It’s not pretentious to call out the skills required to do effective design work. I think some of the possible misconceptions people can have about the utility of AI is equating design with tasks like making a mood board. Pulling together references is a fraction of the problem sets we have as designers. But it’s possible that many people think that a quick picture saves hours of work.
Most of my design sketching takes seconds or maybe minutes to produce but the thought processes and conversations that come out of those sketches are so much more meaningful.
Thanks, Davin. I think I was just anticipating the argument against, and trying not to sound “better than”!
I really resonate with your last sentence. It also reminds me of the infamous design story of Paula Scher designing the Citi logo on a napkin and saying it took her 30 years to design that in 15 seconds.
I think we need pointed and informed criticism. There’s an implication in many places online that speaking directly from experience is speaking down. It leads to a kind of soft allowance for fairly harmful things to seem like balanced opinions.
Hi. "I’d be willing to hear debate about this style of AI usage from someone who has this creative training and discernment regarding visual ideas." Self taught over the course of 30 some odd years, ended up being an author/editor because it got the ideas out faster, but, it me.
Every single time I have used AI to generate an image it has gone through the mental or paper thumbnail process first, and beyond that, sometimes it's impossible to (historically, I was aiming to be an illustrator, I have bad eyesight though, so I've always been really good at using negative space and edge detection, because until I got glasses, way later in life than I should have, it was how I navigated a very, very blurry world) get within a mile of the idea or concept that you want, if only because there are inherent limits on AI image generation at the level of prompt adherence, even for things that if I were to grab my sketchbook, I'm gonna have no problem with. I'd just as soon use regular old reference photos or fall back on my body of knowledge. Like, lately I've been doing simple collage work in GIMP to go with one particular story cycle. There is no way on god's green earth that my visual ideas for how a 1024x5k long pixel collage is going to read visually if given over to the concept of AI image generation. It is currently impossible unless you take multiple images out of whatever you're using to generate them, and cut them up by hand, because the collage has an emergent theme and elemental repetition that I've baked into it from the conceptual start. And it may not be my best work, but it was 2 in the morning and somehow I'm STILL dodging writing the piece I wanted to finish last night.
The issue I'd say with using AI to generate ideas as sketch etc. is, there will be a flattening effect as the model regresses to the mean of its own guardrails (this can be used to create some neat stuff, but they usually shut it down or change the rules before you can really get to the point of making things that are truly interesting.)
That being said, they're already incorporating it into corporate design workflows and teaching it at design schools. I assume the use of it, and its use cases, will evolve from our current point (early adoption and panic.)
I also dislike discounting AI generated imagery as a WHOLE, because IT IS AN ABLEIST POSITION. If I have a severe tremor, or other disability, I can have a full training in design, graphic art, I can master ALL the theory in the world, but there's still a barrier to entry. (I have a very slight tremor most of the time. Unless I try to overdose on Xanax (literally nearly impossible by the way, unless you add in a secondary cns depressant) So, if I'm on my iPad in Procreate, yeah, I'm using the line smoothing function turned up to about 70% on my ink and line work. Now, this is a very limited scope single asset use case, but keep in mind, THAT IS ALSO A FORM OF AI.
As an artist and fan of certain forms of gatekeeping (I am an editor.... of fiction....) I sparkle with a LOT of what you say, but I also see these sort of gaping blind spots that professionals tend to overlook because, well, they're professionals, with professional mindsets and a professional's toolbox to grab from, essentially critiqueing the tech from a professional standpoint (like if I was to start railing about Sudowrite right now, which I have been known to do under certain circumstances and when the air pressure is just right.)
I have a story that's sad but happy to go along with this, but it's not mine to tell in public. But thank you.
The only way to really get what you want to the letter would be to set up your own stable diffusion flux setup and once you're done doing that, why not just, you know, do it yourself. I've never had a sketch come out exactly how I envision it in my head, but I can bullshit human anatomy and on a REALLY REALLY good day some fancy perspective like A Dollar General Kim Jung Gi you pick out of the bins near the cash register in some backwater town in deepest rural West Virginia, long past its expiry date (RIP to a GOAT) or Katsuya Terada if he had suffered a massive stroke and never fully recovered.
