On Monday, I attended several AI sessions. By the end of the day, I was a little AI-ed out, but Stephen Gates, founder of CRZY Design Studio, was one of my favorites. He described his process in detail and shared his top AI tools for creativity.
Stephen’s Top 5 AI Tools for Creativity
- Midjourney for images.
- Runway for video.
- ChatGPT for writing.
- Suno for music.
- Gamma for present presentations
Stephen’s AI Workflow
Stephen shared his Midjourney process with us. I found it extremely informative, and he was very generous in sharing his prompt formula. However, he quickly added that since AI is evolving faster than the speed of light, it did come with a disclaimer that what works today might now work tomorrow.
He emphasized that great work comes from great prompts, and he’s honed the structure of his prompts with lots of experimentation and trial and error. His structure goes something like this—
Medium + Structure + Environment + Composition + Style + Type of Camera Used and Lenses
AI Issues
Stephen highlighted some common problems with AI too—
- It adds unwanted details like extra fingers
- It doesn’t really understand popular culture hands
- it over sexualizes women, so he had to actually tell AI to make sure women’s shirts are at neck level
- it isn’t a quick fix it can take a lot of time and iterations to get what you want.
Pro Tip: In case you didn’t know because I didn’t. Midjourney is off of Discord and is now available as a paid web subscription.
Mastering Midjourney
He also had some great tips on how to get the best out of Midjourney–
- Pick your image ratio wisely. It can make a big difference. You’ll get different results based on the ratio you choose.
- Images tend to be low resolution and unsuitable for print work, so you’ll need to get an upscaler like Magnificant or Gigapixel, which can run you $200 per license.
- Always record your process so that you can repeat your results because the tricky thing is getting predictable results. (Stephen uses a Google sheet.)
- Prompt management is a must so you can repeat the results and evolve with the AI tools.
- Be flexible and experiment. Storytelling still matters, and it’s what you do with the tools that matters.
- Consider adding an AI policy your team can abide by, too.
Stephen edited the images, and he produced a significant amount.
I was excited to experiment with AI, but for me, the verdict wasn’t clear on the commercial use of AI images. So, I won’t be using them for client work at the moment.
Like this article? You might also like…
5 Things to Share: October 2024
Happy Halloween, You Ghouls! The IMTA raises over $50k with email marketing, YouTube tips, a sweet brand refresh, humanizing your website, and notes from the HOW Design Live conference.
Notes from How Design Live 2024
Here are some highlights and interesting tidbits from my four days at the HOW Design Live conference in Downtown Denver, Colorado.
Explore Your Profound Power to Unite, Communicate, and Inspire Action, Pum Lefebure
Pum Lefebure, co-founder and COO of Design Army described herself as the “art kid” and was inspired by the United Colors of Benetton ads and the ’90s aesthetic. She believes art education is a great equalizer, but schools always cut the arts first, and by doing this, we cut out personal expression.