Figma: what Config 2026 speakers say about AI and creative work

What the article is about

Published in March 2026, this Figma blog post previews perspectives from five speakers selected for Config (June 23–25, San Francisco). Holly Herndon, Danit Peleg, Vicki Tan, Grant Sanderson, and Matthew Ström-Awn discuss how they think about AI’s role in creative work. The speakers come from different fields — AI music and art, digital fashion, design writing, educational video, and product design strategy — which gives the piece more range than a single-industry take would.

Context

The article is a series of short statements from each speaker, not a structured argument. The value is in the variety of framing, not in a single recommendation. Figma uses this format ahead of every Config to surface how practitioners across creative disciplines are thinking, and to signal the themes the conference will address.

What makes this 2026 edition worth reading is that the conversation has shifted. Earlier discussions about AI and design often centered on whether AI would replace designers. The speakers here take that as settled — their positions assume AI is part of the toolkit — and move to harder questions about authorship, quality, and accountability.

Key takeaway

The most consistent thread across the five speakers is reframing the designer’s role from individual producer to intentional orchestrator. Herndon argues for expanding creative capacity by positioning artists as directors of AI systems rather than as people competing with them. Sanderson makes a related point about software tools: as building becomes easier, designing tools that genuinely serve users across diverse workflows becomes more important than building new features.

Vicki Tan offers a less obvious reframe: she defines creativity as attention and care rather than originality, arguing that tending toward an idea thoughtfully is still creative work regardless of what generated the initial output. Matthew Ström-Awn grounds this in professional accountability — in a world where producing artifacts is easier, the standard shifts from credentials to shipped work that survives contact with actual users.

Danit Peleg adds a manufacturing dimension: AI matters to her because it closes the gap between digital design and physical production, not simply because it accelerates visual output.

Who should read this

Designers thinking through how to frame their own skills and judgment as AI becomes standard in production pipelines. The article offers less in the way of tactical advice and more in the way of vocabulary — ways of describing what human design intention contributes that is distinct from what AI generates.