This is a brilliant piece; thank you for publishing it! I’m neither a book designer nor a client (but so so interested in everything about the process) but even outside of book design, everything you’ve written here, especially in the final two paragraphs, is absolutely on the nose about AI use:
‘What you are missing is the time and work and training with which to harness the creativity available to all of us, and, critically, the discernment required to know what creative idea to use and how it will work.
‘Maybe AI tools are the future. Just don’t let them think for you.’
Any suggestions that AI gives us are suggestions and ideas to be interrogated, analysed, workshopped, built upon, not the final product, and long story short I don’t want to ramble even more but thank you for putting it all into words!!
I agree wholeheartedly. I am comforted by the fact that my 20-something children see ai as a waste of precious resources (water, for example), and do not participate in the action-figure trend. As a graphic designer and writer, I wonder at anyone using images created in this way, as they are working off of many artists' and writers' work, and not supported by copyright. I have used ai in photoshop to extend the background of a photo my client has purchased, and honestly, it's great for that. I have had other clients try to "write" their package copy with ChatGPT, and that was a disaster, mostly because I think you have to give it something good to work with. As my father used to say, garbage in, garbage out.
I really dislike when people attach ChatGPT image creations to briefings. Like, what do you mean? Is this the route? Do you like this? Does it address the challenge? What are your expectations? Great, now I can’t unsee it…
I agree with a lot here, thanks for writing and sharing! And I also fall on the other side of the fence and use AI for all types of things.
But something in this piece reminds me of teachers right now. A veteran teacher vs a first year teacher using AI to assist in lesson planning. A veteran has decades of experience and knows how to wield such a powerful tool, and knows what not to include, and has the expertise and craft and taste and understanding of their students to still build a great lesson with a powerful assistant. A brand new teacher may miss a lot of that nuance and just use the tool in an inexperienced way. But may also still learn from it as an on the spot personalized teacher/trainer.
So I guess I’m thinking less about “the client” and more about designers.
I know a lot of designers are seeing AI as another tool in the toolbox. Not a replacement. And recognize the most valuable parts of their role are not replaceable by AI. And are supercharged by using it strategically still.
I think it hit the right tone. I’ve discovered over a period of DECADES that people who don’t work with designers are those who never were going to anyway, so trying to convince them is just a bunch of wasted energy.
The same works with maths and coding logic. The WORST people to work with are those who “got the right answer” but can’t show their work or can’t create a system that reproduces the results. Not just for the “creatives.” It’s like that episode of MadMen where Pete “fixes” a leaky faucet. But he didn’t understand plumbing basics, so what he thought was a solution was something that actually made the issue worse… (Don eventually fixed it because he understood plumbing… interesting allegory… metaphor? 🤷♂️)
There’s a subset I find the most frustrating and that is those who say they want to work with a professional designer but then ram their own half-baked ideas through to the finish line.
They think they want a designer, but they really don’t, and that’s when it is especially insidious!
I grew up with Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies. These cartoons were drawn with meticulous care. The art was exquisite. With the onset of the sixties, we got the Jetsons, an all together tepid version of animation that was disappointing and yet still addictive. It was as if we became reconciled to mediocrity. By the time my kids were born in the early 70s, the flowing images of my youth were gone. Our exposures when young create our lifetime esthetics, unless of course, we become aware of the psychological nuance and make efforts to educate and transform our esthetic palate.
Ai is Yang, left brain. The trouble we are encountering in Modernia, is our desire to be quick, efficient in service to win the day. We have forgotten that time is also a factor.
Ai is the God who believes his ideas are so wonderful that he can manifest them all by himself. He is certain that he is the only one who can present his plan. He knows that he is alone and must attack where perceived threat pops up. The problem is that he has no hands; no body. He cannot manifest alone. He is part of a continuum of opposing forces that create. He is not the answer.
