COOKED
Desktop publishing is screen work: flowing supplied copy into InDesign templates, setting type, resizing and color-correcting images, checking pagination and preflighting PDFs for the printer. Generative layout tools, template systems like Canva and automated prepress checks already do the bulk of this at usable quality, and employment has been shrinking for two decades — 3,350 US jobs remain. There is no license, no signature requirement, and the client buys a finished file rather than a relationship with the person who built it.
Core tasks are already automatable. Flowing tagged copy into a master page, applying paragraph and character styles, autoflowing threaded text frames, running preflight for missing fonts and RGB images, and exporting PDF/X-1a are all steps that InDesign's own Data Merge, GREP styles, and scripting already do unattended — a 4 rather than a 10 because even the residual judgment work, picking a kerning fix or reflowing a widow, is now suggested by generative layout tools rather than requiring you.
Fully desk- and screen-based. The only time you leave the workstation is walking a proof to a printer or holding a press sheet against a color bar, and even that has largely moved to soft-proofing on a calibrated monitor — the 2 is for the hard-copy proof check that still occasionally exists, not for anything resembling machine work.
No licence, no signature requirement. No state licenses desktop publishing, no board certifies it, and nobody's name appears in the colophon as legally responsible for the file — if the wrong price runs in a 50,000-piece mailer, the client or the printer eats the reprint, which is why this sits at the floor rather than at a 5.
Anonymous artifact production. Long-term work with one editorial client builds familiarity with their house style sheet and their tolerance for tight leading, and that's worth the 4 — but the deliverable is a packaged folder of INDD, fonts and links that any other operator can open and continue, so the client is buying the file, not you.
Executes defined procedures on defined inputs. You decide whether a caption breaks to a second line or an image gets cropped tighter to fit the column, and those calls are real but bounded by an established style guide, brand standards and the printer's specs — a 4 rather than an 8 because the art director or editor signs off on the layout before it goes to plate.
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Fashion Designers EXPOSED
Has AI actually changed your work?