The Magician: Design Alchemy in the Age of AI

The Magician is that archetype who knows how to take what’s above and channel it below — one hand to the heavens, one hand to the earth, surrounded by tools of every element. Translation: they’re the original UX designer, prototyping the cosmos.

If The Fool is about the leap, The Magician is about the toolkit. And in 2025, our toolkit suddenly includes generative AI — which is equal parts wand, sword, chalice, and pentacle, depending on how you wield it.

The Magician as Designer

Designers right now are scrambling to define their relationship with AI. Is it a co-pilot? A threat? A brainstorming buddy who occasionally spits out nightmare fuel? The truth is, The Magician never asks whether a tool is “good” or “bad.” They ask: how can I channel this energy into something useful, intentional, maybe even beautiful?

For me, that looks like building design systems faster, prototyping with more breadth, and letting AI show me options I’d never sketch myself. But it also looks like curation, judgment, and taste — because a wand is only as powerful as the hand that guides it.

The real alchemy isn’t in the tool; it’s in us.

The Magician as Me

Post-layoff, I feel very Magician: surrounded by new tools, pulling ideas from the ether, testing what works. I’ve been using Runway ML to generate tarot archetypes, Squarespace code blocks to bring rainbow text to life, and AI to refresh my portfolio imagery. It’s messy, playful, sometimes uncanny — but it’s magic in motion.

Design in the age of AI isn’t about doing less; it’s about doing differently. It’s about seeing ourselves less as “makers of pixels” and more as orchestrators of possibility.

The Magician as All of Us

If The Fool is the leap, The Magician is the first step of creation. We’re all standing at the table right now, looking at AI laid out like tools we barely understand. The trick is not to fear them, but to pick them up, try them, fail with them, and shape them into something that carries our voice.

The Magician asks: what will you create with what’s in front of you? For designers, that’s the question of this era. And if you ask me, the answer should feel like alchemy.