FREE

DESIGNER + AI 2025

CHECKLIST
By Michal Malewicz

99% + 1%
Where is your experience coming from?

Hi! I’m Michal Malewicz and I’ve been a designer since 1998.
I worked on over 500 different projects, including some for
brands like Samsung, Oriflame, Renault, BMW, Viacom and more.
I run a boutique design agency squareblack.com and we do
client projects for startups and big, established brands.

A lot of what’s in this book comes from that agency experience -

our methods, patterns and ideas to be able to keep our prices
high alongside the quality.

I named a couple of design trends - like Neumorphism and

Glassmorphism, which comes from my inherent curious nature.
I also run a platform teaching over 21,000 designers through
practical exercises at hype4.academy.

All those experiences combined and questions I got from the

community led to first this checklist, and then the full on course.
Will AI take your job?
I get this question a lot. Short answer is : yes. AI will take what
you think is your job right now. Many designers think moving
some rectangles in Figma is their job.

That job will eventually be taken, because AI can already sort of

generate UI’s. With flaws - sure, but that’s only a matter of time.

Fig 1: 100% AI generated dashboard “design”, March 2025

The “dashboard design” is by no means perfect. It has pretty
useless, random data and doesn’t make sense as a real product.

But then again, it’s exactly the same with human-made

dashboards that are all over social media. They are made for
clicks and don’t consider the basic user needs - because there is
no user.

This type of pixel pushing is not only going to be replaced, but

also completely surpassed by AI “no-code” builders. What it
means is that there will be less and less “designing” in the
traditional sense. Designers will design via prompts and manual
CSS modifications, making the entire process much, much faster.

What happens when we go faster?

You may believe that “designers using AI” will replace designers
“not using AI”. You may also be thinking that with a bit of
prompting you’re already in that first group.

What people fail to realise however, is that speed is only one of

the factors.

Take a step back and think why you’re doing design in the first
place. When we go past all the trivial “helping users” and “being
creative” it all boils down to one thing.

Money. Design used to be a pretty well paid job. You didn’t need
to learn code and it was easy to make $10K/mo as a mid/senior
even outside of the US (or more).
Most designers make money by charging their clients. Freelance
is getting a revival because many companies are not hiring
anymore, probably also counting on AI to do some design
automatically.

We’ll get to the checklist soon, I promise, but you need to first
understand WHAT contributes to how much you can charge
clients.

There are three main pillars: speed, price point and value.

Value

How much?

Price point Speed

With AI we’re witnessing a rapid speed increase. Shit will get

done much faster now. And when I asked around almost no
designer understood what it means.

Mass production and optimized production lines means…

LOWER PRICES.
Yes, with increased speed you will have to lower your prices. And
then lower them again when other designers goes a tad lower
than you just were. And so on. Spiraling into unprofitable.
Where the market is going

Don’t be
here

Time needed Price per hour

After a certain level of quality of your work, it ceases to matter.

And delivery time will be much faster. So you can either compete
on price and slowly become financially irrelevant, or focus on the
perceived, long term value for the client.

This checklist is your tool to do just that.

It has 10 main points to focus on. I briefly talk about what they’re
about here. Then you can do your own research on each one and
create those workflows for yourself.

Or you can get my course, where I share all my tools for this.
Why is this checklist free?

The checklist itself is free. I give you 10 main points to focus on

with sub-points to check off as you go. That way you can start
delivering real, measurable value to your clients.

But it requires you to do extra work. You need to create the

templates and workflows for each item yourself. That’s why it’s
free.

If instead you want to grab all my methods, documents and

templates alongside even more examples and previews on how I
use AI, you can get the full course I made on this.

The course is based on the exact same checklist, I just do most

of the work for you so you can focus on making money faster.

Preorder price now: $50 Full price after May 15: $110
 1
UNDERSTAND BUSINESS
Freelancing is a business. That means you need to act like a
professional to be treated like one. Don’t just send a “paypal link”
for the money from a client. Don’t use Gmail.

This screams “I’m working from my Mum’s basement” and most

clients will treat you accordingly.

Here’s what you should do:

Buy your own domain name and use your email on it.

Have a contract template and an NDA template that’s yours.

Some clients will send theirs, but you should be able to
provide yours at all times.

Understand taxes. Understand the NET price. Be clear

about pricing and taxes in your contracts.

Get any professional accounting/invoicing software and

create real, legal-binding invoices. Specify payment terms,
bank accounts etc. on them. Without a legal invoice you
won’t be treated seriously as clients need an invoice from
you to account your work as a “cost” and pay less taxes.

Have a clear set of rules of engagement in a document.

How much money do you take upfront. What are the
acceptable delays from your side. When do you handoff the
source files.

You can research this yourself or you can find all the templates and
recommendations in my course.
 2
THE AI QUALITY DEBT
AI Quality debt is similar to design/programming debt. It means
not being able to determine whether an AI made part was good
or not, yet using it anyway to save time.

After a while the debt builds up, and you lose track of which part
was made in which AI tool, how and what was the reason behind
it. If you’re smart and thorough it will create both a sense of
professionalism in the eyes of your clients and it will make it
easier for you to upgrade the project.

