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Industry brief · Design

Design, from picture books to coffee characters

Two Building Real guests build on illustration. Vinayak Varma writes and illustrates children's books in Bengaluru, and Ivan Chandra Suriady's Paco Coffee in Singapore sells its coffee through illustrated characters. This brief covers what is happening around them in India and Singapore: AI and illustration work, the copyright rules being written for AI, and where public and private money is going.

IndiaSingapore
Checked 16 Oct 2026 · every figure linked to its source · next review Jan 2027

01At a glance

S$2.7B

real value added to GDP by Singapore's design sector in 20231.

61,000

design-related full-time resident jobs in Singapore in 2024, including 15,000 non-designers working at design firms2.

Residents only. Foreign workers and freelancers are not counted, and the total is not a count of designers.
35,000

of Singapore's full-time resident designers worked outside the design sector in 2024, against 11,000 inside design firms3.

8,400+

design firms in Singapore. 9 in 10 have fewer than 10 employees and revenues under S$1 million4.

2%

growth in India's animation and VFX segment in 2025, as international studios made fewer films and series, by FICCI-EY's count5.

15,000

secondary schools, plus 500 colleges, where Union Budget 2026–27 backs IICT Mumbai to set up AVGC Content Creator Labs6.

Budget announcement, Feb 2026. Not yet delivered.

02How AI is reshaping it

Illustrators: the evidence comes from abroad

  • UK survey. In a 2024 Society of Authors survey of its UK members, 26% of illustrators said they had already lost work to generative AI, and 37% said illustrated work had fallen in value (self-reported)7.
  • UK survey. In an early-2025 Association of Illustrators survey in the UK, just over 32% of respondents said they had lost work to AI, reporting an average loss of £9,262 each (self-selected sample)8.
  • Global platform. A peer-reviewed study of freelancers on Upwork found that after ChatGPT, DALL-E 2 and Midjourney launched, freelancers in the most exposed occupations lost both jobs and earnings, and top freelancers were hit hardest9.
  • Global employers. WEF's Future of Jobs Report 2025 put graphic designers just outside the top 10 fastest-declining roles to 2030, a reversal from its 2023 edition, which rated them moderately growing10. This is what employers expect, not measured job losses.
All four sources are UK or global. We found no India-specific survey of illustrator work lost to AI.

Who is using it

  • Singapore. SkillsFuture Singapore estimates there are about 150,000 creative professionals in Singapore; in its small poll of 87 of them, taken from July to September 2024, more than half had used GenAI tools at work11.
  • India, social creators. In Adobe's 2026 Creators' Toolkit survey, 85% of Indian social-media creators who use or have tried creative AI said it is integrated or essential to how they work12.
Adobe's is a vendor survey of creators who already use AI tools. It does not describe illustrators, and the SkillsFuture poll is too small to read as a national rate.

03Where the money is moving

Public money: announced, not spent

  1. S$40M+
    Singapore's Design 2035 masterplan commits more than S$40 million over 2026–2028, the first three years of a 10-year plan13.
  2. Rs 400 crore
    allocated by the Centre to set up the Indian Institute of Creative Technology (IICT) in Mumbai, I&B Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said in 202514.
  3. US$1bn
    fund for India's creative economy, announced by Vaishnaw in March 2025 as a public-private partnership15.
  4. Rs 3,268 crore
    planned outlay in Maharashtra's AVGC-XR Policy 2025, approved by the state cabinet with a vision to 205016.
These are commitments, allocations and plans, not money spent. We could not verify spending on IICT or the corpus and deployment of the fund. The Indian items should not be added together.

Private money and the markets around design

  • AI comics. Bengaluru's Dashverse, maker of the AI comics app Dashtoon, raised a US$13 million Series A led by Peak XV and says it reaches over 20 million users17.
  • Design tools. Figma opened a Bengaluru office on 12 November 2025 and says India is its second-largest market by monthly active users18.
  • Animation and VFX. India's animation and VFX revenues fell 9.4% to about INR 103 billion in 2024, by FICCI-EY's count19.
  • Media overall. India's media and entertainment sector grew 9% year on year to INR 2.78 trillion in 202520. That is the whole sector, not design.
  • Creator economy. An EY report cited by exchange4media valued India's creator economy at Rs 125 billion in 2024 and projected nearly Rs 500 billion by 203021. That is influencer and content revenue, not design services.

