The author claims that the AI posters don’t have to be horrible, but fail to see that the dozen variations generated are not distinctive - they might have somewhat different typography or imaginary, but still have the same AI uniformity and smell as the crappy restaurant poster you see on the street. The core issue is not only technical, but also the lack of vision and imagination when creating art or even infographics.
The alternative is WordArt, or just black on white Comic Sans with some bolding and font size variations with bad ClipArt. These small scale events would never hire a professional.
I'm old enough to remember that people also complained about WordArt and Clipart and too many fonts etc.
I see the chatgpt poster style on many small-scale local village events also. But again, what they replace wasn't any better. It's not replacing some beautiful craft that existed before.
> I'm old enough to remember that people also complained about WordArt and Clipart and too many fonts etc.
We basically had two kinds of posters:
- those made by someone skilled/savvy (not necessarily a professional)
- those made by someone without skills/knowledge
The later were awful, in the sense that I would never display them in my home as a reminder of a an event I took part in.
But still, they were nice because you knew someone took the time to create them to promote an event and share the important information about it, and each person was producing their own awful posters.
Now with gen AI we have something filled with trash, everything looks the same, the important information is hard to find...
Sure, the variations offered in the article are a bit better and more opinionated, but they still reek AI conformity and I feel sick looking at them.
Some level of uniformity is fine and indeed the norm. It was uniform back when posters were hand painted, eg 19th century world fairs or zoo openings or theater posters. They look pretty similar. Carneval posters looked similar.
The expectation of some kaleidoscope of styles is not really grounded in how things used to be ever.
Also, it's just nostalgia, just like how some young people now think audio cassettes and discmans are "cool" and have some revival, some are nostalgic for the back-in-the-day Word posters because "at least back then", but "these days" it's decline etc. Pretty sure in a few years people will be nostalgic for crappy AI slop of 2025-26 because their shittiness will feel like some charm compared to whatever the AI will be able to do.
I'm not sure about that. I, myself, am not skilled enough to make a nice poster, so when I needed one, I used to asked my skilled friends to do them for me.
But sometimes I also purposefully made myself some Comic Sans stuff, exaggerating them in every possible way, as a joke. And it was well received because people knew it was my own work and understood the joke.
If I made this today, it would not be seen the same. People would thought I'm trying to fight gen AI trash or I'm nostalgic of the past. While I'm just trying to make a joke by making something awful on purpose.
And I couldn't do the same joke using gen AI. The "on purpose" cannot be conveyed. People would just see gen AI trash.
I was one of those "skilled friends" that people go to, to make those posters in times of need back in school. And this was many years ago. Didn't enjoy it, but just did it as part of volunteering, or help the student community or a school club out.
Some people enjoy doing that work, but most people did not, and I was often the last resort because a random club or activity could not find suitable help in time. So had to step up when a friend or acquaintance asked.
I think there is some misguided view where in "the good old days" people designed everything by hand. From the perspective of someone who had to make 10-20 of those a year as a volunteer, I can say it came at personal cost, often caused distractions from the actual event, and there was not enough people who stepped up to get it done. If it was so enjoyable we would have no problems finding people doing the work and that was not the case.
The posters and designs were often rushed out late night by the closest person you can find who had a copy of photoshop on their computer. If we had AI back then, I would bet you 100% it would be the preferable solution and no one would bat an eye. It wasn't the type of work a lot of people wanted to do, could do properly and is willing to do for free, at their spare time, rushed for a deadline.
I'm sorry you keep bad memories of those times.
I could be mistaken but in my case I never forced anyone to use their artistic skills, it was actually more often voluntary from them.
Basically everyone was doing their part using their skills if they had some useful for the project, or just their time/sweat.
The relationship we had (still have, actually) was healthy enough so they could just tell us to piss off if they didn't want to do it. I particularly remember one such instance, because I ended up doing an ugly poster but when asked, I said it was the work of our skilled friend.
On the other hand I've been spending at least an hour per week doing sysadmin work for various groups/clubs, it's not the funniest thing in the world, particularly in the evening when I already spent the whole day doing it at work, but it's just me doing my part for the greater good!
petetnt · · focus · HN ↗
bonoboTP · · focus · HN ↗
I'm old enough to remember that people also complained about WordArt and Clipart and too many fonts etc.
I see the chatgpt poster style on many small-scale local village events also. But again, what they replace wasn't any better. It's not replacing some beautiful craft that existed before.
wiether · · focus · HN ↗
But still, they were nice because you knew someone took the time to create them to promote an event and share the important information about it, and each person was producing their own awful posters.
Now with gen AI we have something filled with trash, everything looks the same, the important information is hard to find...
Sure, the variations offered in the article are a bit better and more opinionated, but they still reek AI conformity and I feel sick looking at them.
bonoboTP · · focus · HN ↗
The expectation of some kaleidoscope of styles is not really grounded in how things used to be ever.
Also, it's just nostalgia, just like how some young people now think audio cassettes and discmans are "cool" and have some revival, some are nostalgic for the back-in-the-day Word posters because "at least back then", but "these days" it's decline etc. Pretty sure in a few years people will be nostalgic for crappy AI slop of 2025-26 because their shittiness will feel like some charm compared to whatever the AI will be able to do.
wiether · · focus · HN ↗
But sometimes I also purposefully made myself some Comic Sans stuff, exaggerating them in every possible way, as a joke. And it was well received because people knew it was my own work and understood the joke.
If I made this today, it would not be seen the same. People would thought I'm trying to fight gen AI trash or I'm nostalgic of the past. While I'm just trying to make a joke by making something awful on purpose.
And I couldn't do the same joke using gen AI. The "on purpose" cannot be conveyed. People would just see gen AI trash.
dreambigwrkhard · · focus · HN ↗
Some people enjoy doing that work, but most people did not, and I was often the last resort because a random club or activity could not find suitable help in time. So had to step up when a friend or acquaintance asked.
I think there is some misguided view where in "the good old days" people designed everything by hand. From the perspective of someone who had to make 10-20 of those a year as a volunteer, I can say it came at personal cost, often caused distractions from the actual event, and there was not enough people who stepped up to get it done. If it was so enjoyable we would have no problems finding people doing the work and that was not the case.
The posters and designs were often rushed out late night by the closest person you can find who had a copy of photoshop on their computer. If we had AI back then, I would bet you 100% it would be the preferable solution and no one would bat an eye. It wasn't the type of work a lot of people wanted to do, could do properly and is willing to do for free, at their spare time, rushed for a deadline.
wiether · · focus · HN ↗
I could be mistaken but in my case I never forced anyone to use their artistic skills, it was actually more often voluntary from them.
Basically everyone was doing their part using their skills if they had some useful for the project, or just their time/sweat.
The relationship we had (still have, actually) was healthy enough so they could just tell us to piss off if they didn't want to do it. I particularly remember one such instance, because I ended up doing an ugly poster but when asked, I said it was the work of our skilled friend.
On the other hand I've been spending at least an hour per week doing sysadmin work for various groups/clubs, it's not the funniest thing in the world, particularly in the evening when I already spent the whole day doing it at work, but it's just me doing my part for the greater good!