“We don’t need to rely on AI to break up the monotony”

Creative Career Conundrums is a weekly advice column from If You Could Jobs. Each week their selected panel of professionals from the creative industry answers your burning career questions to help you navigate the creative journey.

This week’s question:

“My boss really loves using AI for image generation, especially mockups for brand identities we create at the design studio I work at. But it’s not very tasteful at all – he’s not very polished and the images show it. How can I address it so the collective work we make will be better presented?

My boss is tacky. How do I overcome this?”

I think you can only demonstrate by doing. While this might seem a bit passive aggressive, it’s hard to argue that something is wrong without showing the answer.

Firstly, start spamming your team with brilliant case studies you’ve seen. Suggest you want to elevate all your visuals to match. By bringing lots of high quality examples into your boss's orbit, that should start to move the needle on the standard of the output.

Secondly, take a couple of the worst offending examples and redo them. Or better yet, present work to him ready to go in visuals you love. There are so many incredible mockup resources you can use. Some of my favourites; The Brand Identity (particularly good for adding motion in your projects) and Bendito (who really nail their art direction, so will often have mockups that feel really appropriate for the project) Very quickly, viewing your versions and his side by side will highlight your point without ruffling too many feathers.

I think people are leaning on AI to create mockups in the hopes of having assets no one else does. But the real issue is that studios use the same five billboard or iPhone mockups over and over. We don’t need to rely on AI to break up the monotony. Use a marketplace like Supply Family to find mockups from smaller creators that aren’t in common circulation. Collect any that you find. Start a board or resources channel where you can drop in easy to grab, simple to use files you love. So that the excuse of ‘speed’ using AI is null.

If you’re feeling brave, you could set up a workshop with the intention of reviewing the work. Call it an annual review, print everything out and try to begin a discussion around what’s working and what isn’t. What you’d be proud to put on the wall, and what would be better in the recycling bin. Try to move past the sense that ‘his taste’ is bringing the creative down, and focus on bettering the studio output overall. Then hopefully, everyone will win.

In answering your creative career conundrums we realise that some issues need expert support, so we’ve collated a list of additional resources that can support you across things that might arise at work.

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