AI (Artificial Intelligence)

Creativity Meets Intelligence: How AI Has Transformed My Design Practice

Over the past year, I have been taking a deep dive into using AI to explore creative endeavors, using it as a tool to enhance everything from creative strategy, branding, advertising, print, and web design.

What Is AI?

Artificial intelligence is software designed to recognize patterns and generate content based on those patterns. The AI tools I use are called generative AI, meaning they create new content like images, text, and ideas rather than simply analyzing existing information. When I provide a starting concept, the AI draws on everything it has learned to generate something new, much like how a well-read author synthesizes their influences into original work.

AI as a Creative Partner

In my practice, AI serves as something between a brainstorming partner and a tireless assistant. It doesn’t replace strategic thinking or years of experience. Instead, it accelerates and expands what’s possible.

For creative strategy, AI helps me explore dozens of conceptual directions quickly. In branding, it assists with naming explorations, visual mood boarding, and translating abstract brand personalities into color palettes and typography suggestions. For advertising, it generates headline variations, copy options, and rough visual concepts. When it comes to print and web design, AI handles layout explorations, image generation, and technical tasks like writing cleaner code.

The Human Remains Essential

Here’s what AI cannot do: it cannot understand your specific audience the way a strategist who has listened to real customers can. It cannot feel the emotional weight of a brand story or know instinctively when a design just works. And it certainly cannot build the relationships with clients and collaborators that make creative work meaningful.

What AI does is remove friction, letting me explore more possibilities faster while every strategic choice still flows through human judgment.

AI hasn’t replaced creativity. It has amplified it.

I’ve recently been working with a theater production company based in North Carolina on posters for their upcoming productions. Using AI, I was able to keep costs down while upgrading their branding. Feedback from the community has been outstanding!