How to use AI to inform design

How to use AI to inform design

AI in graphic design is here to stay. Understanding AI's implications in the creative process can help businesses identify opportunities to drive efficiencies and free up human time to be more creative.

What Does AI Graphic Design Mean?

AI-driven design means using artificial intelligence to inform your design. When you design manually, you’re putting a lifetime’s worth of experience into the design process to create the product, website, content, or packaging. AI-driven design allows you to bring quantitative analysis into the process, combining this with your human intuition to prove the effectiveness of your design.

AI can drive design in two key ways: by using algorithm-driven design to create a design automatically, or by using data-driven design to input into the manual design process.

Artificial intelligence design software such as DALL.E and CLIP uses GTP-3 to automatically create designs based on human concepts. The AI design tool can generate several different design concepts within seconds, shortening the design process considerably. However, it’s unlikely that this could ever operate without any manual input as it lacks the human intuition to understand the concept or design.

In contrast, the data-driven design uses AI to inform the manual design process, using design analytics to create the most effective design for, the first time. AI-driven usability testing analysis means that less time and money needs to be spent on testing prototypes and the design can be thoroughly tested and adapted before it is ever released to the public.

What is the Creative Process?

How_to_Use_AI_in_Graphic Design

One of the most popular theories can be found in the book, The Art of Thought, by British psychologist Graham Wallas. This process has since been updated and adapted to a 5 stage process.

The five key stages are:

1. Preparation

The preparation stage involves immersing yourself in information. That could involve research or looking at or listening to ideas. For example, a designer might conduct market research and competitor analysis at this stage.

2. Incubation

The incubation stage is a thoughtful stage, where the information that was taken in during the preparation phase is slowly digested by the subconscious mind. This stage can take any length of time, ranging from hours to months. It might feel counterproductive to walk away from the idea for a while, but this is where the magic happens.

 

3. Illumination

The illumination stage sometimes referred to as the insight stage, is where you have that lightbulb moment. These moments usually happen when you least expect them to when you’re driving, lying in bed at night, or taking a walk.

4. Evaluation

The fourth stage of the creative process is the evaluation stage. This is where you consider the validity of your idea and ensure that it is unique. You’ll reflect on the original preparation that you did and ensure that your idea fits with this research. This phase may also involve conducting market research to prove the validity of your concept.

5. Elaboration

The final stage is elaboration, although this phase is sometimes referred to as the validation stage. This stage is where the hard work is done, including testing the concept, creating a prototype, and testing and adjusting the final piece of work.

How has AI Graphic Design Impacted the Creative Process?

AI-driven design processes are replacing the most formulaic and procedural tasks, allowing the creative individual to spend more time on actually creating things.

How is AI being integrated into the creative process to supercharge efficiencies and speed up design processes?

Deep Learning

During the preparation phase of the creative process, extensive research is required. This is where artificial intelligence can help. AI can quickly analyze hundreds or even thousands of design variations to speed up the research process.

Through artificial intelligence, you can even generate alternative designs along a similar theme, providing valuable input into the illumination phase of the creative process.

Speech-to-Text

A huge breakthrough has come from Open AI in its GPT-3 language generator. Not only can this tool create text including HTML coding, but it can also generate code to create images. For example, a designer could ask for a button that looks like an avocado, and GPT-3 will generate the code automatically.

This speech-to-text tool can be useful in the illumination stage of the creative process, helping designers to generate ideas faster than ever before. It’s also valuable in the elaboration stage, where it can help to speed up the design process.

Quantitative Usability Testing

When you’re evaluating your idea, you’ll probably need to analyze data to find out whether your idea is viable. Quantitative usability testing can help with this, producing UX analysis reports to demonstrate likely web traffic, pages visited, user flow, and exit pages.

These key UX metrics can help you to understand user behavior and how your new idea is likely to perform in the real world.

Predictive Heatmap Tools

Predictive analytic heat mapping tools such as Dragonfly AI have become essential in the elaboration stage of the creative process.

Heatmap tools can help you to evaluate the saliency of your design, and understand how user attention will be attracted by your design and where distractions might lie. This can help you to optimize your design without the need for time-consuming user test cycles.