He is part of a process. He is half of God, not the whole Divine Being. He is frosting, not cake. If you can imagine how sick you feel after eating a cup of frosting, that is Ai. I have done so and it is indeed sickening, while in contrast, I have eaten two cups of cake and felt less ill.
Today, in an attempt to digest pounds of frosting, we are forgetting the value of cake. We are exchanging the fullness of cake in the belly, with the thrill of sugar-grease on the tongue and calling it nourishment. Now we starve. We starve the eyes with plasticine images. We starve the ears with digital noise. We starve the body with the absence of touch. Our touching is tap tap tap on plastic squares; the chaotic clang of ancient typewriters is long forgotten. The smooth cartoons of mid century kids disappears into the present frenetic visual chaos of short clips, montage and lashing blue screen light. The strobe light became popular in the 70s.
Have we been hypnotized with flashing light sugar?
I’m Harrison, an ex fine dining industry line cook. My stack "The Secret Ingredient" adapts hit restaurant recipes (mostly NYC and L.A.) for easy home cooking.
I don't think you sound pretentious at all! I have the exact same thoughts when it comes to using AI for software engineering. Generating image/code is the last step of a long process, and you need to define all the requirements, implications and consequences before you do that!
There’s a photographer who made waves by entering an AI-generated photo into a contest and taking the grand prize. He did it to say “this is what’s coming, we need to be ready for it,” but it’s worth noting that he didn’t just have an AI-generated image - he also had decades of artistic sensibility and a keen instinct for what made a good photo.
It’s not pretentious to call out the skills required to do effective design work. I think some of the possible misconceptions people can have about the utility of AI is equating design with tasks like making a mood board. Pulling together references is a fraction of the problem sets we have as designers. But it’s possible that many people think that a quick picture saves hours of work.
Most of my design sketching takes seconds or maybe minutes to produce but the thought processes and conversations that come out of those sketches are so much more meaningful.
Thanks, Davin. I think I was just anticipating the argument against, and trying not to sound “better than”!
I really resonate with your last sentence. It also reminds me of the infamous design story of Paula Scher designing the Citi logo on a napkin and saying it took her 30 years to design that in 15 seconds.
I think we need pointed and informed criticism. There’s an implication in many places online that speaking directly from experience is speaking down. It leads to a kind of soft allowance for fairly harmful things to seem like balanced opinions.
Excellent point.
Hi. "I’d be willing to hear debate about this style of AI usage from someone who has this creative training and discernment regarding visual ideas." Self taught over the course of 30 some odd years, ended up being an author/editor because it got the ideas out faster, but, it me.
Every single time I have used AI to generate an image it has gone through the mental or paper thumbnail process first, and beyond that, sometimes it's impossible to (historically, I was aiming to be an illustrator, I have bad eyesight though, so I've always been really good at using negative space and edge detection, because until I got glasses, way later in life than I should have, it was how I navigated a very, very blurry world) get within a mile of the idea or concept that you want, if only because there are inherent limits on AI image generation at the level of prompt adherence, even for things that if I were to grab my sketchbook, I'm gonna have no problem with. I'd just as soon use regular old reference photos or fall back on my body of knowledge. Like, lately I've been doing simple collage work in GIMP to go with one particular story cycle. There is no way on god's green earth that my visual ideas for how a 1024x5k long pixel collage is going to read visually if given over to the concept of AI image generation. It is currently impossible unless you take multiple images out of whatever you're using to generate them, and cut them up by hand, because the collage has an emergent theme and elemental repetition that I've baked into it from the conceptual start. And it may not be my best work, but it was 2 in the morning and somehow I'm STILL dodging writing the piece I wanted to finish last night.
The issue I'd say with using AI to generate ideas as sketch etc. is, there will be a flattening effect as the model regresses to the mean of its own guardrails (this can be used to create some neat stuff, but they usually shut it down or change the rules before you can really get to the point of making things that are truly interesting.)
