Let AI be your assistant

Let's face it, AI is here to stay, and yes there are concerns about it in the art and design field thanks to Gen AI images being used WAY too liberally on an audience that doesn't have the necessary skills to spot it. Heck! As a designer with an eye for it, I am finding it harder and harder to spot AI. I am at a point now where I really need to look at it twice on some images.

That said, AI is a tool, and we would do better to know how to use it...the right way! Not to create images for us, but by guiding us into creating art. If you want to stay on top of things as a creative, it's time to let AI be your assistant.

And by assistant I really mean the unpaid summer intern kind of assistant. You know the one that you can delegate the most tedious, boring, non creative tasks to or send on errands. Gemini and Chat GPT can't go fetch your coffee or dry cleaning but you can use it to get creative ideas WITHOUT generating an image, or uploading any image of yours might I add.

See that "Groovy Vibes" design above? It's 100% my hand that created it from assets I drew myself in Procreate holding the stylus with my own right hand (yup I am right handed). I created those quatrefoils and viny records assets myself with the goal of creating a 70s inspired patter which you see in the background of that Creatsy mockup.

My patterns do well on Spoonflower, but are less succesful on Redbubble and Teepublic where t-shirts and stickers tend to sell a lot better, yet I wanted to use those assets to make a t-shirt/sticker design.

As I was playing with my assets, I realised it would work great with some text and a retro font. The retro font I had sorted out already. The text? Not so much, I tend to struggle with puns and quotes because I overthink A LOT. I go on tangents, I complicate things, loose the plot, to the point I often end up completely lost with way too many either too cheesy ideas, or long complicated ones and possibly both. With words and lettering, I struggle keeping it to the point and simple enough.

That is exactly were AI can help me and save me hours of overthinking and frustration that my ADHD brain can get completely exhausted with. I have in the past asked Chat GPT to come up with collection name suggestions, in fact Disco Dreams and The 70s Shuffle are two of those names I came up with using the help of AI. For this groovy vibes design idea I did use Gemini, because between Chat GPT and Gemini, I find the answers and suggestions I need a lot cleared on Gemini...personal preferences I guess.

This is how I more or less went with my prompt :

"I have created a retro vinyl records illustration with a quatrefoil flower and I would like to turn it into a t-shirt design. Help me find groovy 70s puns and quotes I could use to add text"

From there Gemini gave me a list of different puns and quotes all arranged in categories, and I ended up liking a category with shorter quotes but none really resonated with me, so I asked it to give me a few more suggestions in that particular category. In the end I used none of the ones it suggested, but got enough inspiration from the ones it generated to create my own : Groovy Vibes.

I immediately got to work in Photoshop trying to make it fit with my quatrefoil record, but I got completely way over my head with ideas and layouts to the point I started hating it all, and in true ADHD self made it all super complicated.

In need of a starting point I turned to Gemini again, again describing my design in words with no image upload and no color suggestion. I asked it to give me pointers on text layout that would work with my illustration and ig gave me a few, again, all in text. It was just enough to give me a direction while still letting me be in charge of all the designs decisions. I ended up combining two layout and style suggestions it provided to create my final design and filled in the gaps in my original vision which had only one record inside the quatrefoil by adding two smaller vinyl records on the side.

this is what ai is meant to be doing for you guys!

It's not supposed to take all the creative fun away from you, it's not supposed to be used to generate slop that you can't own and copyright. It's supposed to make you life easier by helping you think more clearly and kickstart your creative mind when it start acting like a cart of wild monkeys running while in a candy store. It's supposed to to help you overcome your weaknesses.

Let it be your assistant, let it be there to help, not take over. And if you need Gen AI images just because you heard selling on PoD is easy money, then stop! You are clearly not on the right career path, leave that to the artists and designers, not a computer.