Create an “AI usage” document template for yourself

Make sure to outline all AI tools that you used in the project
in the document.

Write which part was created with which AI.

Add when it was created and which version (eg. GPT 4o)

Add the prompt that you used.

Annotate the potential issues and quality gaps. You can use
a system (I have one) or create your own system that’s
consistent so when coming back to it you understand it.

Create versioning if you ever update an element when an AI

tool becomes better. Show the before and after. Note out
which quality gaps were bridged and which still exist.

You can build documents like this yourself or you can find all the templates and
recommendations in my course.
 3
DESIGNER EYE
When generating any kind of AI outputs you need to be critical.
Especially with LLM’s, keep in mind that they are there to make
you satisfied with an answer. That doesn’t always mean the
answer is right, good or even true.

That’s why you need to work on your ability to spot mistakes,

issues and shortcomings WHILE generating stuff with AI.
It’s based on logic and critical thinking combined with a distrust
towards ALL ai outputs. It has to earn your trust.

With photos or illustration look for mistakes (extra fingers?)

With text look for signs of “AI writing”. It’s usually pretending
to be “smart”, using smart sounding but meaningless words
(streamlined, seamlessly) and — em dashes.

With interfaces (even moodboard ones) look for

misalignments, wrong copy and logical mismatches.

With graps and charts look for when a chart doesn’t make
sense, or presents data where the numbers don’t match
what’s on the graph.

With animation look for odd transitions, missing frames,

glitches.

With icons look for style mismatch and imperfections -

different stroke width or cap endings.

You can create methods for this yourself or you can find all the templates and
recommendations in my course.
 4
IDEA VALIDATION
Don’t ask an LLM to validate your idea. It will jump through
flaming hoops to validate any BS concept because it wants you
to be happy with the answer. Before AI gets access to any
research databases, don’t ask it for market viability either.
Always talk to real people to find that out.

Ask an LLM to find flaws or weak spots in your idea.

Give it a perspective relevant to who would be evaluating

your idea in real life (i.e. you are an electric car user and
here’s my idea for an EV charging app - what would annoy
you the most?)

You can ask about similar ideas from other brands but
always fact-check the results. AI tend to hallucinate and
make stuff up when doing online research.

Ask the LLM for a set of questions you can ask people to
verify that idea, but always give them an open question at
the end about their biggest problem that they want solved.

To speed things up create an idea evaluation system. Add

where in the process you ask AI, when it’s time for human
feedback, when do you parse it with AI and how

Mark which AI recommendations matched what the users

later said. I use a traffic light system for this.

You can create a system for this yourself or you can find all the templates and
recommendations of things that I use in my course.
 5
INSPIRATION
AI averages content from the internet. Remember this. It takes
the best alongside the worst of what online creators have to
offer. Which means you get an average result most of the times.

Unless it's guided.

Create a list of designers for whom you’re sure they’re

doing real, client work, not eye-candy for clicks.

Add a list of industrial designers, architects and engineers

and create a curated inspiration board of their best work.

Good design is timeless, so update your inspiration board

regularly and look at it often.

Look at and always evaluate all interfaces (and/or

websites) you use. Even if for a brief moment, see if it’s a
good experience or a bad one and make a mental note of it.

Know the main design styles and trends by name and

characteristic. You can then prompt for a “swiss style”
typography for inspiration.

Make a list of words or prompt structures that are more

likely to get you higher quality results. Consult that list
before new work.

You can create all those lists yourself or you can find all the templates and
recommendations of things that I use in my course.
 6
ANNOTATION
AI removes a lot of critical thinking and logic from people. Which
means people using AI a lot get less critical. They often don't
understand what they generated and why.

Learn annotation techniques to not only train your analysing

muscle, but also show to clients that you understand.

Use paper annotations and flows to stand out + add the human/
personal touch. Alternatively use a tablet.

Learn creating color-coded “expanding” flow diagrams.

Learn how to make a mind map on paper.

Practice hierarchy strips technique for handoff documents.

Do typeframes before website design.

Create a system to annotate and explain your design

decisions. I use a system based on three colors (black, red,
green) and numbers to signify importance and correlation.

Add the extra annotations to most of your deliverables, as

the perceived value of your work will strongly correlate with
your ability to explain it.

Learn how to talk about your design decisions in a clear,

no-jargon way to go through the annotations during
meetings.
Research the techniques and practice yourself or you can find all the templates
and recommendations of things that I use in my course.
 7
MERGING OUTPUTS
Just making stuff with AI is pretty lazy. You get an output that’s
sometimes good enough, but with a little extra work it can be
elevated to great.

Learn the techniques to merge what AI generated with some

extra work from your side. Don’t just generate some random
“pretty” image and BS copy and call it a “hero section design".

These is the exact type of designers that will be getting cheaper

and cheaper.

Create a workflow for using AI photos - upscale,

background removal, color correction, noise.

Make a workflow to shorten and clarify the copy you write.

