Forget creative challenges; use Midjourney for ideas

I will admit to having a high degree of skepticism when it came to AI art. My friends would show me D&D-inspired characters that all seemed to be well-painted, cinematic lighting that would make a director jealous, and a high degree of realism.

However, being a grumpy dude, I would instantly point out that the characters inevitably had 12 fingers per hand, and in place of six-pack abs, were often 24-packs. Glasses that sprouted from within the skull. Wobbly legs that appeared to have smoke for bones.

I know better now. Oh sure, Midjourney still makes?too many fingers ?and abs, but that will be solved at some point. If not, illustrators can breathe a sigh of relief.

Here’s what I like about Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, Dalle-2 et al. No, the artwork is not ready for prime time,?but the ideas are. We can use these tools to generate a whole host of useful things, not just Hogwarts graduate avatars for Facebook.

Here’s some ways I use AI for idea generation:

Website design.

Everyone is bitching that websites all look the same these days. It’s true. The current crop of UI designers kind of suck. They rip each other off incessantly, use the same fonts, and are basically cult members of whatever?Creative Market ?and?Pixelbuddha ?say are hot.

Try this.

Pick a long-dead artist that you love. I say long-dead because I do not want you stealing the styles of current artists. That’s illegal and disrespectful. I told Midjourney to design a website in the style of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.?Here is the exact prompt I used:

design of a modern website landing page for a cafe, navigation menus, style of a Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec poster stylize 1000        

And this is what it rendered:

Pretty amazing, huh? Look at that imaginative upper right one with the body copy in a hand-painted word balloon. While all four are interesting, I think 2, 3, and 4 are usable as designs. Now take these ideas into your favorite coding platform (I currently prefer?Editor X ) and build it.

Product Design

Who says products have to be boring? I see a lot of Plain Jane designs on?Behance ,?Dribbble , and?Muzli . Well, not plain, but a sea of sameness. Like the web design issue, product design has too many wannabes ripping off the truly good designers.

Here is the very first thing I ever did on Midjourney. I was enrolled in /promptcamp.ai (no,?Melody ; not a bootcamp!) and we were experimenting with Midjourney-as-product-design.?I gave this silly prompt:

a realistic cardigan sweater design, very modern, made from dragon scales --8k uhd        

And this is what I got:

Are they wearable? You decide. They are certainly eye-catching, and considering how na?ve my prompt was, the result is impressive.

Can you think of other things AI can inspire for you? How about:

• Layouts
• Graphic Design
• Social Media Posts
• T-shirt design
• Skateboard Design (Check out what?Paul DelSignore ?came up with )
• Logos (Midjourney makes amazing logos, but don’t expect type to come out well)
• Book covers
• Album cover art
• And yes, D&D characters. Here’s a half-orc I made:

And here is the prompt I used:

Low angle shot, f/2.8, 14mm wide-angle lens, medieval half-orcwarrior — ar 3:2 — chaos 0