https://www.wired.com/story/when-websites-design-themselves/ This tip is inspired by the AMA Social Series: Getting Creative with Social Content last month with Travis Sharp from Sharpcase Creative, Havana Nguyen from Honeywell Aerospace, and Sarah Lively from Cartoon Network. The question “how do you differentiate yourselves from other similar brands with AI on the horizon?” was thrown out, and Travis answered: You can absolutely use AI to your advantage. In the social media world, you can identify super fans who are using AI to create your fan art and use these people to your company’s advantage by resharing the content. This empowers your audience to engage with your brand. And don’t be afraid of AI—we already know about it, people will see the dupes, and they can understand what’s real and what’s not. So how does this translate to graphic design? The Grid is a company that uses AI to create websites that make themselves. You hand over your text content, line of business, and imagery, and the software will create finished pages without any work from you. This kind of software will eventually spill into print design, too. Today's reality in AI design is lackluster, but that gives us time to think about what we would want AI to do for graphic design in the future. Should it be completely hands-off or should it be a collaborative effort to create designs for print and web? Who is currently using AI? Wix offers Wix ADI (Artificial Design Intelligence), which can create a website all by itself by using the content you provide to suggest “billions of beautiful design options.”Currently, it feels like a natural option integrated into the Wix interface. Adobe is also using AI through Adobe Sensei, an artificial intelligence and machine-learning framework you can use as the Face-Aware Liquify feature in Photoshop. The tool uses AI-driven face recognition to let users select and edit human faces in photos.

When can AI be a good choice?

Although these tools use AI, they still require hands-on use. You input your data and choose a layout from templates, which can be great for the novice designer or small business owner. A 2016 study by Clutch, found that almost half of the small businesses surveyed did not have a website; the number dropped to 29 percent in a March 2017 followup.

When can AI be a harmful choice?

Some believe AI assistance could trap designers, preventing them from thinking outside the box or customizing their work. Regardless of what's produced, someone will still need to see designs, make any tweaks and changes necessary, and ultimately approve creative. Travis summed it up nicely when he said: Don't be afraid of AI. AI is not going to take over the world and certainly won't push graphic designers out of the picture. This technology will make our jobs faster and easier without sacrificing talent. Think of Netflix and how they use AI to translate artwork into multiple languages, or design software that takes hand-drawn sketches to build a 3-D rendering, which will then need to be touched up and approved by a designer. AI-produced graphic design will still begin and end with human interaction—it will just be done more efficiently, giving time back to designers to spend more time creating. Fun example of AI technology: https://talktotransformer.com/ I typed in "Here are the top 5 tips about branding:" and this is what followed: Make use of your marketing. When you start your brand, you should decide what kind of brand you want to build and then act accordingly. Have a conversation with your audience on your Facebook page and ask for feedback. Look for ways to widen your reach and decide on how to market your brand. If your Facebook page receives low engagement, turn it into a valuable content destination and focus on building up your followers. Respond to your audience's problems. Identify a problem and solve it through one of your social media channels. Connect to the people who are having these same problems and have a dialogue with them.

Social Media Business > Success Tips

Good luck!

Photo credit: Ben Dew