In art school, we had a saying: the last 20% is the last 80%. That final stretch is where good design becomes exceptional.
Published Aug 11, 2026
Author Steve Berry
In art school, we had a saying: the last 20% is the last 80%. That final stretch: details, revisions, the faffing about, is where good design becomes exceptional.
AI has flipped the beginning of that equation. It can give you 80% of an output with 20% of the effort. And because so much appears so quickly, it creates the illusion that the work is done.
It isn’t. You may have 80% of the output, but you still have 80% of the work ahead of you.
The remaining work is slower and less gratifying. It’s editing, questioning, refining, recomposing, removing, and staying with the piece long enough to notice what everyone else will miss. It can take four, eight, even ten times longer than generating the first pass…exactly!
That’s the part people skip! The speed of the first draft makes diligence feel boring & inefficient. How wrong they are. The boring work nobody cares to examine IS THE work.
Details haven’t become less important because the draft arrived faster — they matter more. Everyone can produce something reasonably competent in seconds. Taste lives in taking the time and care to making careful boring decisions for hours.