Blog
Letting AI Lend a Hand in the Creative Studio: Embracing the Tools, Not Replacing the Talent
Written by Pip Kenny, Creative Director of CI Group
The last couple of years have brought a tidal wave of headlines about artificial intelligence in the creative sector – some sharing their excitement, others tinged with anxiety about the possibility that technology might one day replace the very people who give brands their visual soul. With so many competing narratives, it’s unsurprising that designers have mixed feelings towards AI. I wanted to share my take on how we are utilising AI and potentially how it can make designers better, challenging the creative process and pushing boundaries of design excellence.
It’s important to address the real fears many designers have here: A recent Adobe survey found that 62% of designers expect AI to have a major impact on their industry in coming years, and about half worry it could replace human-made art entirely. These are valid concerns – never before have tools become so good at generating images, layouts, and imaginative concepts in seconds – and never have they never been so accessible to everybody. When you view it like this, its obvious to see why creatives are concerned.
However, this view is only part of the picture. And what’s promising to learn is that most creatives aren’t using AI to replace their skills, but to complement them: in the same Adobe study, 75% said they use AI to enhance their work.
Creativity is not just the ability to produce attractive visuals, but the process of translating a brand’s essence into something powerful and unique – a process grounded in human ideas, intuition, and skill. Many designers will attest that one of the core design skills is the ability to translate a client’s brief into a visual reality. AI is powered by prompts, and a good brief underlines the eventual output – you are only as good as what you put in, so the output will depend on the skill of the person providing the prompt and that is where a skilled designer can really harness their creative power.
AI has become what the Ellipsis team at CI Group like to view as an extra set of hands and fresh pair of eyes in our studio. It’s a powerful catalyst for idea generation; it can speed up the process of laborious image searches, provide insights into unexpected colour ways, or generate exploratory campaign visuals in seconds – leaving us with more time to debate, develop our ideas and refine our briefs.
Even more value lies in its ability to analyse data – not only in summarising a client RFP into its most salient points, spotting cultural cues and design trends that resonate with audiences, cutting hours off admin research time which frees creatives to do the thing that they do best – create.
In my experience, these tools amplify our creative potential as opposed to diluting it. A 2024 Canva report found that teams using AI for inspiration and idea generation created 30% more campaign ideas, and 60% said the quality of their work improved. AI isn’t just changing the way we make things; it’s changing how we think about creativity itself.
But it’s a fine line. Human creativity will always be at the core of great design. AI can surface inspiration and crunch data, but it can’t feel, empathise, love or provoke in the same way a person does – even with the best prompts, the best outputs require a human’s input.
In our team, we use AI as a means to free up the mental space for braver thinking, not as a shortcut for creating visuals – or, if it is a shortcut, it’s never the end point: outputs always require the fine tuning that only a skilled designer can add. Real value lies in using AI to handle the repetitive, to boost our reference pool, and to open our minds – while we still make the choices that give work its heart.
As designers in the age of AI, we rely on businesses to value authenticity over speed or cost – and it’s crucial they continue to do so. The creative spirit remains one of humanity’s greatest assets, and in the age of AI, it is more important than ever to protect and champion it. By contrast doesn’t mean being anti-AI and advocating solely human-led creation. Our industry’s real challenge is to harness AI thoughtfully, using it to elevate our work and processes without overreliance, and without losing sight of what makes it truly unique: the irreplaceable vision, imaginations and originality of the people who make it.
Let’s Talk –marketing@cigroup.co.uk