That being said, they're already incorporating it into corporate design workflows and teaching it at design schools. I assume the use of it, and its use cases, will evolve from our current point (early adoption and panic.)
I also dislike discounting AI generated imagery as a WHOLE, because IT IS AN ABLEIST POSITION. If I have a severe tremor, or other disability, I can have a full training in design, graphic art, I can master ALL the theory in the world, but there's still a barrier to entry. (I have a very slight tremor most of the time. Unless I try to overdose on Xanax (literally nearly impossible by the way, unless you add in a secondary cns depressant) So, if I'm on my iPad in Procreate, yeah, I'm using the line smoothing function turned up to about 70% on my ink and line work. Now, this is a very limited scope single asset use case, but keep in mind, THAT IS ALSO A FORM OF AI.
As an artist and fan of certain forms of gatekeeping (I am an editor.... of fiction....) I sparkle with a LOT of what you say, but I also see these sort of gaping blind spots that professionals tend to overlook because, well, they're professionals, with professional mindsets and a professional's toolbox to grab from, essentially critiqueing the tech from a professional standpoint (like if I was to start railing about Sudowrite right now, which I have been known to do under certain circumstances and when the air pressure is just right.)
I so appreciate your perspective! This really drives home the idea that there isn’t just one right take about this. Thanks for sharing.
I think if everyone used it like you did, the work would benefit.
I have a story that's sad but happy to go along with this, but it's not mine to tell in public. But thank you.
The only way to really get what you want to the letter would be to set up your own stable diffusion flux setup and once you're done doing that, why not just, you know, do it yourself. I've never had a sketch come out exactly how I envision it in my head, but I can bullshit human anatomy and on a REALLY REALLY good day some fancy perspective like A Dollar General Kim Jung Gi you pick out of the bins near the cash register in some backwater town in deepest rural West Virginia, long past its expiry date (RIP to a GOAT) or Katsuya Terada if he had suffered a massive stroke and never fully recovered.
This is a brilliant piece; thank you for publishing it! I’m neither a book designer nor a client (but so so interested in everything about the process) but even outside of book design, everything you’ve written here, especially in the final two paragraphs, is absolutely on the nose about AI use:
‘What you are missing is the time and work and training with which to harness the creativity available to all of us, and, critically, the discernment required to know what creative idea to use and how it will work.
‘Maybe AI tools are the future. Just don’t let them think for you.’
Any suggestions that AI gives us are suggestions and ideas to be interrogated, analysed, workshopped, built upon, not the final product, and long story short I don’t want to ramble even more but thank you for putting it all into words!!
Thanks Sarojamo! I’m glad it resonated outside of book design—because I wasn’t really thinking about book design specifically when I wrote it, haha.
I agree wholeheartedly. I am comforted by the fact that my 20-something children see ai as a waste of precious resources (water, for example), and do not participate in the action-figure trend. As a graphic designer and writer, I wonder at anyone using images created in this way, as they are working off of many artists' and writers' work, and not supported by copyright. I have used ai in photoshop to extend the background of a photo my client has purchased, and honestly, it's great for that. I have had other clients try to "write" their package copy with ChatGPT, and that was a disaster, mostly because I think you have to give it something good to work with. As my father used to say, garbage in, garbage out.
I really dislike when people attach ChatGPT image creations to briefings. Like, what do you mean? Is this the route? Do you like this? Does it address the challenge? What are your expectations? Great, now I can’t unsee it…
With your magic, David!
I agree with a lot here, thanks for writing and sharing! And I also fall on the other side of the fence and use AI for all types of things.
But something in this piece reminds me of teachers right now. A veteran teacher vs a first year teacher using AI to assist in lesson planning. A veteran has decades of experience and knows how to wield such a powerful tool, and knows what not to include, and has the expertise and craft and taste and understanding of their students to still build a great lesson with a powerful assistant. A brand new teacher may miss a lot of that nuance and just use the tool in an inexperienced way. But may also still learn from it as an on the spot personalized teacher/trainer.
