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Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) has been the trending word these days. In fact, it is in the left, right and center of our life. Lots of jobs will be eliminated as we human be replaced by robots and A.I. As a designer, we have to embrace the change and figure out how we can leverage the technology to create new design. Text to Image Generator Text to Image has become very popular in recent years. Many new websites and applications popped up to offer various Generative AI tools for users to create images, videos, text and speech using text. I have tried a few and selected a few to share my view and experience in this article. Deep AI Deep AI was on the top of the search result when you google “text to image generator”. The website features AI Chat, AI image generator, AI video generated from an image or text, and text to speech. The result of AI chat was okay but it was no comparison to Open AI. The text to image result was disappointing. ImgGen This AI-powered image generation website is easy to use, 100% free and offer a range of image enhancing tools, including background remover, watermark remover, image restoration, retouching, color correction, and unblur image tool. Of all the tools, I think that the watermark removal tool is a bit controversial. As a designer, I would like people to respect intellectual property and original artwork. Since it is a free platform, there are Google ads that pop-up but they are not as bad as Deep AI. Overall, it is easy to use, fast and you are supposed to be able to download HD file. Adobe Firefly Adobe Creative Cloud is the most popular creative software among creative professionals. There are some free apps but most are subscription-based. Firefly is one of the few free apps that you can use by signing up an account. Adobe has been the most powerful creative software that offers a wide range of creative tools to create drawings, graphic design, websites, videos, enhance images, and more importantly read and write PDF. The Adobe Firefly is an AI tool to generate image/graphic from text. This artificial intelligence was trained on 300 million images in the Adobe library. You may select dimension, add and edit your prompt, regenerate, and generate more options based on your preferred result. The overall result of generating fantasy illustration was good but the options are limited after a while. Catch: it is not totally free. You get 15 credits very month to generate images. After that, you will have to pay HK$38/month for 100 credits. Honestly, I don’t know how the credits are calculated but it runs out fast. I didn’t even download one image and all credits are gone.Microsoft’s AI image generator Create.microsoft.com is a pleasant surprise. The tool was easy to use. Similar to many other photo editing tools, you can select the ratio of the image, remove background and enhance the generated image. The great thing is that you can immediately create a design using the image that you generated. There are some templates that you can choose to create a quick layout with custom text using design.microsoft.com. The overall experience using the create.microsoft.com was good without knowing much about it. The file sizes are good to be used for website and social media. Many More... If you search "text to image generator" online, there are many more websites that offer such service. Some are subscription-based. Some are free. I had tried a few other free ones but the results were not satisfactory. Like human, machine needs to be taught with reference and database. The bigger the knowledge base, the more combination of images can be created. What's Next for Professional Graphic Designers With a smart phone, everyone is a photographer and videographer. With some generative A.I. tools, everyone can be a designer and creator. You don't even need to draw or take photos to generate an image. The question is whether the images or videos generated meet the expectation and good enough for use. Machines and robots are replacing many jobs for sure. It's a matter of time. For now, all these generative A.I. tools will help designers create concept and layout easily, saving a lot of time illustrating or retouching images.
With more bandwidth, 5G, and popularity of mobile devices, websites can be more creative. Here's the trend for 2024. More Attractive Images To capture the attention of your target audience, the first attention is important. That's why what's on the main slider remains important. However, most people would only spend a fraction of a second it and started to scroll down or go to other pages. So, don't expect that your customers would spend more than 3 seconds to read all the messages on the main slider. Instead, keep the audience engaged with more attractive photos and relevant information throughout your website would be key. More Movement With more bandwidth and wider coverage of 5G network, engaging objects such as video background, animation, fancy hover effects, moving text, and parallax scrolls are just some of the web design elements that will make your website more attractive and fun. Mobile First Simply adapting a website to fit different resolution may not be enough. Instead of having mega menu which cannot be adapted for mobile display, some websites started to keep the top navigation simple so that the customers can browse the website the same way they use any other devices. Readability and usability on mobile phones are key considerations when designing new websites. Dark Background We all used to read black text on white background because it is easy on the eyes for printed materials. When it comes to backlit LED screen like the computer, tablet and smart phones, dark mode has become popular. Some suggest that dark mode may reduce eye strain and cut down on blue light exposure. As a designer, we like to think out of the box and try new design elements. And we want to look cool. Vibrant Color & Cyber Look What goes hand-in-hand with dark background is vibrant color. Yellow, orange, magenta and florescent gradient. From logo to graphic design to photography, more dramatic and futuristic look would become a major trend for a while. Use of Typography Big, bold and fancy text is another key visual element in web design. Well, this is more for English which is the dominant international language spoken by over 60% of the world. Of course not all fonts can be displayed on all mobile devices, there are enough variation such as Italics, font size, san serif and non-san serif fonts. Mobile First If you have not yet upgraded your website into a fully responsive website, you would have to hurry up so that you don't loose your target customers to your competitors who offer a much better web browsing experience. Most people browse websites and search for information using their mobile phones these days. Having a design that fits well on mobile devices would be important. What does it mean? It means that your images would not be too large or too small on mobile devices, text is readable, button works, mobile menu won't require scroll down. Yes, you don't want to have too many sub-navigation. Summary All in all, while there is always a design trend, marketers and businesses should still adapt what complements their brand while stay on top of the technology. Talk to us if you are interested in exploring ways to improve your website.
Over the last decade, we have built many websites and eShop using WordPress, one of the most popular content management system that was used by 40% of all websites on the Internet, for some good reasons. Open-source As a web developer and designer, we like to use PHP and MySQL which is a cost-effective solution for creating websites because they are both open-source software. Popularity and Continued Development Since 2003, WordPress has continued to develop, transforming from a simply blogging platform to one of the most popular content management system. Due to its popularity and open-source programming language, tens of thousands of plug-ins (free and premium) are available to enhance the features and functionalities of the websites. Lower Cost WordPress has been a cost-effective solution to many small-medium sized companies and startups to start a presence on the Internet in the past twenty years. The available templates and plugins have saved a lot of our development time which translate into faster delivery and lower costs for our clients. Challenges However, major customization is needed to to create a unique and professional corporate or eCommerce site. As we work on different themes and plug-ins created by different developers, we had to overcome a lot of challenges because every theme or plugin was developed differently. They may or may not work. Some plug-ins may even have conflicts. All these unknown factors may slow down the development process and incur higher costs.