A lot of people in the comments say that the supposedly better examples in the article are still “horrible” because they can tell they’re AI and point to things that the AI did “wrong” and a human artist would do better.
That may be true if you’re working with a top of the line artist, but in my experience the average freelance designer online is significantly worse than AI. I’ve worked with dozens of budget friendly designers on Fiverr and consistently get way worse results than I’ve gotten from AI models. Will a great human designer produce better output than an AI? Maybe, but a small local event or business probably won’t have the budget to hire them or know where to find them. It’s cheaper, faster and easier to use AI to generate something that’s good enough for their purposes.
People also point out all the little flaws in the “good” examples and cite them as obvious tells that they were AI generated. I think it would be interesting to see if people could reliably distinguish between AI generated flyers and human made flyers. Sure, sometimes it’s obvious like when the AI adds those weird, cartoony people. But if the model is told not to create designs like that and stick to the styles used in the second half of the article, I expect people would have a much harder time distinguishing the human designs from the AI designs.
This is my experience as well. I run a bootstrapped business, so we don't have a ton of backing. We can't afford the top design firms, and Fable can do better than those within our budget. So it's not that we prefer AI over human designers; we just don't have the money!
I was the person who "had to bother dealing with it" many years ago before we had AI, Canva, or even Adobe cloud.
I volunteered and designed a good amount of posters for student organizations.
Don't enjoy it but did it to help my peers and friends out.
I find it ironic that back then we had a lot of trouble finding people who were willing to design posters and promo media on print.
Now the comment section on this post has people mourning AI taking over poster making in 2026. Where was the help back then?
From the perspective of someone who had to burn the midnight oil to do it for years, trust me, I would rather not do it and spend that time with my family and friends. And judging from how hard it was to find others who were willing to do it, I think its a reasonable argument that most people were not actually willing to do the work either.
So mourn away but I wouldn't cry if I "missed out" on making posters. If we had AI back then, I would not take on any of those poster making requests.
One of my best memories from an art class in high school was that a student organization came into our class and asked if any of us would be willing to design a poster. I ended up designing and silk-screening their poster for them and it was a fantastic experience.
I can totally see how doing more than a couple would start to feel like work, but having one or two experiences like that was awesome.
ajjenkins · · focus · HN ↗
That may be true if you’re working with a top of the line artist, but in my experience the average freelance designer online is significantly worse than AI. I’ve worked with dozens of budget friendly designers on Fiverr and consistently get way worse results than I’ve gotten from AI models. Will a great human designer produce better output than an AI? Maybe, but a small local event or business probably won’t have the budget to hire them or know where to find them. It’s cheaper, faster and easier to use AI to generate something that’s good enough for their purposes.
People also point out all the little flaws in the “good” examples and cite them as obvious tells that they were AI generated. I think it would be interesting to see if people could reliably distinguish between AI generated flyers and human made flyers. Sure, sometimes it’s obvious like when the AI adds those weird, cartoony people. But if the model is told not to create designs like that and stick to the styles used in the second half of the article, I expect people would have a much harder time distinguishing the human designs from the AI designs.
ha-shine · · focus · HN ↗
sevenzero · · focus · HN ↗
dreambigwrkhard · · focus · HN ↗
I volunteered and designed a good amount of posters for student organizations.
Don't enjoy it but did it to help my peers and friends out.
I find it ironic that back then we had a lot of trouble finding people who were willing to design posters and promo media on print.
Now the comment section on this post has people mourning AI taking over poster making in 2026. Where was the help back then?
From the perspective of someone who had to burn the midnight oil to do it for years, trust me, I would rather not do it and spend that time with my family and friends. And judging from how hard it was to find others who were willing to do it, I think its a reasonable argument that most people were not actually willing to do the work either.
So mourn away but I wouldn't cry if I "missed out" on making posters. If we had AI back then, I would not take on any of those poster making requests.
dgacmu · · focus · HN ↗
I can totally see how doing more than a couple would start to feel like work, but having one or two experiences like that was awesome.
dreambigwrkhard · · focus · HN ↗
we should have asked the arts students! (and find a way to return the favor) i did not think about that.
that being said there were some intense rivalry between various studies, my presence may not be have been well received.
and judging how i am here, you can guess what i studied :-)
thank you for this. really feel like i got a missing piece of a puzzle reading this.