Chris Barin

Twenty-five form fields. To buy one jar of peanut butter. That store was paying for ads. The ads worked fine. The store didn't. Chris Barin spent five years running an online food brand in Romania and took it to about EUR 700,000 a year.

AI can generate a thumbnail, product scene, landing page, or prototype in seconds. So what is a designer worth now? More than ever—if you stop competing on execution alone.

On 20 October 2010, at 10: 46, Chris Barin registered on 99designs. Three weeks later he won his first contest. The prize was $1,247. He had begged his parents for a computer for three years before they bought one.

Most design projects go wrong before the designer opens a file. The objective was never agreed. The brief was one line long. Four people gave feedback and two of them contradicted each other. The logo files arrived a week late. Then a change landed in round three and got called a small tweak.