Here’s some ideas/predictions of how the role of a designer will be enhanced and expanded by artificial intelligence:
Automation of Repetitive Tasks
Designers spend a lot of time on repetitive tasks such as resizing images or choosing colors. AI can automate these, freeing up time for designers to focus on the more creative aspects of their work. For example, tools like Adobe Sensei and the recently launched Adobe Firefly can automatically remove backgrounds from images, adjust the lighting, create brushes, and generate unlimited variations.
AI-Powered Design Assistance
AI can also help designers generate new ideas and find inspiration. Platforms like Midjourney use AI to create beautiful renderings of web pages that, more or less, adhere to the designer’s prompts. Other tools, like Canva, use AI to suggest design elements like fonts and colors that fit a particular aesthetic.
Selection from a Larger Pool of Ideas
A designer might be able to come up with 10 good logo ideas and 20 bad ones in a week. AI will generate the same output in 2 minutes. After a week, and at that pace, we’d have thousands of options to choose from. While there are such a issues as the tyranny of choice (paywall) and too much of a good thing, the fact is, creative directors will now be able to select the best of a much larger universe of alternatives. Hopefully, this will end up improving design outcomes.
Collaboration between Intelligences
We need to collectively work to make sure that AI is not here to replace designers, but rather to augment our skills and capabilities, and to push the boundaries of what’s possible. The future of creativity lies in the collaboration between human designers and AI-powered tools, resulting in a more efficient and innovative design process.
Designers who embrace this technology will have a competitive edge. By harnessing AI to automate repetitive tasks and generate lots of new ideas, we can focus on the most critical aspects of our work, resulting in more efficient and innovative design solutions. At Digit, we are already using AI every day to help us with our work—not substitute our value—and to improve the results for our clients.