Have you ever seen the movie Edward Scissorhands? It takes place in a suburban neighborhood where everything is the same – same houses, same cars, everybody dresses similarly – the only variation among these things is color. Even then, the colors used all belong to the same pastel palette. The neighborhood seems trendy and new for its time, but the overall impression of the scene is superficial.

This safe, controlled environment is disrupted by the introduction of Edward – a lab-invented being with scissors for hands, who has unkempt jet-black hair and a black leather getup. The people in the neighborhood are morbidly fascinated by him and his uniqueness, and almost immediately are inspired by and want his twist on their own yards, houses, and even hairstyles.

This scenario is almost exactly how it feels to be a graphic designer in the time of AI, but in reverse. Designers are starting to see a shift away from unique work created by learned professionals and toward AI – a solution that spits out the same designs but with different color schemes and pictures – just like that superficial neighborhood.

So I talked to the Forum design team and here are our collective thoughts about what we are seeing in the ever-changing landscape of AI and design.

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The Appeal of AI-Generated Designs

This sudden change has us asking ourselves: what is the appeal of AI over a human designer?

So far, our list of perceived “pros” for AI-generated designs is as follows:

  • Speedy: With the right prompt, an AI program can spit out a design in mere minutes.
  • Cost-effective: While some AI programs have tiers where one can pay a subscription for certain features, most options are free for anyone to use.
  • Control: When a user enters a prompt into an AI system, they can tell it exactly what they want and make as many edits as they wish, without having the back-and-forth of communicating with a human designer.

These are big points in AI’s favor, and we understand why they might sway a client to go that way. However, there are some discrepancies with AI designs that we designers suggest a person would pause to consider when visually representing a brand.

The Problem With AI and Brand Consistency

When a company or organization uses AI to generate a design, they are not just creating a poster or a t-shirt. They are putting into the public space a representation of their brand. Anyone who works in the marketing world understands how important it is for a brand to remain consistent, reliable, and authentic. This may look like using the same color palette and fonts across designs, the same design elements or even patterns, and the same overall voice of the brand in written content. Professional graphic design helps bring these elements together to create a recognizable and consistent brand identity.

Designers take the time to create a visual look for a brand and collaborate with the client to create a future direction for it to grow, while also considering its past. While building this relationship, we learn what a client’s preferences are and this helps streamline the design process in the future. Basic AI programs have no understanding of these concepts. A client may tell it to use a green and blue color scheme, but without the specific greens and blues (and not to mention fonts, design elements, etc.), the resulting design will just be an imitation of the look of a brand, not a strong embodiment of it. This waters down a brand’s overall representation and might even confuse loyal customers of a company. Sure, AI can create a last-minute poster much quicker than a human would, but at what cost to the brand? AI prompts gone awry that need a designer to edit might end up creating a bigger hole in a client’s budget than if the designer were to do it from the start.

How to Recognize AI-Generated Designs

The similarities among work created by an AI program begin to be easy to spot once you know what to look for. First, it has this way of creating this consistent “glowy” look in a design. Pictures of food, for example, all have a glistening sheen, and every element is “popping” or accented, screaming for your attention. The overall hue is warm and saturated, and AI-generated pictures of people are all smiling with not a hair out of place.

Here is AI’s formula for the “perfect” design layout: the same large title at the top with a brushstroke, the same little accent lines bursting above call out text, the same breakdown of icons across columns, all separated by lines.

The color scheme might be different, the logo might reflect the company or organization, but something just feels off. The spacing seems a little cramped, some pieces of a pattern might look a little distorted, you might even be asking yourself, “is a person’s finger supposed to bend that way?” To some people, these issues may not be enough to sacrifice the ease of use and cost-effectiveness of AI. But to others, these signs are red flags.

How AI-Generated Content Can Affect Brand Reputation

In a study done by Rival Technologies, 72% of Gen Z consumers reacted negatively to AI-generated content used in marketing – often unfollowing a brand, refusing to patronize the business, and even publicly scrutinizing the choice.

That’s a pretty big risk for a business that has spent time and money building its brand. The whole point of marketing is to connect with an audience and give people a reason to choose one company over another. If a design looks like something they’ve seen a dozen times before, or feels disconnected from what they know about a brand, it may do more harm than good. People want to see what makes a company different, and using generic designs that could belong to just about anyone makes that a little harder to do. After all, if every brand starts looking the same, what reason does a customer have to remember yours?

Not only are there implications to the look and reputation of a brand when using AI, but there could be legal consequences as well. Many people turn to AI for creating a logo for their business for the reasons discussed earlier. But it may not be common knowledge how AI gets its inspiration for these logos, or that AI designed logos may cause issues with copyrighting or trademarking a brand down the line.

AI creates designs by scouring the internet and pulling from other logos, artists, and brands. Nothing created by AI is 100% unique – what a user receives is like a franken-logo pieced together from other sources. This might not be concerning at first glance, but if a company wants to legally protect their brand, it likely won’t pass muster.

U.S. copyright law requires a human author for a work to be eligible for copyright protection. That means purely non-human creations (such as AI) cannot be copyrighted. Trademarking might be a little easier to skate by with an AI-generated logo as it doesn’t have the same human-made requirements, but since AI uses elements and logos from other industries to make its designs, it may get rejected there as well. This is due to the fact that a trademarked design must be distinguishable enough from fellow competitors in order to receive approval.

How to Use AI as a Tool, Not a Replacement for Designers

It may seem from this article that we as designers are completely shunning the use of AI. This is not the case. We recognize that it is a useful tool for some things, and AI is here to stay. Even our team has leaned on it as a useful photo-editing tool, making quick changes that used to take us much longer to do in Photoshop.

We do, however, have some guidance that may help get the most out ofAI-generated designs. The biggest thing we can suggest is to use AI as a starting point, not as a final product. It’s totally acceptable and helpful to use it to brainstorm ideas and get thoughts out of your head and onto paper, and we welcome clients using it as a “rough draft” for a design. The caution here is that computers make mistakes that not everyone will catch. We will notice distortions or gestures that could be considered “off” or even offensive by viewers. In an ideal situation, we would take an AI inspiration and turn it into a functional design that honors the look and voice of the brand and protects its authenticity and longevity.

AI is trendy, fast, cheap, and a wonderful tool if used correctly. If used without caution, however, it can tarnish a brand, leave clients frustrated with its results, create legal headaches, and even alienate loyal audiences. Think about that neighborhood with the same cookie-cutter pastel houses – would a brand be successful if it fit into that same mold, or would it find itself on the top of the heap by showcasing its uniqueness and genuine qualities to its viewers? We designers are here with tools in hand, willing to earn the trust of our clients, and wanting to build something beautiful – and memorable – together.

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