Do I still need a designer if AI can design, and when should I hire one?

Yes, but the job has moved: AI handles first drafts and production mocks, so the designer you eventually hire is a product-minded generalist who brings judgment about what to build and how it should feel, not pixel labor. Most founders can run on AI tools plus a few visual rules until users and revenue arrive; the moment your product needs a coherent brand, a scalable design language, or you are losing deals on polish, bring in a founding designer, and expect the bar to be higher than before because everyone's baseline output improved. As Figma's Dylan Field argues, craft and quality are now the moat precisely because building got easy.