How to Integrate AI Tools into Your Design Workflows

In the ever-evolving landscape of design, staying ahead means embracing innovation, adaptability, and the intelligent use of emerging technologies. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is no longer a buzzword; it's a transformative force reshaping how we approach creativity, problem-solving, and design workflows. “I've witnessed firsthand how AI tools can augment human creativity, streamline processes, and deliver unprecedented results,” says James Nash, founder of The Shed Creative.

This article explores our favorite AI design tools and practical strategies for integrating them into your design workflows and processes.

The Influence and Impact of AI in Design

AI's influence on design is revolutionary. It has expanded from being a tool for automation to a co-creator that can generate ideas, analyze data, and predict trends. The integration of AI into design and creative workflows is not about replacing human designers but enhancing their capabilities and boosting efficiency and effectiveness.

AI can handle repetitive tasks, offering insights from vast datasets, and freeing up time for designers to focus on more conceptual and strategic aspects of the creative process. AI tools can help accelerate workflows, including tasks, such as writing creative briefs, creating mood boards, and streamlining design collaboration and feedback, to make the process seamless and synergistic.

With AI’s help, The Shed Creative team is reducing time across various design tasks:

• 84.17% Graphic Design

• 6.17% Presentation Design

• 6.74% Custom Illustration

• 2.91% Motion Graphics

While the human touch is essential for creative strategy and vision, AI is a way to enhance and evolve our work. “That’s why we’re focused on figuring out where AI is already making a difference and where it still falls short,” says Nash. “Several design tools like Adobe have integrated generative AI into their apps, acting as a creative co-pilot to accelerate ideation, exploration, and production. Our designers are diving into this technology to solve creative challenges led by our Creative Leadership team. This hands-on approach helps everyone learn how to make the most of AI tools.”

Does using Generative AI lead to a shorter time to final? Yes, AI can speed up the process significantly, but it varies for certain asset and design types. AI is great for quick inspiration, creative briefs, and content drafts, but for more detailed and specific projects, human input remains crucial. The creative brief process still requires human oversight and emotional intelligence to ensure clarity and precision in communicating your vision with designers.

Understanding the Role of AI in Design

Before diving into specific tools, it's essential to understand the roles AI can play in the design process:

• Automation of Repetitive Tasks: AI can automate time-consuming tasks like resizing images, optimizing layouts for different platforms, and even coding. This automation allows designers to focus on the creative and strategic elements of their craft.

• Enhancing Creativity: AI can serve as a creative partner, generating design variations, suggesting color palettes, or even creating entirely new design concepts based on input parameters.

• Data-Driven Insights: By analyzing user behavior, trends, and feedback, AI can provide valuable insights that inform design decisions, ensuring that designs are not only aesthetically pleasing but also effective.

• Personalization: AI enables hyper-personalized design experiences, adapting content, and layouts to individual user preferences in real time.

• Predictive Analytics: AI can predict design trends, user behaviors, and the success of diverse design elements, allowing for more informed decision-making.

The Real Deal on Design Use Cases Using AI Tools

Top 3 Requests That Experience Fewer Rounds of Revisions When Using AI:

1. Package Design: 20% reduction in revision rounds when using Gen AI in requests and revisions

2. Presentation Elements: 18% reduction in revision rounds when using Gen AI in requests and revisions

3. Print Collateral: 10% reduction in revision rounds when using Gen AI in requests and revisions

Top 3 Requests That Are Faster Without the Use of AI:

1. Photoshop Edits: 150% Increase in revision rounds
   AI can handle basic Photoshop edits, but most generative AI tools still struggle with making simple adjustments without altering other parts of the image. Additionally, they often merge layers, which can be a critical design feature in the final asset—especially for requests that require precision. While AI is improving, it’s not quite there yet for tasks that demand this level of control (for now).

2. Merchandise Design: 65% Increase
   Merchandise needs to be “designed to specifications,” meaning there’s little room for abstractions and approximations in mock-ups. This level of precision is best handled by the human design mind—at least for now.

3. Web Design and Digital Design: 10% Increase
   We know generative AI struggles with accurately mocking up text, and web and digital formats often rely heavily on text. Plus, designers who specialize in digital and web understand the nuances of layout, composition, and the specific complexities of the platforms they’re designing for. That’s a crucial advantage AI just can’t replicate—yet.

Top AI Tools for Design Workflows

The market is exploding with AI-powered design tools, each offering unique capabilities. Here are some of the most impactful tools and how they can be integrated into your design workflows.