04Rules for AI and copyright

  1. India. A DPIIT committee's working paper proposes, by majority view, a mandatory blanket licence letting AI developers train on all lawfully accessed copyrighted works with no opt-out. Royalties would be a government-set share of the developer's revenue, payable once the AI system is commercialised, through a central body (CRCAT)22. It is a proposal for stakeholder feedback, not law, and Nasscom dissented.
  2. India. Union Budget 2026–27 backs IICT Mumbai to set up AVGC Content Creator Labs in 15,000 secondary schools and 500 colleges6. It is an announcement, not yet delivered.
  3. Singapore. The DesignSingapore Council's Design 2035 masterplan commits more than S$40 million over 2026–2028, the first three years of a 10-year plan13.
  4. India. A single judge of the Delhi High Court refused news agency ANI an interim injunction against OpenAI, finding prima facie that storing ANI's content fell within fair dealing and that ChatGPT's outputs were not substantially similar to ANI's works23. The case is about news text, and the order is interim, not a final judgment.
  5. Singapore. The Ministry of Law and IPOS opened a consultation on AI and IP, running until 22 October 2026, including the scope of the Copyright Act's computational data analysis exception, which already applies to commercial and non-commercial use24. The consultation paper says AI-assisted work is copyright-protected only if made by a human, and output that reproduces only a work's general style does not infringe25. The consultation was still open when this brief was checked, and its outcome may change these rules.

05Trends to watch

Illustrators report lost work, in UK surveys

26% of illustrators in a 2024 Society of Authors survey of UK members said they had lost work to generative AI7. Just over 32% of respondents to a UK Association of Illustrators survey in early 2025 said the same8. We found no comparable survey for India.

Graphic design's outlook has turned

WEF's 2025 report put graphic designers just outside the top 10 fastest-declining roles to 2030, after rating them moderately growing in 202310. On Upwork, freelancers in the most exposed occupations lost jobs and earnings after ChatGPT, DALL-E 2 and Midjourney launched9. Both are global, not India data.

Most design work happens outside design firms

In 2024, 35,000 of Singapore's full-time resident designers worked outside the design sector, against 11,000 inside design firms3. SkillsFuture Singapore says seven in ten non-creative job roles now need creative skills, and only a third of creative professionals work directly in a creative sector26.

Copyright for AI is being decided now

India's DPIIT committee has proposed a mandatory licence for AI training with no opt-out, as a proposal for feedback22. Singapore is consulting until 22 October 2026 on the scope of its existing data analysis exception24. In Delhi, an interim order on news text went OpenAI's way23. None of these settles how illustrations may be used to train AI in either country.

Animation and VFX has stalled in India

India's animation and VFX revenues fell 9.4% in 2024, by FICCI-EY's count19. The segment grew just 2% in 2025, as international studios made fewer films and series5.

06The problems our guests are solving

Creativity, children's books, and the AI challengeEP05
India

Vinayak Varma · Independent

Creativity, children's books, and the AI challenge

Rs 1.08 lakh crore

India's book publishing market in 2024–25, as estimated in a Federation of Indian Publishers report prepared by NielsenIQ BookData, which projects Rs 2 lakh crore by 2030–3127.

This is the whole book market, including educational and textbook publishing, not children's books. The report flags children's books as a growth opportunity, but the coverage we checked gives no figure for them.
26%

of illustrators in a 2024 Society of Authors survey of its UK members said they had already lost work to generative AI (self-reported)7.

UK data. We found no India-specific survey of illustrator work lost to AI.

In India, a DPIIT committee's December 2025 working paper proposes letting AI developers train on all lawfully accessed copyrighted works under a mandatory licence with no opt-out, with royalties paid through a central body (CRCAT)22. The paper says sectors without a copyright society would not be CRCAT members, and non-members would be paid only if they register their works. In our reading, most freelance illustrators in India have no such society. The paper is a proposal for feedback, not law.

