A designer’s take on AI tools

After getting very excited I am almost instantly over AI.

I am currently building my website & getting serious about regular content and whilst chat gbt has hugely accelerated the number of drafts I've created, the rush of ideas to the head and an understanding of what people would expect from the copy side of my content, I am now rewriting almost every word to actually reflect my unique experience and perspective.

Maybe you can prompt it better but I feel the words always feel a little contrived even with my input. I can see where others have used chat gbt and it's a bit off putting, aren't we meant to be making connections on these social media sites? I don't really want to engage with people's robot expanded vague thoughts.

I'm moving towards a quality over quantity approach and sustainable progress towards an audience who share my values.

The internet is already saturated with bite-size generic advice, no amount of bright colours or bold outlines will make my version of that stand out anyway, and on top of that, I didn't start my own studio to be inauthentic.

As for image making, I spent somewhere in the region of 2 days (a conservative estimate) trying to create a hero image for my website, a website that's focused on custom design, hand painted signs and bespoke branding. I would have been better off spending that time creating a beautiful hand lettered graphic but I had shiny new toy syndrome and it was a valuable 2 days to learn a lesson and honestly, pretty fun.

Saying I'm 'over it' might be a bit strong, I'll continue to use it to bounce ideas around but I'm no longer under the illusion that it will be running my social media for me or taking my photographs for me (my least favourite creative job).

I've attached my favourite image from the hundreds of images I made Midjourney create. It's a representation of my studio, looking out over a view that mimics my logo, 3 mountains covered in clouds, under the moon.

I wanted to create this image because my studio is an industrious couple of tables in the corner of my house, and a photograph of that didn't capture the feelings I wanted to invoke, of climbing through the haze to achieve your dreams and goals.

I had this idea that if I made the narrative I had created seem like a real world then I could promote the experience people get when they work with me but in reality, these tables in the corner of a room are my narrative. Before that, it was the corners of generous people's homes & businesses and soon it will be a photo worthy, magical shack at the bottom of my garden.

I am climbing through the clouds, towards the top of those mountains. I'm just not there yet, heck maybe those mountains just get taller and new clouds appear.

Now I am actually building the studio of my dreams. No doubt it will have the chaos of this picture but I might even paint a mural of those mountains under a night sky.