Adobe Sensei
Adobe Sensei is Adobe's AI and machine learning platform, embedded into its Creative Cloud applications like Photoshop, Illustrator, and Premiere Pro. Sensei's capabilities range from automating tedious tasks to providing creative suggestions and enhancing productivity.

• Use Cases:

  • Content-Aware Fill: Automatically removes unwanted elements from photos and fills the space with a plausible background.

  • Auto Tagging: Automatically tags images with keywords for easy searching in large image libraries.

  • Face-Aware Editing: In tools like Photoshop, Sensei can recognize faces and suggest edits, such as adjusting facial expressions or proportions.

• Integration Tip: Utilize Adobe Sensei to streamline your editing processes, allowing you to focus on the creative aspects of your projects. For example, use Content-Aware Fill to quickly remove distractions from your images, saving time on manual edits.

Figma with AI Plugins
Figma is a web-based design tool that has rapidly gained popularity for its collaborative features. While Figma itself is not an AI tool, its ecosystem includes several AI-powered plugins that can enhance your design process.

• Notable AI Plugins:

  • Design Lint: Automatically checks your design files for inconsistencies, such as missing styles or incorrect color usage.

  • Remove.bg: A plugin that uses AI to remove backgrounds from images within seconds.

  • Color Contrast Checker: Ensures that your designs are accessible by checking color contrast ratios.

• Use Cases:

  • Real-time Collaboration: Figma's AI plugins can be used during collaborative sessions with clients and creative teams to instantly get feedback and correct issues, ensuring that designs are polished and consistent.

  • Rapid Prototyping: Use AI plugins to quickly generate design elements, such as buttons or icons, saving time during the prototyping phase.

  • Integration Tip: Integrate Figma's AI plugins into your workflow by setting up a consistent process where you run checks and enhancements before finalizing any design. This ensures that your designs are both aesthetically pleasing and technically sound.

Khroma
Khroma is an AI-powered color tool that learns your color preferences and generates color palettes tailored to your style. It's a valuable tool for designers to streamline the process of selecting harmonious color schemes.

• Use Cases:

  • Custom Color Palettes: Generate color palettes that align with your brand or project style.

  • Color Inspiration: Use Khroma to discover new color combinations that you might not have considered.

  • Palette Exploration: Quickly browse through hundreds of AI-generated palettes based on your preferences.

• Integration Tip: Use Khroma at the beginning of your design process to establish a solid color foundation. You can also use it mid-project if you find yourself stuck on color choices, allowing the AI to suggest combinations that fit your design's overall aesthetic.

Integrating AI into Your Design Workflow: A Strategic Approach

Integrating AI tools into your existing workflows requires a mindful approach. Start by identifying your roadblocks, skill gaps, and time challenges, then align your tools and talent to your evolved roadmap.

Here are a few tips to ensure a smooth and effective AI integration into your process:

• Start Small
  Begin by integrating one or two AI tools into your workflow rather than trying to overhaul your entire process at once. You might start by using Adobe Sensei for specific tasks in Photoshop or experiment with an AI plugin in Figma. Gradually, as you become more comfortable, you can explore additional tools and deeper integrations.

• Identify Pain Points
  Focus on areas of your workflow that are time-consuming or repetitive. These are prime candidates for AI intervention. For instance, if resizing images for different platforms is a bottleneck, a tool like Adobe Sensei or Let’s Enhance could save significant time.

• Collaborate with AI
  Treat AI as a collaborator rather than a replacement. Use it to generate ideas, provide feedback, or automate routine tasks, like creative briefs, but always keep your vision at the forefront. AI can enhance your creativity, but it’s your expertise and intuition that ultimately drive the design process. While it’s paramount to get the details, we don’t want to agonize over design requests and gathering supporting materials.

• Stay Updated
  AI technology is rapidly evolving, with new tools and features released regularly. Stay informed about the latest developments and be open to experimenting with new tools that could further enhance your workflow.

• Educate Your Team
  Ensure that everyone on your team understands how to use the AI tools you’ve integrated. Provide training sessions and create resources that help them get up to speed quickly. A well-informed team can make the most of AI’s capabilities, leading to more efficient and creative outcomes.

• Evaluate and Iterate
  Regularly evaluate the impact of AI on your workflow. Are you saving time? Is the quality of your designs improving? Use these insights to adjust your approach, fine-tune your toolset, and ensure that AI is delivering the desired benefits.

