Well I may as well join the debate. It’s what everyone is talking about at the moment (in my circles anyway!) so I may as well add my penny’s worth.
A.I. – Artificial intelligence. Hmmm. is it really intelligent?
Is it the next big thing?
I’ve been around a while, so I’ve experienced some of the major shifts in recent years in the world of design (and the world in general).
I was at uni in 1994 (yes, I’m that old) – apple macs were just becoming useful tools in the design studios. Drawing boards, tracing paper, isograph pens, pmt prints and cow gum were still very much in use, the Mac sat in the corner and was used primarily for typesetting. Early software (Quark, Freehand, Photoshop) was emerging allowing page layouts to be created on screen for the first time. It was a massive change in the design industry – over the space of about 5 years the way we produced our work completely changed. The skills needed were flipped on their heads, and we went from precision hand skills with the scalpel, rotring pen and airbrush to using a mouse, computer software, scanners and screens.
A little after the macs arrived came the next massive change – the arrival of the World Wide Web. I distinctly remember the lecture I attended at uni when we were introduced to ‘the information superhighway’ for the very first time. The idea that we could talk to someone in another part of the country, or world, from our keyboards in real time was one thing – but that at some point in the future we could look something up, see someone else’s webcam, that we would be able to sit and choose what we wanted to watch on TV, or order something using our TV and it would be sent to us in the post without us having to leave the sofa.
Minds blown.
It suddenly opened up everything – the whole world at our finger tips! Search engines, emails, no more faxes and instant messaging. Huge.
So what is my point about all of this? Is AI just the next big thing. Is it bigger than the arrival of the internet? Our minds are blown once more by this technology, what it can do, its capabilities, and how it can make our lives easier. Of course it can. It’s amazing.
But at what cost?
I do think that just as when the Apple macs came in and the drawing boards became no more than a place to put things, we use different tools and it is wise to embrace them. The thought process to all intents and purposes remains, and that is the key. The first work produced on a mac would not have been ‘as good’ as work produced the traditional way on the drawing board. We were learning as we went along, and got better over time, until at some point, using a mac became the better, easier, more efficient way. But always, a graphic designer, someone with an eye for composition, an instinct for colour and a unique interpretation of a brand or personality will still be that. They might use different tools and even work in a different way but it’s the quality of the work, the thought process, the creativity that stays the same.
I’m rather thinking that in the creative industry the key will not be just using AI, but how to use it, how to create prompts that effectively get what we want (at the moment from personal experience, by the time I’ve developed a beautiful prompt I could probably have created the thing by myself without it!). How to make the most of the technology without losing that essence of individuality, personality – identity.
It’s a bit like junk food I guess. We all like a bit of beige from time to time. We like to watch crappy TV and we’ll buy cheap beer or naff clothes or go to B&M for our furniture rather than ask a carpenter to hand craft a bespoke piece. We want it quick and we want it cheap. But will it be beige, will it look like everyone else’s and will it be highly processed, or crafted with care?
I’m referring in particular, by the way, to AI being used for design (I know there is a much bigger world out there with AI being used for all sorts of different things!). The posters I see on a daily basis that all look the same. Yes they’re bright and colourful, yes they get the information across – but the poster about the Easter Fun Day in this village looks the same as the one in the next village, and the next town, and all towns across the country. Does it matter? Probably not when it comes to publicising local events, not on a small scale. It saves the creators so much time and money to churn something out quickly on ChatGPT or Canva, so many charities and non-for profit institutions who really can’t afford to pay a designer, can now produce something that looks like it’s been created by a professional, and catches the eye, much better than something created in microsoft word or, dare I mention, corel draw. So I really do believe AI has its place in some instances.
But when it’s used by business for a quick fix, when they think it does the work a designer does – if it’s not crafted and curated, what happens then?
Well, in the last two weeks, for two separate clients, I have had to re-create artwork that has been produced using AI. One artwork (a poster) was created, it looked really good, but with no consideration for print, for page dimensions, CMYK, bleed etc. No consideration for it to be re-sized and re-formatted for different uses as part of a world wide advertising campaign – no idea that the beautiful artwork created was not in layers, with editable type and moveable components that get nudged around when converting something for a different use. The poster is probably going to appear on bus stops, railway stations, hoardings, shop windows – all of these are printed differently using different materials, ink and machines, and will be seen differently – point sizes and colours need to change, the information will need to be more succinct for one situation and more detailed for another. The client didn’t know that, they just asked AI to ‘design me a poster’. What a designer does is so much more than making a pretty picture.
The second incident was a wonderful white paper (I LOVE designing white papers and reports!) where the client had inputted their report, and AI had spurted it out with no regard for page size (again!), page breaks, or the nuances of the company’s branding strategy. It just didn’t ‘look right’ (you can say that again!) – so here I am again fixing things, costing the company money and time, when if they’d given me the job in the first place it would have been so much quicker and better thought out. Because I’m human. Becuase I know the client. Because I know what I’m doing, and my brain, my decisions, my playfulness and creativity are not computer generated. What I do is influenced by my mood, by the weather, by the music I’m listening to, by something I saw on my socials that morning. It doesn’t receive input in the same way AI does.
But this is the thing. AI is new. What’s to say that in a couple of years, it will have learnt about print, it will know it’s client, it will know what is required, that it needs to be A4 but in layers and at a resolution where it can also be printed for a bus stop? Will it be that we will have learnt the skill of how to prompt? Same as we had to learn how to use a mouse and move type about in Quark rather than on a drawing board? Will it be that our skills set will have to change?
I couldn’t design on a drawing board with a rotring pen now – I don’t have the hand skills. I can get what is in my head ‘out’ much more quickly using a mac. I’ve learnt how to use the software. My thinking might be the same as my predecessors who sat at a drawing board with a layout pad sketching out thumbnails until they got it right, I just use different tools. So in the (not so distant) future – will the tools change again? Will I have to adapt to this new ‘AI’ world? Or, will people still come to me in the same way they would go and have a bespoke piece of furniture made rather than buy something from B&M? Will my ‘craft’ become something of more value, of more quality, because I ponder and create and think. It isn’t the quick (cheap) option perhaps, but is it better quality?
And if you are a business out there, looking for your brand to fly above the others, to have your visual communication designed and thought about – even if AI is quicker, is it better? Does it know you like your designer does? Or, and here’s the thing – does it think outside the box? Because that’s what makes us designers unique, we don’t always think in straight lines, we don’t always come up with what we’ve been asked for – but it’s normally the right answer to the question the client didn’t even know they had.
Can AI do that?
Maybe, one day. We’ll have to wait and see.