We all know about the rapid rise of artificial intelligence. Overnight, seemingly, we have become reliant on the tool’s ability to do routine tasks and help with our daily lives.
From texts to images to brand assets, its speed has seen it become adopted by businesses and creatives alike. And while useful, when it comes to good design, AI is by no means the finished article.
AI falls short because design is about more than just visuals. Rather, it’s a skillset that involves nuance and strategy, two things AI has yet to emulate beyond surface-level cliches.
Here, we’ll be breaking down why AI cannot provide the same high level of work as a design agency.
Why AI looks so tempting
Before we eulogise about the human difference a design agency brings, let’s first acknowledge the fact that AI design is out there, and the reasons people opt for it are fair.
It produces fast designs that cost next to nothing, and users looking to create new imagery or branding don’t need a degree in graphic design to create passable assets.
The draw for businesses to use AI graphic design is also plain to see.
It appeals to businesses because it delivers assets cheaply at a time when agencies are too often seen as an expensive luxury, rather than the necessary investment that they are.
As attractive an option as AI may be, once you scratch beneath the surface, it starts to fall apart.
Firstly, there’s no long-term strategy to just pump out imagery. AI can’t yet understand a brand’s medium to long-term plans with the same level of nuance that a human can. The long-term impact of AI design is also still in question because what is produced isn’t ‘original’, it’s generative, meaning it’s just rehashing what’s come before.
In short, your brand is worth more than AI design.
What agencies bring that AI cannot
Human intuition and empathy
Great designers anticipate how a design will make a business’s target audience feel. They’ll combine colour ways, imagery, and content to create something that moves a potential buyer to act.
AI doesn’t consider these things. It merely acts on the prompts given to it, usually inputted by someone who themselves doesn’t factor in the aims of the asset being created.
AI doesn’t consider target audiences and how the assets it produces resonate with, for instance, a Gen Z crowd or a group of baby boomers. Targeting these audiences requires knowledge of what makes them tick and how any assets created will create the desired emotional connection.
Strategy beyond execution
Design agencies, ones worth investing in at least, don’t just create logos or websites and say ‘That’s that’. That’s what AI does.
Agencies align whatever they’re going to create with a business’s goals and well-established brand values that sum up what a business is.
AI can’t prioritise business goals or offer constructive feedback on designs, it’s a yes man that creates what it’s asked to. All it does is execute that one creation, it fails to see beyond that.
Launching a rebrand that supports market expansion, for instance, requires more than just a chatbot. It’s a significant investment that requires foresight and the input of expert designers who can draw on years of experience to advise and provide insight.
Cultural context and originality
Something that isn’t thought about enough when it comes to AI is that it’s generative, i.e. it just creates images based on those that are already out there. There’s no originality to it. However passable the results may seem, AI works from existing patterns and data.
In contrast, design agencies tap into lived experiences, local nuance, and their own creativity to produce truly original ideas that tap into the current zeitgeist. They can jump on cultural moments and trends that crop up overnight to promote your brand in a way that AI cannot keep up with.
Collaboration, relationships & trust
Clients investing in design agencies do so not just because of the assets they create but because of the partnerships they develop. So much about the creation process involves communicating ideas and thoughts in a nuanced, human way, then distilling these into a visual summation.
AI just works off plain text inputs, where those small nuances can’t be communicated in the same way.
Agencies also build trust with their clients over the years, getting to know them and adapting their offerings based on differing business priorities.
They are plugged into the business, building trust with them as years go by. AI asset creation is fleeting, offering little to no collaboration or improving future work based on prior iterations.
Creativity thrives in chaos
Anyone who’s worked with or for agencies knows that things don’t follow a linear pattern. Often, briefs feature conflicting thoughts or are furnished with unrealistic deadlines. Good designers relish the challenge to create amidst this ‘chaos’.
Human designers can improvise and create variations of designs that, while not strictly to the brief, give clients something they never would have dreamed of. AI is only as imaginative as the person typing in the instructions. It lacks flair and quickly produces less-than-average results when fed contradictions or unclear feedback.
Human designers are better at pushing back, scrutinising feedback for the betterment of the work.
AI as a sounding board, not a canvas
So it can’t collaborate, it doesn’t build relationships, and it doesn’t understand current cultural landscapes. What use is AI then?
Well, it would be naive to think it has no use. Of course it does. It should be thought of, though, as a tool to enhance efficiency, not a replacement for true creative talent.
AI is great for generating moodboards by collating imagery, colour schemes, and font styles far more quickly than if a designer had to manually search for all these elements. It can also help with variations of original designs, finding ways to tweak certain aspects after it’s been created.
Through all this, though, it’s important to remember that AI is there as a support for designers, not the lead designer itself, and the value of design agencies going forward will be curating how they use AI in their workday.
AI is not the be-all and end-all
AI is here to stay, but it currently shows no sign of being able to replicate a designer’s human intuition or ability to take broad concepts and distil them into something visually outstanding.
Businesses that see AI as a total replacement for good design will simply blend into the background and soon find their generative work replicated elsewhere.
Truly great design agencies focus on their clients’ long-term brand growth and look beyond the art they create for them.
Rather than just being robots agreeing to everything, the real value of a design agency lies in its history of helping clients and the wisdom it gleaned from that and then imparting it to their newest partner to the benefit of their brand and bottom line.
Deuce Studio is an award-winning, London-based branding and packaging design agency.
If you are looking for a branding and packaging project, then let’s talk.