Check out our guide to visual heatmaps for more insight.

How is AI being used to Inform Design for Marketers and Designers?

Artificial intelligence is already used in many different areas of industry, including digital marketing and graphic design. Here are some of the ways that AI is used across the creative industries.

AI in Digital Marketing

An ever-increasing number of businesses are implementing AI into their digital marketing. AI technology is helping marketers to save time and work smarter, whilst tailoring their advertising to individual users more than ever before.

1. Personalised Advertising with AI

Artificial intelligence allows digital marketers to personalize their advertising messages and designs to suit each user.

The AI technology first analyses the audience using data collected to identify their individual goals and requirements. The system then uses natural language generation (NLG) and natural language processing (NLP) to create a personalized advertisement that is suited to the individual user, increasing both attention and conversion rates.

Learn more about predictive analytics and personalization.

2. Market Research using AI

In digital marketing, ensuring that you’re targeting the right audience is essential and AI technology is extremely valuable in this area.

AI can analyze both past and present customers, as well as ad performance, to compare against pre-defined key performance indicators (KPIs). It will then identify the best audience to target with future advertisements, based on the data analyzed.

3. Using AI to Optimise Performance

In digital marketing, it’s important to continuously monitor the progress of campaigns, identifying and implementing improvements wherever needed. AI technology simplifies monitoring and optimizing the performance of marketing campaigns.

Machine learning algorithms can analyze how campaigns are performing and generate recommendations for improvements to optimize both performance and user experience. AI is even capable of identifying performance issues that the marketer may have not even realized existed.

3. Predictive Analytics

Predictive analytic heat mapping tools such as Dragonfly AI allow users to assess the saliency and impact of their designs before testing them on real-life users, enabling conversion-driven design.

Heatmaps provide a clear visual representation of where attention is being grabbed and where distractions may be diverting attention, helping designers to optimize their designs to be as effective as possible, without long and costly user testing cycles.

Discover why predictive analytics is so important with our comprehensive guide.

AI in Graphic Design

AI technology allows graphic designers to create new designs quickly and efficiently, with the ability to create multiple variations of designs that feature dynamic personalization. The use of AI allows graphic designers to work more efficiently than ever before, with a range of personalization techniques at their fingertips.

1. Product Design

Artificial intelligence graphic design is beginning to be used in the design of products and packaging, especially where uniqueness is required.

For example, in 2017, Nutella used AI-based algorithms to create one-of-a-kind jars known as “Nutella Unice”. The algorithm was able to put together patterns and colors to create millions of unique jar designs at the touch of a button. This campaign resulted in over seven million jars being sold in just 30 days.

2. Logo Design Makers

Another area where artificial intelligence graphic design is useful is logo design. There are many free logo design tools online that use AI-based technology to create unique logo designs based on data inputted by the user.

If you’re looking for a more high-end logo design tool, Tailor Brands is a logo designer based on highly advanced AI technology. This intuitive technology creates unique logos for businesses and then allows the user to continue to customize the logo until it meets their requirements. 

3. Speech-to-Text

Graphic designers can bring their ideas to life without even picking up a pen, thanks to speech-to-text technology. Open AI’s GPT-3 language generator allows graphic designers to see their ideas come to life by simply saying their design concept out loud.

From a scroll bar that looks like a snake to a banner of the FA Cup, AI technology is transforming the creative process for graphic designers, allowing their ideas to be brought to life at the touch of a button.

How to Use AI Within Website Design

Artificial intelligence is a valuable tool within the design, using predictive analytics to demonstrate where user attention will fall on a page and where distraction may take over.

Dragonfly AI uses predictive visual analytics heatmapping system to provide you with a clear visual representation of user attention, enabling you to perform user experience analysis to facilitate improvements to your design.

Use AI in Graphic Design to Empower Your Creative Production Team

AI is transforming the creative process and changing the way that we design products, packaging, and marketing materials.

AI design should be seen as a support rather than a replacement for humans. The design process becomes faster, smarter, and more efficient when technology and humans work collaboratively.  

Dragonfly AI offers your team the data insights they need to enhance creative quality consistently and at speed. 

Book a demo today

 

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