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As part of our blog series on AI tools for marketing teams, Amelia Jones shares her feedback on AI for design and visual communication.
If like me, you’re a creative marketer and a keen designer, you may be sceptical about using AI tools for supporting the creation of visuals, but also perhaps a little curious? I’ve taken a look at a variety of AI tools for design, and to cut a long story short:
Whether you’re creating an image, infographic, or social media ad creative, AI tools are useful for inspiration, quick editing, and image enhancement. However, they lack the human touch in creativity and project understanding, and any outputs definitely require a thorough review and fine-tuning.
So, let’s delve into my research – I’ve put together some thoughts on how both free and paid tools can support the design process.
- No design guidelines? No worries. Use Colormind [1] – simply upload an image such as a brand logo and the colour scheme generator will use deep learning to learn colour styles, creating quick and helpful colour palettes to adhere to design guidelines.
- Typefaces. Manually searching for and testing font combinations in Adobe InDesign [2] is time consuming! Fontjoy [3] uses deep learning to generate the best and beautiful font combinations that share an overarching theme yet positive contrast.
Source: Fontjoy [3]
- The Adobe Suite, AI-edition. Adobe Express [4], formerly known as Adobe Spark, is a cloud-based graphic design tool that makes it easy to create impressive social media graphics, promotional videos, ads, and more.
- Editing made easy. Although a Photoshop fan myself, I must confess it can appear complex with a myriad of features, and requires training to learn how to make even the simplest of image edits. If you’re just looking to remove the background of an image, then RemoveBg [5] can do this for you for free. Or use DALL-E [6] to edit from text-prompts.
Source: Tracy Le Blanc, Pexels [7] Source: RemoveBg [5]
- A template to save time! Many of the AI tools mentioned can generate design templates based on user input or predefined parameters. This is especially useful for creating consistent and professional-looking social media ads, banners, and other visual content.
- A second pair of eyes/opinion. Although I’m yet to explore an AI tool for this, chatbots supposedly can offer feedback on your design concepts, providing insights for improvement to boost user engagement.
Getting started
In putting this blog together, it’s clear that many tools overlap in their functionality and effectiveness. Pricing varies from free to around $19 per month, but several paid tools are offering a free trial. Starting with free options and free trials can be a good way to test out what might work for your team. Ultimately, remember that in all instances, these are tools that can potentially improve the efficiency of the design process, but can’t replace our expertise. As someone who remains passionate about visual communication, I’m excited to continue learning and experimenting with these tools through 2024!