The Future of Marketing Design: Harnessing AI in Creativity With Human Designers

Marketing design is evolving. How people see brand designs, how brands use them to tell their story, even how businesses tackle design workflows – everything is changing! The future of marketing design is one where AI in creativity is a crucial part of the conversation. 

But then comes the big confusion. AI can whip up catchy designs in seconds – illustrations, infographics, edits on existing designs, you name it! So, is it time to let AI replace designers in your marketing workflow? Or should you keep AI far away from your marketing designs and stick to traditional designer-focused workflows? Or is there a smarter way to find the sweet spot between the two? 

Well, the answer isn’t simple. AI can generate images quickly, sure, but it cannot replace the insight, intuition, and emotional storytelling that human designers bring to marketing designs. What it can do is amplify your team’s creativity. 

So, where should you let AI run the show and where should you let humans take the lead? That’s exactly what this blog will break down – practical ways to combine AI tools and designers to create marketing designs that scale, connect with the audience, and future-proof your marketing workflow. The secret to getting the best of both worlds. 

Ready? Let’s get into it! 

Why Every Marketing Team Needs to Pay Attention to AI in Creativity 

According to McKinsey, 78% of surveyed businesses use AI somewhere in their business. But that’s not all. The technology is expanding rapidly. So much so that in the upcoming years, AI use in organizations is projected to grow by about 120% year-over-year! 

The one little detail that marketers should note here is that the three top areas where the growth and adoption of AI has been the fastest are: software development, marketing, and customer service. So, even if you are not integrating AI into your marketing workflow yet, your competitors are! 

Wondering where these marketers are using AI in their workflows? Creating content and optimizing content happen to be the top applications of AI tools in marketing, followed by brainstorming content. In fact, data shows that about 71% of marketers adopt AI tools to inspire creative thinking and about 62% of them use them to generate image assets. 

Those are big numbers considering that it was only in 2021 that OpenAI made headlines with the announcement of a revolutionary AI tool that lets users generate images from simple text prompts, DALL·E. 

Quick Fact: Did you know that the concept of AI-generated art dates back to the 1970s? Abstract painter Harold Cohen created a tool called Aaron, an artificial intelligence software that could create art. 

So, yes, given this rich historical connection between AI and art and the recent explosion of tools for AI in creativity, a lot has changed in marketing. Using AI in creativity as a marketer means: 

• Faster ideation 
• Smarter design creation 
• More control over design optimization 

Where and How to Use AI in Creativity, and When Not to

Where to Use AI for Marketing Design 

To let ideas take shape – in the form of reference images 

Most marketers have brilliant ideas in their minds, but the real challenge begins when it comes to bringing them to life. If you think explaining your ideas to your designers feels difficult, AI comes to the rescue. 

Since most tools for AI in creativity are beginner-friendly, even non-designers can generate useful visuals. Use them to create reference images that eliminate the need for hunting through dozens of stock photos or sketching rough concepts. No more telling your designer to create a design that mimics the visual style of one image, incorporates the subject from a second, and positions elements like a third. AI can pull all of that together in a few seconds, giving your design team a clear reference.

In fact, adding clear reference images to visually explain your idea helps reduce the number of revisions, saving hours of back-and-forth. 

When you do use AI tools to generate reference images: 

• Be specific with your prompts – mood, tone, style, colors, and themes. 
• Explore multiple AI tools to create varied interpretations of your idea. 

Quick visual exploration 

Perhaps you have plenty of ideas for the execution of your design? You want to see how each of these ideas will look once executed before you actually choose one. That’s when the power of AI in creativity becomes evident. 

In fact, the unprecedented speed that AI brings into marketing design is what makes it a valuable addition in the exploration phase. 

With AI tools, you can quickly compare how your design would look with different color palettes applied or with different visual styles. 

For example, say you’re advertising a new luxury bag launch. You might be debating between an Art Nouveau-inspired direction or a modern editorial look. Both feel good in theory, but you need to see them come alive before choosing the direction that fits your brand’s tone. With AI, you can visualize both instantly instead of waiting days for mockups. 

For instance, ChatGPT took just about a minute to generate the below variations. 

Whereas a traditional design workflow would have required several hours to create both versions, not to forget the need for a professional photoshoot for the product! 