Watch the episode →
The venture builder whose coffee bar won goldEP13
Singapore

Ivan Chandra Suriady · Paco Coffee

The venture builder whose coffee bar won gold

Paco Coffee is a coffee bar, not a design firm. The Singapore design figures on this page are context for the design talent and IP behind a character-led brand, not Paco's market.

In the episode, Ivan explains why Paco sells its specialty-grade beans through illustrated characters instead of tasting notes.

For a brand built on characters, Singapore's consultation paper on AI and IP sets out the current position: AI-assisted work is copyright-protected only if made by a human, and output that reproduces only a work's general style does not infringe25. The consultation runs until 22 October 202624.

Open consultation as of 16 Oct 2026, when this brief was checked. Its outcome may change the rules.
150,000

creative professionals in Singapore, by SkillsFuture Singapore's estimate; in its small poll of 87 of them, more than half had used GenAI tools at work11.

Watch the episode →

See how these conversations connect on the Discovery Atlas →

07Sources

One research agent gathered 33 figures from government, regulator and established data sources. A separate red-team agent then reopened every source, checked each number, its scope and its date, and looked for newer or conflicting data. It kept 13 figures as written, corrected 17 and cut 3. Each figure above links to its source below, with the date it refers to.

  1. DesignSingapore Council, Design 2035, May 2026 · 2023
  2. DesignSingapore Council, Design 2035 (MOM Labour Force Survey data), May 2026 · 2024 (full-time residents; rounded to nearest thousand)
  3. DesignSingapore Council, Design 2035, May 2026 · 2024 (full-time residents)
  4. DesignSingapore Council, Design 2035, May 2026 · Department of Statistics data (2025), cited in Design 2035
  5. FICCI-EY, Mar 2026 · 2025 calendar year
  6. PIB, 17 Feb 2026 · Budget announcement, Feb 2026 (not yet delivered)
  7. Society of Authors (via Design Week, Oct 2025) · UK, 2024 member survey (self-reported)
  8. Association of Illustrators (via Design Week, Oct 2025) · UK, early 2025 survey (self-selected)
  9. Hui, Reshef & Zhou, Organization Science, 2024 · Short-run effects, 2022–23; published Nov 2024
  10. World Economic Forum, Jan 2025 · Employer outlook 2025–2030, global
  11. SkillsFuture Singapore, SDFE 2025 · SDFE 2025 (published early 2025); poll Jul–Sep 2024
  12. Adobe / Harris Poll, Aug 2026 · Survey fielded May 2026
  13. DesignSingapore Council, May 2026 · Committed budget 2026–2028 (announced 26 May 2026)
  14. Outlook Business, 1 May 2025 · Announced allocation, 2025; spend and operational status not verified
  15. IndBiz (Govt of India), 14 Mar 2025 · Announcement, Mar 2025; corpus and deployment not verified
  16. All India Radio News, 16 Sep 2025 · Approved Sep 2025; planned outlay, not spend
  17. Z47, 12 Aug 2025 · Aug 2025 (round); user count is a company claim
  18. Figma blog, Nov 2025 · Nov 2025 (company statement)
  19. FICCI-EY 'Shape the future', Mar 2025 · 2024 calendar year (actual)
  20. FICCI-EY, Mar 2026 · 2025 calendar year
  21. EY, via exchange4media, May 2025 · 2024 estimate; 2030 projection
  22. DPIIT Working Paper on Generative AI and Copyright, Part 1, Dec 2025 · Proposal for stakeholder feedback, Dec 2025; not law
  23. SCC Online Blog, 27 Jul 2026 · Interim order, 24 Jul 2026; not a final judgment
  24. MinLaw & IPOS, Aug 2026 · Consultation open 26 Aug–22 Oct 2026; outcome pending
  25. MinLaw & IPOS, Aug 2026 · Government statement of current law, Aug 2026
  26. SkillsFuture Singapore, SDFE 2025 · SDFE 2025
  27. FIP / NielsenIQ BookData, via India CSR, Sep 2026 · FY2024–25 estimate; FY2030–31 projection