The Future of Design is Human Collaboration with AI

The integration of AI tools into design workflows represents a significant shift in the industry. However, it is not a shift away from human creativity, intuition, or innovation. Instead, it is a move towards a collaborative future where designers can harness the power of AI to enhance their work, streamline processes, and unlock new levels of creativity. As AI continues to evolve, its role in design will become more integral, helping designers tackle more complex challenges and deliver more personalized, data-driven, and impactful designs.

“AI not as a replacement for our creative instincts but rather an extension of them,” says Nash. “By integrating AI into our workflows, we've been able to push the boundaries of what's possible in design, delivering work that is not only visually stunning but also strategically sound and responsive to the goals of our clients.”

The Human Touch in an AI-Driven World

One of the key aspects to remember when integrating AI into your design workflows is that the human element remains irreplaceable. AI can analyze data, suggest patterns, and automate tasks, but it cannot replicate the nuanced understanding of context, culture, and emotion that a human designer brings to the table. AI tools should enable designers with the means to focus more on the critical aspects of design rather than getting bogged down by repetitive tasks.

For example, while AI can suggest color palettes or generate design concepts, it is the designer who understands the brand's voice, the client's needs, and the cultural nuances that make a design resonate with its audience. This human touch is what transforms a good design into a great one.

The Ethical Use of AI in Design

As AI becomes more prevalent in design, it's also important to consider the ethical implications. AI-driven designs can inadvertently perpetuate biases or make decisions that are not in line with ethical standards. Therefore, designers must be vigilant, ensuring that the AI output aligns with ethical practices and that the technology is used to enhance inclusivity and accessibility.

When using AI to analyze user data, designers must ensure privacy is respected and that the data is used responsibly. Similarly, when generating designs, AI should be guided to avoid perpetuating stereotypes or biases that could harm certain groups. This requires a conscious effort from designers to prompt the AI in a direction that aligns with ethical and inclusive design principles.

The Future of AI in Design

The future of generative AI in design is promising, but not quite there for crafting the nuanced final designs for clients. It’s fantastic for visual communication with many design teams leveraging new tools to speed up prototyping for your creative vision and collaborating on ideas faster.

As AI technologies continue to advance, we can expect more tools that offer deeper insights, more personalized design experiences, and more seamless integration into existing workflows. Designers who embrace innovation and adapt to emerging technologies will be better positioned to succeed in the ever-evolving design landscape.

Our prediction? We will see more AI tools that focus on collaboration, allowing designers to work alongside AI in real-time, sharing ideas and iterating on designs faster. We will also see AI taking on more strategic roles, such as predicting design trends, optimizing for user experience, and assisting in decision-making processes.

Integrating AI into your design workflows is not just about adopting new tools; it's about rethinking the way you approach design. By embracing AI, you can unlock new levels of creativity, efficiency, and precision in your work. The tools and strategies in this article are a foundation for incorporating AI into your design practice, but the true power comes from how you harness them to enhance your uniquely human creative vision.

The future of design is not about being human or AI; it's about the synergy of the two. By integrating AI into your workflows, you are not only improving your current projects but also setting the stage for a future where design is more innovative, impactful, and personalized.

Successful designers will view AI as a partner in the creative process—to complement their skills, expand their capabilities, and open up new possibilities. “At The Shed Creative, we are excited about the potential of AI and continue to explore ways to integrate it into our workflows,” concludes Nash. “Our goal is to stay at the forefront of leveraging AI to enhance our design processes and push the boundaries of what design can achieve.”

About The Shed Creative

The Shed Creative integrates traditional design principles and cutting-edge AI to push the frontiers of what’s possible in design. Going beyond the old agency model, becoming an extension of your team or agency, The Shed delivers end-to-end graphic design and content solutions for a variety of industries, from hospitality and food brands to education and the environment. 

Led by marketing and design renegades, The Shed offers a range of services, including branding, digital advertising, website creation, product packaging, and content - powered by a flexible Creative-as-a-Service membership plan. With our CaaS approach and collaboration platform, The Workbench, The Shed is your partner to energize your output and help you stay relevant in a fast-moving world. With a monthly subscription, you get unlimited access to skilled creative talent, efficient project workflows, quality control by subject matter experts, and a best-in-class project management tool.

For more information on our services and plans, or to schedule a demo of The Shed Workbench, contact Mike Speiran, Head of Business Development, at mike@theshedcreative.com.