The presence of AI in print – and digital – has exploded in the last year. From small stickers to massive billboards, AI-rendered products can be seen all over, but these come with major pitfalls. Yes, AI is easy, but what is lost in the process? Not only is AI stripping us of natural resources, but it’s stripping us of important human resources: creativity and discovery. Don’t hate us, as I’m sure many of us have used AI-created pieces before, but please learn from this.

1.        It’s hard to have heart when there’s no human. Let’s face it, without a human behind a project, the overall appearance of a printed piece is lackluster. Often the same fonts are used with the same sparkle and pizzazz, over and over and over. We see the same idea floated by many different companies or individuals who have used similar AI prompts. Print starts to just feel like jumbled noise instead of pieces made specifically for particular clients or consumers.

2.        Creativity dies. One of the unique properties of humanity is our creativity. We can come up with ideas, designs, and techniques that set us apart, not only from the rest of the animal kingdom, but also from each other. One graphic designer is not going to come up with the exact same idea as another graphic designer even if they are given the same prompts. Some may see this as a negative, but from a design standpoint, we want this to happen. Creative ideas are individualistic, even if created in collaboration.

3.        Is that even text anymore? We’ve all seen the images that had ‘words’ on them, but when you zoom in on the piece or look a little closer, those ‘words’ aren’t words at all: they are modern-day hieroglyphics. When we see this on printed pieces, it’s a red flag and comes across to an interested client as fake or even as a scam. Not only do we see hieroglyphics, but often misspelled words or homophones. Trust is lost in this process.

4.        Inaccuracies with irrelevant information. One of the major design flaws with AI-created pieces is the lack of negative space on the design. AI currently fills up as much space as possible on the layout, often loading it with irrelevant information that creates confusion. This goes against the design philosophy that negative space within the artwork is a positive, focusing your eyes on the ideas that matter. AI projects often overstimulate the brain making it difficult to focus on the important information.

5.        The unease of editing. When asked, our graphic designers had a lot to say about the use of AI in pieces, but one of the most important issues with AI-created pieces is that they are extremely difficult to edit. Vectorized projects are by far the easiest to work with, followed by projects that were created on lower cost graphic design software. However, AI-created pieces have major design flaws that are hard to overcome without time and effort, which only grows the overall cost of the design work.

Note: AI was not used in the writing of this piece. Period.