AI design and portfolios: the 'filing cabinet' trap

When you ask artificial intelligence to redesign something creative, like a portfolio, you often end up with a result that's different, sure, but not necessarily better. It's a bit like asking for a house renovation and just getting the walls repainted. The furniture stays exactly where it was.

One user tried to have their portfolio redesigned multiple times with different AIs, consistently getting the same "filing cabinet structure." This means the AI only changed the aesthetics, leaving the internal content arrangement untouched. It's like a new outfit that still doesn't fit right.

The problem is that artificial intelligence, as good as it is with style, doesn't always understand the "why" behind a design. You can give it a super detailed style guide, full of colors, fonts, and layouts, but if you don't explain the function, it just rearranges pixels.

The author found that giving the AI a traditional "style sheet" didn't solve the core issue. The AI generated aesthetically distinct versions that were, in fact, identical in their underlying rigidity. This inability to move beyond the surface is a common limitation of current generative models.

Ultimately, the solution came with a single, specific instruction that changed everything. Instead of focusing on style, the author asked the AI to consider the function of the portfolio. They told the AI the portfolio needed to "tell a coherent story" and "guide the visitor through the thought process."

This functional directive allowed the AI to break the "filing cabinet" pattern and generate a truly new design. It understood it needed to reorganize content to follow a narrative flow, not just an aesthetic one. This breakthrough was documented by dev.to user anch'childress1 in their article on May 23, 2024.