See your design in the real world before you seal it 

Sometimes marketers have the perfect design – this could be a logo or packaging label, or a social media post. But you cannot really tell how the design will look out there in the real-world application of it. Take even a billboard design, for instance. What looks stunning as a design on a small digital screen sometimes loses its magic when applied onto a large billboard, especially considering the billboard placement and other factors. 

For instance, we took a stock photo and prompted ChatGPT and Gemini to visualize the image on a billboard in a city setting. Here are the results (the first image was generated by ChatGPT and the second one by Gemini).

We asked Gemini to create variations in terms of lighting, and here’s the same billboard visualized in a warm evening glow. 

Clearly, visualizations like these and tweaks to the lighting and other details can be tedious when you rely merely on traditional design tools. This is where the strength of AI in creativity shines. 

Image editing and enhancement 

The surge of AI in creativity began particularly because several AI-powered features in popular platforms like Canva, as well as AI tools like ChatGPT and Gemini (with the launch of Nano Banana), have made editing images so much simpler. Post-processing, which takes a lot of time, can now be tackled in minutes. 

For instance, previously, edits like swapping backgrounds in images, removing objects in an image, or adding elements all meant complicated steps and an understanding of design software. Therefore, marketing teams that worked with designers had to go back to designers even for last-minute updates. But that has changed with the advancements of AI in creativity. 

Now, whether you are working with a freelance designer or a design agency, if you are worried that revisions to your design are going to cost you extra, then there are AI tools that can help tackle these minor edits. Of course, with an unlimited design service, you get unlimited revisions, but having AI tools at your disposal means that you can expand your creative freedom and further tweak the designs that your unlimited design team gives you. 

Enhance your design – add soundtracks, voiceovers, and more! 

Marketing designs aren’t just visuals. Sometimes you need soundtracks to bring your animated clips to life. In other cases, you need voiceovers to communicate your message clearly via videos or even to add a personal touch. In all such cases where you need add-ons to complement your designs, AI comes in handy. 

There are several AI tools that let you create voiceovers along with the option to fine-tune the nuances of the voice, including tone and delivery. If you do not want to spend additionally on these AI tools, collaborate with a design team that supports these AI-powered upgrades. 

Did you know that you get AI voiceovers and other AI-powered features to simplify your design workflow on KIMP360? 

Applications like these prove that AI in creativity helps speed up production timelines for multimedia campaigns. This is a significant leap for brands, considering that video continues to be the most popular content format across channels and across diverse marketing applications. 

In addition to voiceovers, AI music tools help create soundtracks and background audio that feels relevant to your design, eliminating the need for finding stock audio that actually does the job! 

Looking for AI music tools? Check out a few options here. 

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Now that we have spoken about all the benefits of AI in creativity for marketers, let us also talk about a few limitations, a few scenarios where letting AI take the driver’s seat might not be the best decision. 

When Not to Let AI Take Over

Crafting branding design 

Branding design is one of those areas where AI visuals simply cannot beat human creativity. Because there is a thin line between inspiration and imitation. If you have been using AI tools to generate designs, you know that some of these designs just feel generic. Most AI-generated visuals might look good, no doubt, sometimes too good even! But the question is, are they good for your brand? 

Not everything that looks good is good for your brand, right? You need visuals fine-tuned to capture the nuances of your brand’s personality. Naturally, a human designer who understands your vision, empathises with your target audience and has experience crafting brand designs for similar goals can do a better job at crafting brand identity designs.

But yes, AI is not completely useless in such cases. You can use AI tools to brainstorm ideas for your logo design. Or your designer can use AI to quickly generate mockups to help you compare the logo design variations. 

Similarly, when working on your mascot, AI tools can help you visualize or even quickly get ideas for the best character to represent your brand. And designers can use AI tools to instantly swap outfits for your finalized mascot or even place it in different settings to help you better understand if your mascot needs any updates. 

In short, branding design is one of those areas where the complexity in the role of AI in creativity becomes more evident. This is one of those areas where human designers undoubtedly need to take the lead, but AI can become a reliable co-pilot!  

Looking to outsource branding design? Check out our blog on strategies to hire the right branding design agency for your needs! 

Brand-centered messaging 

There are various marketing designs that are thoughtfully crafted for brand-centered messaging. These are occasions where placing all your trust in AI in creativity might not be the best move. 

