Sunday post #09
This week I said something at work that I thought I would never say, “I love Ai!”
For the past year I have been experimenting with Ai for imagery for Yoshan projects. I have used an algorithm to generate a collection of over 10,000 pieces of art and used Midjourney to help me create imagery for prototype designs for a card game. While the imagery was generated quickly and it produced visuals that I couldn’t imagine or execute on my own, the results didn’t communicate what I wanted, they didn’t feel right. And some were just plain weird.
This is my initial sketch, I needed to create a set of characters quickly and thought it would be a good experiment for image generation using Midjourney
I discovered Midjourney isn’t so great at line drawings (yet).
Midjourney felt my family of characters should be even weirder when I asked for colour. Not at all what I was looking for. Time to simplify my prompt and ask it to create just a cat and dog for me.
The Ai tools gave me lots of options which meant more decisions. My usual design process helps me to eliminate and reduce decisions to create a look and feel that solves a creative brief. I spent more time generating and producing options and after a couple of hours found myself further away from what I was looking for or what was useful. Ai wasn’t helping me.
Hmm, not quite Midjourney.
In the VS+YO design studio this week we created a layout design with an image that looked great but to work would require the image to be extended by almost a third. The background of the image featured a river, sky, and buildings which was quite complex. This type of work is not in my skillset, normally I would send this to a retoucher to complete. I decided to try the Ai generative fill tool in Photoshop. In under a minute it had completed the task to a high level which had me declaring my love for Ai.
This is where I think Ai is amazing, it can take the part of a job that is time-consuming and repetitive and free up time for creative work. It is a useful tool. And while Ai can be used to take care of the look part of the work it doesn’t take care of the emotional side of design, the feel.
The best designs make you feel something and I’m convinced the feel part will always need a human touch to make it connect emotionally.
Go outside challenge
This week’s focus for photos was numbers. I plan to research some outdoor activities for this month to get me excited to spend proper time outside instead of doing the minimum of walking to the studio. Next week’s brief: Red.
Day 57 - 63 - Numbers