So I guess I’m thinking less about “the client” and more about designers.
I know a lot of designers are seeing AI as another tool in the toolbox. Not a replacement. And recognize the most valuable parts of their role are not replaceable by AI. And are supercharged by using it strategically still.
In other words, I think it requires wisdom.
I think it hit the right tone. I’ve discovered over a period of DECADES that people who don’t work with designers are those who never were going to anyway, so trying to convince them is just a bunch of wasted energy.
The same works with maths and coding logic. The WORST people to work with are those who “got the right answer” but can’t show their work or can’t create a system that reproduces the results. Not just for the “creatives.” It’s like that episode of MadMen where Pete “fixes” a leaky faucet. But he didn’t understand plumbing basics, so what he thought was a solution was something that actually made the issue worse… (Don eventually fixed it because he understood plumbing… interesting allegory… metaphor? 🤷♂️)
There’s a subset I find the most frustrating and that is those who say they want to work with a professional designer but then ram their own half-baked ideas through to the finish line.
They think they want a designer, but they really don’t, and that’s when it is especially insidious!
Ugh… another MadMen reference “you’re a nonbeliever… I’m not here to convince you about Jesus… or the value of human-powered design…” https://youtu.be/5y4b-DEkIps?si=cKThh3a3kPPwPPCj
I grew up with Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies. These cartoons were drawn with meticulous care. The art was exquisite. With the onset of the sixties, we got the Jetsons, an all together tepid version of animation that was disappointing and yet still addictive. It was as if we became reconciled to mediocrity. By the time my kids were born in the early 70s, the flowing images of my youth were gone. Our exposures when young create our lifetime esthetics, unless of course, we become aware of the psychological nuance and make efforts to educate and transform our esthetic palate.
Ai is Yang, left brain. The trouble we are encountering in Modernia, is our desire to be quick, efficient in service to win the day. We have forgotten that time is also a factor.
Ai is the God who believes his ideas are so wonderful that he can manifest them all by himself. He is certain that he is the only one who can present his plan. He knows that he is alone and must attack where perceived threat pops up. The problem is that he has no hands; no body. He cannot manifest alone. He is part of a continuum of opposing forces that create. He is not the answer.
He is part of a process. He is half of God, not the whole Divine Being. He is frosting, not cake. If you can imagine how sick you feel after eating a cup of frosting, that is Ai. I have done so and it is indeed sickening, while in contrast, I have eaten two cups of cake and felt less ill.
Today, in an attempt to digest pounds of frosting, we are forgetting the value of cake. We are exchanging the fullness of cake in the belly, with the thrill of sugar-grease on the tongue and calling it nourishment. Now we starve. We starve the eyes with plasticine images. We starve the ears with digital noise. We starve the body with the absence of touch. Our touching is tap tap tap on plastic squares; the chaotic clang of ancient typewriters is long forgotten. The smooth cartoons of mid century kids disappears into the present frenetic visual chaos of short clips, montage and lashing blue screen light. The strobe light became popular in the 70s.
Have we been hypnotized with flashing light sugar?
I mostly find myself in agreement.
I’m Harrison, an ex fine dining industry line cook. My stack "The Secret Ingredient" adapts hit restaurant recipes (mostly NYC and L.A.) for easy home cooking.
check us out:
https://thesecretingredient.substack.com
I don't think you sound pretentious at all! I have the exact same thoughts when it comes to using AI for software engineering. Generating image/code is the last step of a long process, and you need to define all the requirements, implications and consequences before you do that!
There’s a photographer who made waves by entering an AI-generated photo into a contest and taking the grand prize. He did it to say “this is what’s coming, we need to be ready for it,” but it’s worth noting that he didn’t just have an AI-generated image - he also had decades of artistic sensibility and a keen instinct for what made a good photo.