Why graphic designers think generative A.I. needs them as much as they need it

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As generative artificial intelligence programs producing images, such as OpenAI's DALL-E, Midjourney and Adobe 's Firefly take off, graphic designers — many of whom operate as sole proprietorships — can't ignore the usefulness of a tool that helps them to better meet the endless demand for visual content. But amid fears that AI will supplant creative professionals, they are exploiting a current limitation in the technology: the results are only as good as the human mind prompting the A.I. programs. "The advances in AI affecting the world of graphic design are much of the same advances we're seeing elsewhere," said Nicola Hamilton, president of the Association of Registered Graphic Designers. "ChatGPT is becoming increasingly capable of doing our writing and planning, while Midjourney and DALL-E are creating pretty advanced artwork when given the right prompts," she said. For Hamilton, and many graphic designers, dealing with new technology is nothing new — it's core to the evolution of their creative profession, dating back all the way to the democratization of printing, through the introduction of computers, the birth of the internet, and the prevalence of social media. "Graphic design is a fairly young profession. Originally we were tradespeople (printers, typesetters, sign painters) and our common understanding of design is tightly tied to both the popularization of advertising and the technological revolution," Hamilton said. How much time does generative AI save? As designers experiment with gen AI, they are starting to answer a few big questions that surface amid any professional technology advance: How much time do the new tools really save designers? And can designers maintain the upper hand over the tech? "The most promising (or terrifying) work in AI-generative artwork seems to be coming from Midjourney," Hamilton said. She pointed to a project she saw presented at the Design Thinkers conference in Vancouver in June as an example of how to answer these questions. Pum Lefebure, co-founder & chief creative officer at Washington, D.C.-based agency Design Army, created a campaign with the help of Midjourney for a high-end eyewear retailer Georgetown Optician — a fictitious planet of giant eyeballs. "It's visually stunning, but as she revealed on stage, was a massive undertaking to create. Learning how to prompt the AI still requires an extensive knowledge of image making and a lot of hours," Hamilton said. Jake Lefebure, Pum's husband, and co-founder and CEO of Design Army, said his firm sees AI as a tool, not a solution. "We use AI in a way that is more a creative tool process, as opposed to how a lot of people envision it: tell it what to do and all your problems can be solved." As an image board, or mood board, working alongside the designer across many iterations of a campaign, AI can play an important role, Lefebure said. But he added, "It takes a lot of finessing and you really need to train the AI. You need to craft the vocabulary to get the results you want. It's not a mind reader." If how a designer articulates and phrases prompts dictates the results, that may become among the proprietary advantages at work in competition for campaigns. Lefebure did not want to discuss any best practices his firm has learned about generating successful image generation results. Manipulating imagery is not a new practice for graphic design professionals. Stock photography, for example, has always played a role in the creative process. "We use AI as a tool to create with, not something to just spit out into a design," Lefebure said. Adobe's importance in the gen AI image era While the names of the emergent generative AI starups such as OpenAI and Midjourney are first becoming known to many, these innovations are also beginning to be incorporated into the design products from one of the most successful companies in the S&P 500, Adobe. Hamilton said new AI applications are rolling out across Adobe products more slowly, but they are making big impressions. Adobe Photoshop's new AI Generative Fill, "is turning a lot of heads right now," she said. "I don't know how many designers know it by that name right now. I've been seeing each individual application of Firefly as a tool in its respective program — mostly applied through Photoshop. That being said, Adobe has a pretty tight grip on the industry. Once they move a feature out of beta, it'll be industry standard in no time." Sole proprietor graphic designers competing with design firms may see the ubiquity of AI in such tools as time-savers and workload scalers. Hamilton says one of the most-repeated statements about AI is that "it's just a tool." But she said there are multiple, specific examples of the way small to medium-sized design studios are making it a useful tool today. Among these examples: to build workback schedules (a reverse timeline calendar of tasks to meet project deadlines); to write rough drafts of client copy; and to build better mockups to present to clients. "Right now, the best thing designers can do is think of AI as a playground — it's a place to experiment so that we can get to know the tool and begin to better understand the possible applications," she said.