Design Forward 26 winner Tiia Maria Jaakkola: designing with AI, rooted in craft

Tiia Maria Jaakkola is a Finnish fashion designer based in Denmark, holding a BA from VIA University College (2017) and an MA from Design School Kolding (2023). Her master's thesis, Designing for Circular Fashion by Integrating Upcycling and Digital Tools, established her as a designer whose practice sits at the intersection of craft, sustainability, and emerging technology. With a prior background in business, she brings industry fluency alongside a deeply conceptual, design-led approach.

For her Design Forward 26 submission, Tiia worked exclusively with The Fabricant's AI Design Tools — using text-to-image generation and image-plus-prompt workflows to develop a craft-based mini-collection. Her goal was deliberate: to test whether she could maintain strong authorship and a distinct design identity while working with AI as a creative partner. The result exceeded her expectations.

For Tiia, AI is not simply a productivity tool — it is a transformative force that demands critical responsibility. She argues that advancing with AI must go hand in hand with reconnecting to embodied craftsmanship: without a deep understanding of materials and construction, AI risks becoming a shortcut rather than a meaningful extension of design thinking. She sees the current moment as a dual movement — forward into new technologies, and backward into traditional knowledge.

Looking ahead, Tiia is most hopeful about AI's potential to reduce sample waste and shift the industry away from overproduction toward designing for real needs. She sees AI as a tool that sharpens the iterative design process and enables rapid detail-level development — but only in the hands of designers who are strategic, precise, and rooted in craft. For Tiia, fashion is a platform for sustainability, ethics, and activism — and AI, used responsibly, can strengthen that platform rather than undermine it.