I’ve just read an excellent article in The Independent, concerning the spread of AI‑generated event posters and how they are rapidly taking over local event advertising in the UK.
Take a look at the posters in your local high street shop windows, or on your Facebook feed. You’ll see lots of these AI-generated posters. You’ll quickly see that they follow a bland and repetitive visual style – overwhelmingly cute and cartoonish, filled with generic bunting, awkwardly rendered animals and yellow‑tinted imagery. They all use the same fonts and often use American English spelling instead of British English.
But overall, they lack personality. Sure, they cost nothing to design (apart from the environmental cost associated with using AI – you can read more about that in the article) but don’t you think they all look the same? Look at these examples.
I’ve been thinking about this for a long while, and the Independent article confirms it’s not just me.
The growing use of AI and tools like Canva makes design easy for those who want to save money. I get that. And I’ve certainly lost work to so-called “AI slop”. A friend of a friend recently tried to save money by getting AI to design his gig posters. AI took it upon itself to change the faces of the band that he had supplied.
Look again at the AI-generated poster of me. AI has made several mistakes. It’s made me left-handed. I’m apparently writing on a keyboard which is broken in half for some reason. It has even given me straight teeth and dyed my hair ginger!
In a world where these AI-generated posters are fast becoming the norm, you can stand out from the crowd better by using a human graphic designer to create something original and striking.
It is my opinion that us designers will ride out the AI trend, because when everybody else’s posters all look the same, how do you get yourself to stand out? That’s where I come in.
Now, that isn’t to say I don’t use AI in my work. I’ve always embraced technology. AI is already heavily integrated into the Adobe tools I use, and, used carefully, can save some repetitive and fiddly tasks. But I’m certainly not going to let it think for me, let alone take my livelihood away.
Plus, AI can’t print hundreds and thousands of posters, booklets and flyers at competitive prices, like I do.
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