6 Best AI Design Tools for Visual Communication Designers

AI tools have been seamlessly finding their way into every industry, integrating with a wide range of services. From entertainment to healthcare, the use of AI tools is skyrocketing. In the design world, AI is revolutionizing and transforming how graphic designers, visual identity designers, and communication designers practice their work.

Have you noticed on social networking applications where certain posts appear to make a person’s deceased family members or a historical character move and talk? Thanks to the power of Generative AI and the capabilities of AI, designers can mobilize various tools to bring life to lifeless objects and images.

What is AI offering to communication designers?

It offers a wide range of tools to designers for easy and quick opportunities to create new fonts, build custom images, have ready design layouts, colour-palatte generation, quick image editing, and more. It is helping designers to understand the user needs better from AI-driven analysis, leading designers to hyper-personalize their design content. A key transformative tool AI offers designers is the power of visual recognition to identify images, humans, animals, objects, patterns, etc.

Benefits of AI in graphic, visual, and communication design

i. It’s reducing the time designers spend on mundane design tasks, allowing them space for creative design processes and thinking.
ii. Improves designs to keep brands and designers competitive with generative AI and suggestions.
iii. Lessens a designer’s workload by offering quick creative solutions like new fonts, image editing, etc.
iv. Better work output from designers with reduced time, lesser workload, and improved designs.

Must explore AI tools for graphics designers, visual identity designers, and communication designers

In Graphic and communication design, AI tools help designers upload existing designs or mock design ideas to generate specific designs using text prompts. The AI tools help with design iterations and editing. A simple prompt can help designers generate a specific form of design from Manga style, 3D visual reality, or animated cartoons. Here are some leading AI-based tools for designers to explore:

1. Uizard

An intuitive AI tool, Uizard allows designers to effortlessly design websites, mobile applications, and desktop software. It has a massive library of design elements that are easy to use with a simple drag and drop. This tool is extremely user-friendly and allows designers to design their ideas from scratch or use one of the many templates available in Uizard. Its AI feature expedites a designer’s work by offering tools like:

i. text assistant
ii. a text-to-image generator,
iii. option to upload sketches, images, and mock designs
iv. option to turn uploaded designers into digital mock-ups,
v. generates colours and fonts based on uploaded designs, and more.

Price: Uizard offers various subscription models, starting from free access for 2 projects to $12 per month and $49 per month under its paid plans. The latter payment offers designers access to all features and priority support.

2. Adobe Firefly

Adobe already offers communication designers a wide array of tools, and Adobe Firefly is another innovative product from the global brand. It is a generative AI tool to ideate, create, and communicate that significantly improves a creative workflow. Adobe wants designers to feel empowered using this tool to bring their ideas into reality just as they imagine them. Adobe Firefly offers:

i. text-to-image generation,
ii. design text fonts
iii. generate colour palettes
iv. recolour SVGs to offer a wider range of variations to vectors and more.

Price: For designers who are subscribed to the Adobe Creative Cloud, Firefly is part of the Creative Cloud package. Adobe now allows designers only a certain number of free credits per month to control and offset the computing it requires to generate AI designs.

3. Midjourney

This one is an AI-powered graphic design tool that offers users hyper-real design/ image generation. Making it the talk of the town in the design community and becoming a leading AI-based graphic design tool in the market. At the moment, Midjourney can be accessed through a Discord platform. Once designers are used to the platform, they can:

i. generate different types of graphics like logos, posters, etc.
ii. generate complete website designs
iii. turn text-to-graphics in real-time.
iv. produce hyper-real designs and images, etc.

Price: While Midjourney offers free access to all, the platform does have several users at the same time which causes delays in the server. Paid members gain access to faster and quicker services on the application with less time lag. Paid subscriptions range from $10-$12 with certain hours of use and offer un-watermarked images for designers to use.

4. Khroma

Another graphic design AI tool that is a one-stop-shop for all colour palette needs. This AI tool offers an infinite number of colour combinations for designers to work with. When a designer signs up on the application, the app will have the designer pick 50 of their favourite colour from a wide range of selections. Using these answers, Khroma produced countless colour combinations for the designer.

Price: The best part of this AI design tool is that it’s free for everyone to use. Designers can edit the palettes and even upload images to add colour to them. Or simply copy and paste the hex code to use across other design platforms.

5. Looka

Want to design logos in an instant? Use Looka Logo Maker which offers innovative software with an easy-to-use configuration wizard to create multiple logos. Designers can use their basic prompts to generate new designs. The wizard will offer designers many pre-made logo designs to understand designer preferences. Designers then select their choice of colours, symbols, slogans, and other elements that help to best represent the business. The designer will have the option to edit the final options of layouts, icons, colours, etc. to finalize their design.

Price: Looka has a one-time fee charge. It charges $20 for a JPG of logos. Or designers can upgrade their services by paying $65 for higher resolution files like EPS, PDF, etc.

6. Let’s Enhance

It’s a great AI tool for designers to quickly enhance the quality of images. Let’s Enhance has a great neural network programme that can even fill in missing details that were not originally present in the images. Designers can increase the resolution of low-quality images and enlarge photos without losing quality or details. The best offering of this tool is that it can enhance the most pixelated images to make them print-ready using powerful AI.

Price: The platform works on a credit system, offering designers free credit upon sign-up. Once these are utilized, designers can gain new credits from $9 – $45 per month for 100-500 credits.

Other creative AI platforms for communication designers are Canva, Design.ai, Autodraw, DreamStudio, etc.
These tools are revolutionizing workflow for communication and visual designers by offering them intelligent suggestions. By harnessing the power of these AI tools, designers can work more efficiently and produce sophisticated and impactful creative content. Unlocking new potential in the field of design, AI tools are empowering designers to produce content like their thoughts utilizing text-to-design prompt services.

Seeking to join the design workforce?

Skill yourself with global design trends and learning at Strate School of Design, India. With its unique French pedagogy and global connections, Strate brings its students an international platform for cultural exchange, networking, and industry interactions.
Learn more about the Brand Identity and Visual Communication program here.