AI by Design: How We Leverage AI Advancements in Graphic Design for You

This post was written by Jolie Baskett, Director of Design at RNL.

When you think of designers, what comes to mind—drawing tablets, the eyedropper in Photoshop, branded colors in a palette? Did you know Artificial Intelligence (AI) is now a vital tool as well? RNL designers use AI for routine graphic adjustments and technical improvements, saving time and allowing them to focus on the strategic elements and bringing your brand to life.

How AI became essential to the design process

Over the last decade, AI has been implemented across the spectrum of Adobe Creative Cloud programs. With the recent boom in AI awareness and new tools, Adobe is introducing rapid advancements in visual design — particularly with generative AI, or gen AI. This type of AI uses our inputs to create original content — the trick is providing it with the right guidance from an expert human. RNL designers put in the most appropriate, targeted prompts, accounting for potential errors, to get the best results for a given brand, audience or strategy. We know AI’s weaknesses to identify and correct issues in the final results — for example, just like many human artists struggle with hands, so does AI! RNL designers always check the hands in AI-generated imagery to ensure our clients’ students don’t appear with six fingers and two thumbs.

Generative AI has been widely adopted,with nearly half of the general population using generative AIand 34% using it daily, according to Salesforce. AI and machine learning have streamlined rote tasks like mundane editing and formatting that once took a designer hours to complete and can now be executed in minutes. Artificial Intelligence is like an intern — it helps our designers get the job done, while our seasoned experts drive the direction, review and course-correct to ensure the strongest results.

The RNL Creative team harness these capabilities to expand on your photography and graphics. RNL designers have the knowledge to best use AI tools for our clients’ benefit due to our team’s multiple degrees in visual communication design and multimedia design, UX/UI certificates, teaching experience and in-depth AI experience.

You’ve heard the buzz. What can AI do for your RNL designs?

You found the perfect photo: It shows a well-known area of your campus with smiling students. But they aren’t wearing branded gear. Enter Artificial Intelligence.

Today’s AI-driven design programs help our designers to:

• Quickly improve photo clarity.
• Expand photos to provide more background for content overlay.
• Subtly modify facial expressions.
• Enhance necessary detail.
• Remove and replace unwanted logos.

We take your campus image—or an Adobe Stock image from our subscription—and develop on-brand photos, illustrations and creative art forms for your fundraising appeals. We can create an entire image or alter a tiny part of an existing one.

Here are a few ways our design specialists use AI tools to elevate your institutional assets from suitable to spectacular:

• Create imagery that fits the style of a picture, such as adding signage to a student center image to set the scene.
• Replace an ensemble with a different outfit, showcasing your school’s colors and mascot instead of [Insert Corporate Logo Here].
• Sketch a drawing that fits a particular “look” — we can convert your images into illustrative elements reflecting your brand’s iconography.

AI’s results are rarely 100 percent accurate, so our designers adjust manually until we get the desired effect. We create the goalpost, AI starts the marathon, and we take your campaign across the finish line.

Machines aren’t perfect. What happens when generative AI “creates” an individual with 16 fingers, a human face without recognizable features, or a building that defies the laws of physics? We ensure AI is a benefit rather than a detriment by quality checking every piece, using expert Photoshop skills, advanced prompt engineering abilities, and a shared belief in “less is more.”

Yes! AI makes “no” a thing of the past

If you ask us to swap out a T-shirt because none of the subjects wore your branded gear, we say,“Absolutely.” Using Photoshop Generative AI, we can change the shirt, paint areas that weren’t perfect in the original photo, and add your logos and graphic elements.

These examples are real-world applications of how RNL’s graphic and multimedia designers have used AI in our materials:

• You want us to take a mug of hot chocolate with marshmallows and change those squishy treats into the shape of hearts for your calendar-year-end appeal? Done and cinnamon-dusted.
• Your Giving Day designs need to include custom art featuring your state flower? Our team can create that – and you don’t have fight your allergies in a field with your camera phone to get it.
• Your subject looks unhappy or has closed eyes? We can wake them up and make them smile!

More than a one-trick pony

When it comes to design changes, the sky is the limit. For instance, Illustrator Betahelps us create vector graphics (subjects, scenes, patterns, etc.) using AI Text to Image. Although still in development, the possibilities for creating illustrations, infographics, custom background patterns and other design elements more rapidly are as exciting as they are revolutionary.

Your fundraising efforts are sometimes best explained with a graphic or infographic, two elements now made quicker and easier using these enhanced tools. Other Adobe programs—such asPremiere ProandAfter Effects—enable lightning-fast video and motion graphics creation, boosting your multimedia.

Lessismore

Our mantra when it comes to AI for graphic design? Lessismore. If the raw assets create a compelling mail piece, digital/social media ad or email appeal, we use them as-is. If they need adjusting based on your fundraising goals, our industry best practices or simply to align more closely with the creative vision, we go the extra mile.

AI is a great tool, but it is only a tool — our trained experts use it carefully, following best practices developed for results as well as legal compliance. The four principles of responsible AI use apply to how our designers implement it as well as to our AI product offerings.

AI is also making a major impact in other areas. It is changing the success of fundraising emails. And it is also changing other key areas of higher ed such as enabling us to “talk” to our CRMs and engage our constituents in intelligent conversations with digital assistants.

Whether assets benefit from enhancement or your campaign requires bespoke creations, our team takes the utmost care to customize assets that ensure legitimacy, add value and excite your donors. We don’t do gimmicky; we do reality.

Let’s put AI to work in your fundraising designs

Find out more by reaching out to RNL for a consultation. We’ll discuss how we can use AI to make your appeals more personalized, engaging, and appealing.

Discover RNL Edge, the AI solution for higher education

RNL Edge is a comprehensive suite of higher education AI solutions that will help you engage constituents, optimize operations, and analyze data instantly—all in a highly secure environment that keeps your institutional data safe. With limitless uses for enrollment and fundraising, RNL Edge is truly the AI solution built for the entire campus.

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