You have no doubt seen them — posters, fliers, and social media promotions that seem strangely out of whack. The details are too sharp. Proportions are off. Everything is bathed in an approximation of golden hour twilight. You are not interested. Your eye moves on.
One trend that has been increasingly impossible to miss is the use of artificial intelligence to make everything from yard sale signs to cafe specials boards. A user asks for a design for a barbecue chicken dinner, and the computer coughs up something nearly identical to millions of others. Every inch of the resulting poster is covered. The typefaces are all over the map. There are exclamation points and doodads everywhere. They are sentimental, kitschy. They try to evoke a generic, idealized Americana. There is zero local feel at all. It’s all too easy — and all too easy for the public to ignore. Then, oftentimes, the graphics fail to match what is actually on offer. A.I. writing is much the same. It might be grammatically correct, and perhaps the tone is right, but it is also weirdly manipulative.
Graphic designers are alarmed, with good reason. While large companies are willing to pay for top-notch professionals, the owners of small businesses often look to cut corners where they can. The temptation is seductive — and everywhere. Microsoft ceaselessly suggests its A.I. assistant can help. Adobe products, including Photoshop and InDesign put robotic tools front and center. Google search results present an A.I. overview at the top of the page.
One of our favorite new news sources, 404 Media, recent published a story titled, “We Are Living in a ChatGPT Flyer Pandemic.” The upshot was that users of A.I. graphic designs risk a subliminal backlash. Frequent viewers of this material are becoming attuned to the lack of effort that went into it. The thought, summarized, might be, “If you don’t care enough to create your own announcement, why should I think your event would be any different.” It reminds us of the old saw that, given enough time and typewriters, a group of chimpanzees could churn out the collected works of Shakespeare. Well, perhaps not exactly, but we wouldn’t want to read it.
For our nickel, we’d take a hand-lettered sign over A.I. any day. Of course, now that Golden Eagle Art Supply on North Main Street is gone, where one might go for the poster board and pens other than slog to Bridgehampton in summer traffic is admittedly a high hurdle indeed.