Why am I including AI in My Design Workshops?

If you’ve seen my new workshop posts lately, then you’ve probably also seen some of the comments it's attracting. A few people have had something to say about the fact that I’ve added an AI element to my Canva and Branding series. And I really do get it. There’s a lot of AI slop out there and I’m the last person who wants to be adding to it.

But here's the point they're forgetting, small business owners are already using it. They're not using it because they’ve thought about all the alternatives and carefully weighed up all the options - they’re using it simply because it’s fast, it's easy and it’s there. And that's not going to change just because a designer says it should. I see this happen every few years when technology catches up and makes the tools easier to use.

So I made the decision - as unpopular as it tends to make me in the graphic design world - to be in the room and show them how to use the tools - that they're already using - properly.

Firstly it's about the brief

AI without a real brand behind it doesn’t produce brand content. It produces generic content that looks like everyone else’s. What everyone likes to call AI Slop. A one-paragraph prompt is not a brand brief, regardless if you're giving it to AI software to to a graphic designer. It’s a guess. And AI makes the same call any tool does when you don’t give it enough to work with.

The same applies with a designer. If you walked into my studio, handed me your logo and said “make me a poster” - no brief, no context - you’d get a nice-looking poster back. Which you might be OK with.  But in the process of making that poster - and in the absence of further information - I’d have had to make calls about your fonts, your style, your tone, your audience, based on almost nothing. I’d be using my experience and research skills to pull from what other businesses in your industry are doing and then making a judgement call. AI is doing exactly the same thing (only a hell of alot faster than I could manage). 

So what some of the sessions in my workshop actually do is give people the skills and tools so they can actually brief AI properly. (And in the process they will also be able to brief the next Graphic Designer they use too.) Fonts, colours, brand voice, target market, the whole thing - set it up once, and then use it every time. Then their results stop looking like it came off a template and start looking more like the actual business. Is it perfect, of course not - because AI can't actually replace a designer - but it is better than what they had to start with.

A non-designer can make a terrible poster in InDesign too

So deep down we know that the slop problem isn’t actually an AI problem. It's not the software, it’s a no-brief, no-brand-foundation problem. Any non-designer can make just as generic and off-brand a post using proper graphic design software as they can using AI. But because AI is so easy and accessible, it's just quicker for them. That’s why they use it.

So I reiterate - the issue has never been the tool. It’s always just the thinking that goes into the design before the tool is even downloaded.

Will AI replace graphic designers?

Definitely NOT. In exactly the same way as buying a plant from a nursery and putting it in your garden doesn’t replace a landscaper. You’re doing something, yes. It might even look good to an amateur eye. But a landscaper who brings forty years of knowing which plant dies in that aspect, which ones fight each other for root space, and why the drainage on that side of the block is going to be a problem in three years. That’s not something a trip to your local Bunnings is ever going to replace.

Teaching a small business owner how to brief AI properly doesn’t replace what I do. It simply means the stuff they put out between our sessions - and trust me they will continue to create stuff themselves - actually looks kinda like them, not like a stock prompt.

If that sounds useful, my workshops run across four Tuesday mornings in November and December - 10, 17, 24 Nov and 1 Dec.