For example, it could be rebranding campaigns where you are evolving your brand identity based on data gathered about what’s missing in your current brand identity. Or perhaps it is a milestone campaign. You need authentic visuals capturing the real moments that shaped your brand’s growth. Or even purpose-driven campaigns where every element, every color, and emotion in your design should be aligned with strong values and a purpose that your audience connects with. 

In all these occasions, a designer-led creative workflow is the best way to preserve the human touch. After all, brand perceptions are shaped by such campaigns, and hence, you cannot rely on generic AI visuals for them. 

Layered storytelling 

The best kind of campaigns are those that connect through memorable stories communicated layer by layer. AI can help you generate stories or even create quick visual storybooks (like Gemini Storybook), but can they really create story arcs that accurately capture your brand? Especially when it comes to visual storytelling? That’s where it gets slightly tricky. 

The emotional depth in your design, layered storytelling through your campaign visuals, streamlined messaging, that’s where human designers outshine AI in creativity. Put simply, AI can tell a story and what happens, but not be able to connect that story to your brand or tell why it matters. Empathy is the secret ingredient in layered storytelling through visuals, and human designers do it better. 

Hence, this is also one of those areas where AI can help iterate visual references and some design variations, but your design team will be able to add more emotional depth to your visuals. 

Designing culturally-relevant ads 

Let’s get real – just like human emotions, cultural nuances cannot be automated. Empathy cannot be taught to machines. Though they can be programmed to mimic empathy, eventually, after a few responses, it starts feeling artificial and forced. Therefore, when you are creating culturally-relevant campaigns to connect with a specific demographic, say, an ad for a local culturally significant holiday, AI cannot replace human judgment. 

AI tools might help gather resources to understand colors, symbols, and other culturally relevant elements, but designers understand the subtle context behind each better. Besides, AI tools currently do not have a reputation for being inclusive or culturally sensitive when it comes to capturing the essence of specific demographics. AI visuals are not always inclusive. 

Remember that during cultural celebrations, it is more about authentic connections, about showing customers that you understand them, than flaunting dazzling visuals that merely push products. Therefore, for culture-driven ads, let human empathy take over! 

Accessibility-focused designs 

One of the main reasons people use AI in creativity is that it helps expand creative boundaries and visualize even the seemingly impossible. However, when it comes to creating accessible designs, AI falls short! 

Remember that AI tools are only as good as their training datasets. If the chosen AI tool was trained on datasets that did not include sufficient data to represent people with disabilities, then the tool cannot perceive the context or create designs that take into account unique accessibility challenges. 

For instance, some AI tools might end up adding text overlays on complicated backgrounds or using colors with poor contrast, affecting readability. Accessibility is about real people interacting with your designs. So, if you are aiming to ensure accessible design choices, human designers still take the lead. 

AI in Creativity Without Losing the Human Touch: Best Practices 

1. How do you set up an AI + human marketing design workflow? 

Clearly define the scope of AI tools and the role of human designers. Prioritize tasks that require human oversight so that there are clear workflows that reduce confusion and maximize efficiency.

2. How do you use AI for experimentation without losing control of your brand?

Treat AI-generated designs as starting points and not final designs. Test multiple iterations and work with your design team to understand how to apply your brand elements to the AI visuals. In other words, think about the best ways to fine-tune AI-generated designs so that they look and feel like your brand. 

3. How can your team make AI a dependable co-pilot? 

Prompt engineering is growing to be a skill that most teams should acquire. Given that keeping AI away is an outdated approach, it’s time to start training your teams on how to use the chosen AI tools efficiently. Teach them to craft precise prompts that fetch accurate results that elevate your marketing workflow. Equally important is to learn how to refine prompts and record the ones that actually work for your requirements. 

Your Ideal Marketing Playbook? AI-Assisted Human Creativity 

So, should you let AI tools replace human designers in your marketing workflow? If you think generic designs aren’t enough, then no, AI isn’t enough! AI can churn out ideas, variations, and mockups, but human designers handle emotional depth, cultural nuances, and layered storytelling better! 

Hence, the sweet spot lies in combining both. That’s where an AI-ready design team can make things easier! From AI-assisted request forms that simplify the design brief process to AI-powered upgrades that transform our internal workflow, KIMP is evolving rapidly to help you keep up with the shifting landscape. 

Ready to experience the KIMP difference? Register now and start your 7-day free trial!