Design is one of the voices that your organization uses to communicate. Posts that have accompanying images perform multitudes better than those without in terms of engagement, and your visual style being consistent and striking is key when it comes to strong brand recognition.
Of course, the work involved in creating a strong visual style is a human job. There are design principles that are taken into consideration with each new asset being created, but as we mentioned in our piece about using AI to write your copy, the best way to relate to human beings is to entrust these jobs to human beings. Full reliance on AI to create art for you is a mistake of the highest caliber, but that doesn’t mean AI isn’t useful…
Let’s Get This Out of the Way
As it stands right now, many of the AI tools used to create visual assets aren’t exactly operating in the most ethical fashion. Only recently, Midjourney–who had initially stated it would be too difficult to properly credit any of the artists their tools were trained on–was caught with a list of over 10,000 artists that they used to train the Midjourney tool. Taking the work of artists without their permission is one thing, but AI art is also catching a lot of flack because it’s pushing these incredibly talented, human artists out of work. In the last month, Wacom used AI art in some of their promotional materials and Hasbro was caught doing the same after laying off 1,100 people in December. Both faced swift public backlash.
Using AI to create assets for your brand isn’t just a bad idea because of how it might end up looking, but because large swaths of the population view the use of AI art as cheap and unethical. It can damage trust in your brand, and no one wants that.
But…
When it comes to minor corrections and adjustments, AI can be a huge help to your design team and can end up saving them a lot of time.
Extending Photos and Patterns
Say there’s an image that you want to use for your banner, but it’s in the wrong aspect ratio and there’s no room to add the copy you want to add. AI can be used to extend the borders of these images so that they can be used in multiple ways. Suddenly that Instagram photo stretches across the entire top of your landing page. That pattern used only one time sparingly in a social post becomes a full-on wallpaper! This kind of pattern recognition can be extremely useful, and it sure beats creating all new assets from scratch.
Photo Tweaking
You did a promotional photoshoot for one of your products/services that’s about to launch. You have the shots you want to use–they have amazing lighting and your subjects are exactly where they should be–but something’s a bit… off.
Maybe someone’s hand is in a strange position, or the plant on the table needs to be a little more subdued so it doesn’t draw focus away from the main subject. There are AI tools that can correct this.
Adobe’s generative AI tools can be used to highlight problem areas and replace them with something closer to your vision. Don’t like that plant? Highlight it and prompt the AI to make it a small succulent. You can switch an open-palm hand gesture to a peace sign. You can even add glasses to a model’s face to make them look more sophisticated. Remove stains from clothing! Heal the cracks in concrete! There’s so much help that AI can give you to attain that perfect shot.
PRO TIP: If you’re altering images of people, make sure you double-check the AI output. AI generation tools can still miss when it comes to the number of fingers a person should have, and they can still lose track of the boundaries between flesh and the inanimate.