Specify how short you want the outcome to be, and the
“grade” understanding difficulty level to make it simpler.

Merge hand-drawn sketches with external inspiration for

more unique outcomes.

Play with animating specific parts of a visual with AI video

tools - learn to identify how to only animate specific parts
and describing the animation.

Add a badge to your annotation documents near main

elements (like key visuals) to show the work proportions.
99% + 1%

Research the techniques and practice yourself or you can find all the templates
and recommendations of things that I use in my course.
 8
BEING HUMAN
I know. I know. We’re all introverts and we don’t want to do calls
and meetings. But with the disassociation that AI brings, meeting
people (whether online or IRL) will become a big part of earning
more as a designer.

I’ve been to hundreds of meetings, including ones with big CEO’s

of Fortune500 companies and there are a couple of things to
remember.

Learn to listen before you talk. And when listening make

sure to UNDERSTAND.

Don’t be afraid to own your design decisions. Explain them

without jargon or hard words, but with growth and strategy
(or conversion) in mind.

Don’t interrupt people, but be clear to show when you want

to chime in.

Disagree even with the CEO if you have a good argument

for it - be sure to back it up.

In smaller meetings, with a more relaxed atmosphere you

can jump to non-work subjects for brief moments, but
make sure that when talking about yourself, you pick some
interesting parts the other party can relate to. That will
make them more friendly towards you. Also remember what
they talked about last time and mention it.

Learn to talk and listen through practice, find patterns online or you can find all the
templates and stories from my experience that worked best in my course.
 9
NEW CONTEXT
Finding new context in existing data will be a big skill of the
future. With AI combining data sources is now faster than ever.

Learn to look at data as potential. What more can I do with what

I get?

Ask AI about correlations between various data points

based on your user research - provide context for the
question, otherwise it will hallucinate.

Create your own algorithms that calculate and present new

information from multiple data sources

Validate your custom data with users and do manual

checks to see if the data is correct.

Learn to think about data sets as building blocks that can

make new building blocks. Don’t just accept the data you
get - create new data out of it.

Plan for user-contextual data points to merge with external/

general ones. You can ask LLM’s how to do it, but make
sure to start at a point beyond statistical error.

Not all data needs to be presented to the user. Some can

be parsed, most can be hidden. Learn to avoid user
overload and only pick what’s actually needed.

Find patterns and examples for understanding data points online or you can find
all the templates and stories from my experience that worked best in my course.
10
STRATEGY
If you “just” sell a design, you’re doing it wrong. The output of a
design (even if great) is a commodity. There are great “design
templates” out there. But even if the quality is good, the value of
a templatized approach is always low in the eyes of clients.
Instead focus on selling strategy.

Always create a “strategy guide” document and attach it to

your project. Do it even if the client doesn’t ask for it.

In the document outline the current status of the design

(state A) and use annotations (6) throughout.

Divide elements into how likely they need to be changed.

For example a section showing logos of clients is unlikely to
be greatly improved. But a section about the offer is likely.

Starting with state A, plan for a state B (and/or C) of what

else can be tweaked and how. This can be new copy, a
different visual or exchanging/replacing whole parts of UI.

Create a timeline for user testing of state A, when state B

(and others) should be introduced and how many results
are viable for a revision.

Emphasize your strategic approach as a path for the client

to make more money because of working with you. You sell
them a constant set of small improvements instead of a
“one time design".

You can learn about post-laucnh strategy online or you can find all the templates
and strategy documents from my experience that worked best in my course.
THINK LONG-TERM
Read case studies. Create personal databases of information,
inspiration and patterns. Ask users - even through social media
surveys. Gather data points.

Live and breathe design, but also (more importantly) live and
breathe strategy. You’re a strategist now, which is what
designers were always supposed to be.

They just forgot about it in the craze of moving colorful boxes

filled with gradients.

Now moving those boxes will become cheap. The deep thinking,
problem solving and ability to assure the client to trust you are
the skills that will allow you to earn more.

As AI progresses, some of these skills may be replaced to a

larger extent. That’s ok. With a long-term, strategic approach and
a high focus on providing value you will be able to adapt.

Taste and quality will become your differentiator, but for that you
need to first UNDERSTAND what good design is and WHY it is
good. Otherwise you’ll join all the “prompters” in the race to the
bottom of a price chart.

Designers are there to solve problems. Lower design cost is a

problem that you can solve with this checklist. Combine it with
the much needed “designer curiosity”, learn new things and go
crush 2025 and beyond!
Where was AI used in the making of this PDF and how?

99% + 1%

This PDF was 99% human made. AI was used to shorten

less than 1% of the paragraphs to make them more
readable.

Made by Michal Malewicz (me) in 2025.

You can find me on:

https://x.com/michalmalewicz
https://youtube.com/malewiczhype
https://instagram.com/malewiczhype

If you want me to help your company go to

https://squareblack.com

The full AI course with all my templates, documents and

data is right here:
https://hype4academy.gumroad.com/l/ai2025

And our platform for designers will soon have a daily “AI
practice” sessions. Find it at:
https://hype4.academy