You’re a busy creative, we get it.
You’ve got stuff to do, deadlines to meet, and projects with tighter turnarounds than most NASCAR racetracks.
So, yes, we get it. And that’s why we’re here to help.
Here at Designity, we find that any tool that speeds up your creative process, boosts your productivity, and makes your life easier is a great tool to have.
So, you asked, and we answered. For this blog, we are rounding up the best artificial intelligence (AI) tools that our own Designity team uses on the daily to keep themselves organized, speed up the ideation process, and just, in general, make them a more effective creator.
In no particular order, here are our best AI tools!
DALL-E 2
For those of you not in the know, DALL-E 2 is a state-of-the-art language model developed by OpenAI.
It’s an AI-powered tool that works by using its built-in natural language processors to “understand” a written prompt typed by the user and then matching that prompt against a database of millions of images in order to generate a relevant image for you.
For example, if you were to type “3D image of a yellow blob with a sunhat,” the AI would generate an image based on your request.
It’s quite a powerful tool and can generate art in whatever style you ask, from watercolors to photo-realistic to comic book sketches, making it an ideal tool for designers everywhere looking to quickly stylize existing art, speed up their process, or find a launching pad for a design.
Senior Graphic Designer, Meghan W. finds DALL-E 2 a very useful tool in the design process. In her own words:
"DALL-E 2 is so useful for drawing inspiration on the days where I am feeling creatively drained or don’t know exactly where to start with a design. I describe what I’m looking for in the prompt and then use the images DALL-E 2 generates and go from there!"
Lavender.ai
Lavender.ai is an AI email assistant that can help you reduce the amount of time you spend each day writing and replying to emails.
It offers real-time AI-driven coaching on your emails, lets you research your prospect without navigating away from your inbox, makes sure your email doesn’t end up abandoned in your prospect’s SPAM inbox, and more.
A definite game-changer if your job consists of communications and constant outreach, like Designity’s Director of Sales and Partnerships, Nick B.!
Here is what Nick has to say about Lavender.ai and how it streamlines his workload and saves time in his busy day:
"As sales professionals, we aim to be matchmakers. In order to effectively drive new business, we must also be excellent at communication. This is most prevalent in cold outreach, where, on average, you have 9 seconds of a customer’s attention to engage with them. Lavender.ai simplifies our team’s email copy to improve reply and conversion rates to help drive top-of-the-funnel activity."
ChatGPT
ChatGPT has been making waves lately.
It’s an advanced language model that, like DALL-E 2, was developed by OpenAI.
Like Chatbots of yesteryear, it engages in conversations, answers questions, provides info, and can assist you with all kinds of tasks. Unlike the chat boxes from the early 2000s, it uses powerful AI capabilities, machine learning, and natural language processing to generate very human-like responses to whatever text prompts you give it.
While it might be a nightmare for English professors everywhere, copywriters are finding it to be a very useful tool to cut down on revisions time, ideation, and research.
Senior Copywriter, Sara L., takes advantage of ChatGPT to save time and help her finish projects faster.
"I like to use ChatGPT as my trusty grammar-checker, sentence revision tool, and thesaurus. And, as long as I’m not asking it about anything that happened after 2021, it’s also a great tool for saving Googling time while I’m researching a certain topic for a project. Oftentimes, I have to write about a topic I have very little experience in, so it’s very helpful to ask ChatGPT my question and have it answer me without having to Google and go through tons of content to find the information I need. I fact-check everything, of course, but even then, it’s been a big help in cutting down the time that I used to spend researching!”
Adobe Generative AI
While Adobe programs, like Photoshop, Illustrator, and Premiere Pro have been around for a while now, Adobe has recently come out with generative AI tools for many of the programs in its Creative Suite.
These AI tools aim to help users create, explore, and push boundaries, while also saving them time and optimizing their creative process.
Many designers and video editors, like CD Brian, find Adobe’s AI additions to tried-and-true programs to be a huge help.
He uses it in his day-to-day, speeding up his editing process and making normally monotonous tasks effortless and fast. We’ll let Brian explain a little more about his process:
For Lightroom: They have an AI feature that allows me to automatically mask the sky.
I tend to use this AI to help do global adjustments and/or to select the subject or inverse of the subject. It speeds up the editing process when color-grading my photography since I don't have to worry about "coloring in the lines." Further, that AI feature allows me to manually mask objects in the photo and determine its boundaries so that I don't have to be extremely meticulous on how I mask.
For Photoshop: I tend to use the AI feature that removes the background, selects the subject, and cleans skin blemishes based on my history. When altering photos, it helps me to speed up the process as a basis since it is a mask. So I don't have to color through the photo to construct that mask. The skin-cleaning AI significantly speeds up my photo editing process without me having to create multiple layers (as it creates that for me) and then I just have to tweak it slightly or to my liking.
For Premiere Pro: I use the AI feature to create synchronized subtitles based off the vocal registration caught by the system. Mainly, this was used for short-form social media videos, such as Instagram reels and/or YouTube shorts. The second AI feature I use is cutting up the clips based on audio cues or music tracks. I used to manually read the music and make sure I'm cutting on the correct beats or notes but, with this AI, it cuts directly for me so I don't have to skim through the music track —extremely helpful!
