August 5, 2025 • 38 mins
AI is transforming the creative workflow—but not in the ways we first expected. In this conversation with Galen Low, creative and PM leaders Sara Fisher, Sara Doubleday, and Greg Storey talk through the practical and philosophical implications of AI’s growing role in creative work. This isn’t about flashy tools or end-to-end automation. It’s about realigning how teams work, communicate value, and preserve the human essence in their process.
From misinformed client expectations to the strategic reframing of creative outputs, the panel explores how project leaders and creatives can use AI to amplify their strengths rather than replace them. Spoiler: there’s still no shortcut for trust, authenticity, or thoughtful strategy.
Resources from this episode:
- Join DPM Membership
- Subscribe to the newsletter to get our latest articles and podcasts
- Connect with Sara Fisher, Sara Doubleday, and Greg Storey on LinkedIn
- Check out Vye and Seer Interactive
- Check out Greg’s book – “Creative Intelligence: Don’t Ask AI, Think With AI”
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Galen Low (00:04):
Today's session is all about how AI is impacting
the creative process and theway that we lead projects.
I thought maybe we could startby meeting our panelists.
Who should I pick on first?
Sara Fisher is the directorof project management at Vye.
And Sara, when I first met you,you were a designer and then we
re-met when you were a PM andnow you're heading up an entire
(00:26):
PM team over there at at Vye.
What's something thatyou learned as a designer
that you still use everyday as a senior leader?
Sara Fisher (00:34):
Yeah, so I definitely still use file naming
conventions, date codes andversioning, Google Doc titles,
just everything, meeting notes.
It's so helpful, just notingthose things in the file
name and it's a habit thatI can't break it 'cause
it's so good and helpful.
Galen Low (00:54):
It is a helpful one.
I saw a post the other day,I can't remember for the
life of me, who it was.
I was like, you know, yourwhatever, when you have a file
on your desktop that's called,or files on your desktop, it's
called Final final use this one.
And I'm like, that is 75%of the like deliverables
I've ever had on a project.
It's like version 11.151, final, final share.
(01:15):
But I love that.
It's a great way to stayorganized for sure, and
like totally necessary.
Totally necessary.
I think I'll pickon the other Sara.
Sara Doubleday is the creativelead at Seer Interactive.
And Sara, I actually sawyou give a talk about
change management at lastyear's digital PM Summit.
Now you're heading up the visualdesign brand and campaigns
team at Seer Interactive.
(01:36):
How has your experience inchange management helped
you navigate change withyour creative departments?
Sara Doub (01:42):
Yeah, great question.
So my background is in design.
So when I first came to Seer,oh gosh, over five years ago
at this point, I joined areally small but very mighty
creative team where I worea ton of hats beyond project
management, as I'm sure manypeople here can understand.
So I really think thechange management isn't
just for operations and PMs.
It's really for everyone.
(02:03):
So last year when I made theintentional shift back into
full-time creative strategy,I never stopped using the
change management principles.
So leaning into change has beenhuge for our team and our growth
as well as for understandingand learning about AI.
Galen Low (02:18):
Actually, your talk was so instrumental.
Now it's a life skill, right?
It's like running water.
It's, it's like youneed to understand how
change can be done.
Well, to the point of whatwe're seeing in chat, right?
Like things are changingso fast, entire teams
are being asked to pivot.
We're gonna get into that aswe get into the discussion, but
what a useful slash superheroskill change management.
Last but not least,Mr. Greg Storey.
(02:39):
Greg is a designer, a creativestrategist, and honestly one
of the coolest humans I know.
So I'm really honoredto have you here, Greg.
You actually surprised mein our prep call because you
literally just published a bookon like almost this exact topic.
The book is called “CreativeIntelligence: Don’t Ask
AI, Think With AI”, andit's been getting a lot
of praise in the communityright now in our community.
I remember way back, not thatfar back, but anyways, way
(03:03):
back in the day, years, ayear ago, couple years ago,
I remember you not beingvery hot on AI at the outset.
I'm wondering at what pointyou like turned a corner
and embraced AI in thecreative process, and then
also what made you decideto write a book about it?
Greg Storey (03:14):
The switch flipped for me, when I saw it was a
incredible tool beyond thegeneration point, the generating
things, whether it was cartoonsor video or whatever, that
just didn't impress me.
But once I saw that, oh mygosh, this thing can help
me expand my thinking, it'san incredible research tool.
(03:35):
The more I dug into that andused actually my background
in design as a researcher,explorer, designer, being
curious and in creative ways.
And when I talked to otherpeople about how they were
using AI and people talkingto me, it was clear that
nobody knows how to usethis, or nobody has a really
good idea of how to use it.
And so that made methink I, well, I'll
(03:56):
write a book about it.
Basically documentedeverything that I had been
doing in a more friendly way.
Galen Low (04:02):
I like that.
And it's in therein the title, right?
It's like facilitatingthe creative process, not
doing the thing for me.
Right.
