Frozen Toast, AI, and Other Modern Horrors

A couple weeks ago I went to a professional conference and saw something genuinely chilling. No, it wasn’t a Halloween costume. I watched a live demo of how to scare off every client in the room.

I attended a panel on book cover design & illustration—right up my alley. I’ve done plenty of book covers myself, so I wasn’t there to learn the basics. I wanted to see how other designers worked. Maybe catch a new perspective. Maybe walk away with a better way to solve a familiar problem.

There were six panelists. One of them stood out, but not in a good way. They spent most of their time complaining. Clients were stupid. Illustration was hard. AI was killing the industry. Adobe was ruining everything. Anyone using AI? Apparently, part of the problem. They were ditching industry-standard tools for some obscure alternative. And they dominated the conversation. They talked over others, shot down points, and made the whole thing feel like a personal vent session.

Meanwhile, I sat there thinking: You know this room is full of people who hire designers, right?

What came through wasn’t confidence. It was fear, dressed up as bitterness. They sounded like someone watching the train pull away without them—then deciding to go eat dirt. Maybe they thought they’d lost work to AI. Maybe they never learned the new tools. Maybe they couldn’t afford industry standard software. But the effect was the same: they made everyone in that room feel uneasy and afraid to ask questions for fear of being called “stupid”.

What I learned, more than anything, was that I wouldn’t want to work with them. Ever. They made the entire panel about their frustration instead of sharing anything useful.

And that’s when my brain jumped to frozen toast.

The first time I saw frozen toast in a grocery store, I thought it was the dumbest thing ever. Bread, toaster, done. It’s toast. Why would anyone need it pre-toasted, then frozen?

I rolled my eyes. I might have laughed out loud. It seemed like the laziest product in the freezer aisle.

Years later, while learning about accessibility, my mind floated back to the frozen toast. I connected the dots and realized it wasn’t ridiculous—it was necessary for some people. Some people can’t stand long enough to cook. Some parents need a fast fix for hungry kids. Some elderly folks can’t manage a toaster safely. People recovering from surgery. Kids learning to fend for themselves. Frozen toast isn’t a joke. It’s a workaround. Frozen toast isn’t for me — it’s for them. And once I understood that, it stopped being dumb and started being useful. For them, it isn’t lazy. It’s survival.

AI for illustration is frozen toast.

It’s not here to steal your design job. It’s here for people who were never hiring you in the first place. They can’t afford an illustrator, or they need something fast, or they just don’t care that much. AI helps them get by. There are good reasons not to use it—but that’s a different conversation.

This person made designers and illustrators look hard to work with—like we mock clients behind their backs. We should stay curious. That’s how we evolve. By the end of the panel, I was irritated and a little angry (remember, I’m not that evolved).

AI isn’t your enemy. Clients aren’t your enemy. Fear is. So is treating people like they’re beneath you.

Good professionals stay curious. We try new tools. We ask questions. We respect the people who keep us in business. That’s how we stay relevant.

Maybe that panelist was just scared. Fine. But fear isn’t a hall pass for bad behavior. If you’re in a room full of potential clients, act like you want to work with them.

A tool meant for someone else can’t make you and what you do irrelevant. But your attitude in front of the people who might hire you certainly can. Customers will never hire the drowning vendor who will climb on their heads and drag them down too. Be confident in your work, happy to see your potential customers in any setting, and pleasant to be around. You know, like normal.