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.
I've worked with some of the top designers in the world. I don't think that AI will beat them (for now), but the examples in his sample page[0] beat the junk that I've seen a lot of non-top-designers do.
As he states, he isn't trying to make stuff that doesn't "look like AI did it," he just wants to introduce variety, and has proposed a disciplined way to do that.
can you please list some of the people you worked with? I really appreciate good design and am always looking for great artists that I don’t know about yet, thanks.
Going through pentagram's site, their shakespeare in the park posters do give me that AI vibe. Perhaps AI has been trained in many such similar posters, but as a layman, I'd be hard pressed to be able to distinguish these from AI generated ones.
On a side note, I wanted to link that collection here, but unfortunately there's no hyperlink, it just opens in a popup. You'll have to scroll down to the bottom of their home page to find it. I hope for their sake they just overlooked this one thing, because if designers don't see the role of hyperlinks in user experience, I can't take them seriously.
Pentagram is an interesting company. We worked with them around fifteen years ago, so it’s likely a lot has changed, since then.
They have a structure, where each studio is run by a partner, and has its own specialty. Almost a separate company.
We worked with the San Francisco one, which was specialized in software design. We used them for graphic design. We used DDO, for interaction design (we worked with both, simultaneously). It was quite an experience, and taught me a great deal about integration of professional designers, into a technical project. I still use a lot of what I learned, to this day.
They had that “AI vibe,” back then, so I guess we know where the LLMs got some of their training materials.
Their Web sites have always been like that. I’m assuming that part of the reason, is to discourage scraping, and another, is to be fairly pretentious. There was quite a bit of showmanship, back then, and I have no reason to think that it’s any less, these days. They are certainly not alone. New York is filled with studios like that. I know a chap that designs top-end jewelry, and is almost a caricature. It seems to work. He makes a lot of money, so someone takes him seriously.
DDO website is refreshingly clean. Very reminiscent of early 2000's era, it just gets out of your way inviting you to browse through all the content. I wish more websites retained such functional design. The amount of visual stimulus thrown at you these days can be quite overbearing. While I just glanced through pentagram's site, I found myself spending a lot of time going through DDO's pages. They seem to have some really solid articles too. Thanks for sharing!
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.
ChrisMarshallNY · · focus · HN ↗
As he states, he isn't trying to make stuff that doesn't "look like AI did it," he just wants to introduce variety, and has proposed a disciplined way to do that.
[0] <a href="https://john.hartnup.uk/poster-prompts/" rel="nofollow">https://john.hartnup.uk/poster-prompts/
skor · · focus · HN ↗
ChrisMarshallNY · · focus · HN ↗
Kinda pricey, though.
potamic · · focus · HN ↗
On a side note, I wanted to link that collection here, but unfortunately there's no hyperlink, it just opens in a popup. You'll have to scroll down to the bottom of their home page to find it. I hope for their sake they just overlooked this one thing, because if designers don't see the role of hyperlinks in user experience, I can't take them seriously.
[1] <a href="https://www.pentagram.com" rel="nofollow">https://www.pentagram.com
ChrisMarshallNY · · focus · HN ↗
They have a structure, where each studio is run by a partner, and has its own specialty. Almost a separate company.
We worked with the San Francisco one, which was specialized in software design. We used them for graphic design. We used DDO, for interaction design (we worked with both, simultaneously). It was quite an experience, and taught me a great deal about integration of professional designers, into a technical project. I still use a lot of what I learned, to this day.
They had that “AI vibe,” back then, so I guess we know where the LLMs got some of their training materials.
Their Web sites have always been like that. I’m assuming that part of the reason, is to discourage scraping, and another, is to be fairly pretentious. There was quite a bit of showmanship, back then, and I have no reason to think that it’s any less, these days. They are certainly not alone. New York is filled with studios like that. I know a chap that designs top-end jewelry, and is almost a caricature. It seems to work. He makes a lot of money, so someone takes him seriously.
potamic · · focus · HN ↗
ChrisMarshallNY · · focus · HN ↗