For Audition: I use the AI features to clean up noise in my audio, provide me an equalizer setting that fits the settings of the clip, and dissect the lyrics from the musical score of a song. It's not often I have to work with audio mixing, but when I have to jump into Adobe Audition, that feature saves me so much time because I find myself having to research how to do it again since it was so long ago since I dove deep into audio mixing.
Canva AI
Canva is a pretty popular web-based graphic design platform that lets users create a wide range of visual content from graphics for social media to posters, flyers, presentations, and more.
With its easy-to-use interface and drag-and-drop functions, the platform makes it easy to create sleek and professional-looking graphics, making it quite popular for both amateurs and pros.
Like many other design sites, it too has recently come out with useful AI tools, such as an AI image generator, Magic Design, its AI design tool, and Magic Write, Canva’s text generator and AI writing tool.
All of these tools are designed to streamline the design process and make design more accessible to everybody.
Creative Director, Simon F., couldn’t agree more. Here’s what he had to say about Canva’s AI offerings:
"The most powerful thing about AI generation isn’t just the quality of the images that are created, it’s the accessibility. Anybody can create something interesting on their first try and, with a little practice, generate genuinely sophisticated imagery. It has the potential to completely reorientate the creative industry."
Reclaim.ai
If you’re a busy creative on the go, it can be frustrating to constantly have to check your schedule to see when you’re available for meetings, or even to find time to get to the dentist for that toothache you’ve been ignoring the past few months.
Reclaim.ai is a scheduling automation app that can instantly let you know what your day looks like and when you’re free to schedule breaks, meetings, grocery runs, or anything else you need to get done!
Creative Director, Catherine F., uses this advanced AI tool to keep her calendar (and her brain!) organized and know what each day brings! Here’s how Reclaim.ai takes the surprises out of her days:
"Reclaim.ai has been a game-changer for managing my calendar and other critical tasks. I can add in Habits and Tasks and give preference to when I like to do those activities, and it will block it to when it fits best with my work. It also uses a smart “Time Defense” system for how items appear on the calendar."
Copy.ai
Like its more famous cousin, ChatGPT, Copy.ai is helping content creators and copywriters everywhere to create quality content and turbo-charge their creativity!
With tools like “Growth Ideas” and “Brainstorming and Startup Tools,” this text-generating AI tool helps you ideate on topics, write better headlines and meta descriptions, and makes content creation a snap.
Senior Copywriter, Gillie H., is one such writer who isn’t afraid of being pushed aside by the robot revolution. On the contrary, she is embracing AI and using it on the daily to boost her productivity and save her valuable time on research and revisions.
Here’s what she has to say about her experience with Copy.ai:
"While so many creatives are uncertain about AI tools and fear a jobless future where AI will completely do the work, ousting the writer entirely, I feel different. I welcome technological advancements and view them as creative tools that inject inspiration when I'm in the midst of looming deadlines and still need to create innovative, well-thought-out content in multiple tones and voices.
Let's say I need a final closing sentence for a blog. Using Copy.ai's set of blog tools, I create a project specifically for the client in question, enter all the necessary information and choose the tone I am seeking (witty, empathetic, adventurous, professional, etc.). Once Copyai creates answers, I go over them, usually dismissing most, but if I'm lucky, I come across an inventive phrase or interesting word, which sparks new ideas. Using that word or phrase as a springboard, I brainstorm original content.
Recently they've launched their own chatbot, which can be used to put together blocks of information, but the output always needs extensive editing, the sources cannot be trusted, and too many times the facts are inaccurate or not based on up-to-the-minute information. The real writers' enemy in 2023, is a public that only has the focus to read three short lines of text. Perhaps someone can create an AI tool that combines multiple types of media paired with words to make the reading experience more sensory and stimulating for the public. Something that replaces books instead of eradicating them and offers visionary ideas based on the available art forms."
<div class="c-blog_comp-cta cc-component-2"><div class="c-blog_comp-cta-left"><div class="c-blog_comp-cta-left-wrap"><img src="https://global-uploads.webflow.com/61cdf3c5e0b8155f19e0105b/63695243d096983691046ac3_Potential-Creative.png" loading="lazy" alt="" class="c-blog_comp-cta-left-img"></div></div><div class="c-blog_comp-cta-right cc-dark"><div class="c-blog_comp-content"><div class="c-text-wrapper cc-mb-32"><div class="c-title-4 cc-bold"><strong>Like to work as a freelancer with consistent income?</strong></div></div><div class="c-text-wrapper"><div class="c-text-2">Designity's collaborative model is designed to give you all of the perks of being a freelancer without the income instability.<br></div></div></div><div class="c-blog_comp-wrapper"><a href="http://designity.com/creatives" target="_blank" class="c-button w-button"><strong>Join Our Creative Community</strong></a></div></div></div>
Creativity For the Future
As you can see, AI isn’t just revolutionizing the tech world, it’s revolutionizing the creative world too!
By harnessing the power of AI now to optimize your workday and bump up your productivity, you can unlock a whole new world of endless possibilities and redefine the way you approach your creative process.
So, if you’ve been on the fence about AI, why not pick one of our recommended tools and give it a shot? You never know until you try!
Did we miss your favorite AI tool? Let us know in the comments!
