer.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 3
      },
      {
        "dimension": "trust_premium",
        "change": "Provenance requirements in commissioned art and museum contexts: if funders (NEA/NEH grant terms, IMLS museum grants) or juried design competitions require disclosure and human-authorship attestation for commissioned exhibit and scenic design, and textile/pattern buyers demand human-authored provenance to avoid the copyright unregistrability of AI-generated work established in Thaler v. Perlmutter, buyers begin paying specifically for a documented human designer.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 4
      },
      {
        "dimension": "judgment_accountability",
        "change": "Named responsibility on high-consequence installations: if standard contracts for large trade-show and museum builds name a single designer accountable for structural, crowd-flow and material-safety decisions with insurer-backed E&O requirements, the role owns consequential calls rather than delivering deliverables.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 3
      }
    ],
    "ceiling_note": "Even with every lever, this bucket likely tops out in the 50s. There is no licensure body for exhibit, set, textile or packaging design and none is organizing to create one, so the liability shield stays thin and borrowed from architects and engineers. The screen-based half of the work — the majority of hours for the modal worker — has no protective mechanism at all. Levers here concentrate value in fewer on-site senior roles rather than protecting the 9,480 headcount."
  },
  "adjudication": null,
  "employment_history": {
    "points": [
      {
        "y": 2017,
        "emp": 7770,
        "wage": 55930
      },
      {
        "y": 2018,
        "emp": 8450,
        "wage": 60570
      },
      {
        "y": 2019,
        "emp": 10610,
        "wage": 64620
      },
      {
        "y": 2020,
        "emp": 10680,
        "wage": 63750
      },
      {
        "y": 2021,
        "emp": 10190,
        "wage": 62310
      },
      {
        "y": 2022,
        "emp": 11180,
        "wage": 65390
      },
      {
        "y": 2023,
        "emp": 9880,
        "wage": 67500
      },
      {
        "y": 2024,
        "emp": 9680,
        "wage": 66220
      },
      {
        "y": 2025,
        "emp": 9480,
        "wage": 64950
      }
    ],
    "from": 2017,
    "to": 2025,
    "change_pct": 22,
    "comparable_from": 2019,
    "spans_soc_revision": true
  },
  "pivots": [],
  "license": "https://cookedindex.com/terms"
}