And like generating the thingand that's the output and
off we go, ship it to client.
Ship it to stakeholder X. Yeah.
And it's not thetechnology problem, it's
like the human problem.
We just weren't using it.
Well.
Yes, I love that.
User error.
Yeah, user.
Somehow.
It's always a human, you know?
(04:23):
That's the problem.
Alright, let me tee this up.
I would say arguably oneof the areas that felt the
most immediate impact ofAI was the creative field.
One day it was promising totake on all the administrative
stuff so that creatives couldfocus on their craft and
then wham, suddenly it's likedoing the design instead.
Like tools like Mid Journey andAdobe Firefly, they like led the
(04:43):
pack with AI image manipulation.
Tools like Wizard and Figma UXPilot are like generating wire
frames, site maps, and evenfunctioning websites in seconds.
Heck, even ChatGPT's imagegeneration engine, you
know, we give it flack.
But it is also startingto get labeled.
As you know, a creativemarketing team killer for
all its disruptiveness.
Looks like AI is here tostay, and some creatives are
(05:04):
embracing it with open arms.
New creative possibilitiesare being unlocked.
Tedious parts of the processcan move quicker, and in
some ways it can be easierto get on the same page
creatively before pouringweeks of work into something
that a client doesn't like.
The big question is value.
How do we distinguish betweenareas of our creative projects
that can be AI led with humanintervention and areas that
(05:25):
should be squarely human led,and how do we tell the story of
value while still meeting theserapidly evolving expectations
around the creative process?
With that, I thought this timewe would dive into the meaty
question first, and I'll letany of the panelists weigh in.
I guess when I talk to folks inour community, I would say that.
Saying that some creativeteams are feeling undervalued
(05:47):
in the shadow of AI might belike a huge understatement.
Clients are labeling thingsas oh, was that created by
AI even though they spentweeks laboring over it?
Or on the other hand, somefolks, including project
managers are like, Hey, couldn'twe just use AI for that?
And we're often simplifyingthe value that a
creative team delivers.
So the meaty question is,how should digital creatives
(06:10):
frame the value of theirwork in an age of AI?
And also how can projectleaders help uphold that value?
Sara Doubleday (06:17):
One of my favorite quotes
is from Spider-Man.
With great power comesgreat responsibility.
It's something I referencefrequently because, you know,
we have this amazing newtechnology at our fingertips.
It's changed how we workedovernight, and we're
so focused on outputs.
So the next question thatI'm always asking is, why are
clients paying us all thismoney if we're just gonna
use AI to give them assets?
(06:38):
And to me, the focus reallyneeds to be on as a creative,
what is the strategy andwhy are we doing this?
Because now that anyone cancreate an image, you have
to really think about howis the image that you're
generating driving value ona website or on a campaign?
How is it standing out?
How is it addressing the problemyou're trying to solve in a
time where users are expectingmore personalization, more
(06:59):
answers to their questions,so just creating an image
and slapping it somewhere isnot gonna be addressing that.
Galen Low (07:05):
Like Goal orientedness and always
love a Spider-Man reference.
How about from yourperspective, Sara Fisher?
Sara Fisher (07:12):
For me, I think that teams should lean on,
like humans bring authenticitythat AI just can't ever claim.
So if we can find ways touse language when we're
talking to our clients andour customers about what
are we bringing as humans?
That are human elements,and also tying that together
(07:35):
with goals that mightappeal to like leadership.
And I'm talking aboutelements like trust,
emotional engagement, loyalty.
Those are things that, I mean,AI, it's not really trusted
very well, and people aregonna be skeptical about it.
It's new, everyone'sgetting used to it.
So leaning on those humanelements and what we bring as
humans to the projects, likeeven if AI is being used.
(07:59):
Let's enhance itwith our humanness.
That's how I see it.
Galen Low (08:03):
I love that.
Yeah.
I agree with thatsort of authenticity.
Greg?
Greg Storey (08:07):
Before I get to the AI thing, just to add some
perspective to this, to that,in my career, we're talking
Photoshop one, you know?
Right.
I feel like as, as technologyhas evolved, design
has always taken a hit.
There's always been anassumption that what we do is
just, I had one client one time.
(08:28):
Look at a logo word markthat we'd created with
the logo branding package.
And he said, thatlooks like a type out.
And he kept using this wordtype out and it's like,
what do you, I can't stop.
What does that mean to you?
And he's it looks like youjust went into Microsoft Word
and just, you know, selecteda font and typed it out and,
you know, I was like, whoa.
Like how do youcome back from that?
(08:48):
It's the same,same thing, right?
Of I had a boss one timethat just assumed that.
We scanned designs and thecomputer coded the web for us.
There's always been assumptionsand, and design has been one of
those things that I think it'sbecause it's so visual, right?
It's one thing that everybodyhas an opinion on or they
have an opinion not to havean opinion, but it's an easy
(09:11):
mark and I, I think one ofthe things that especially PMs
can do, especially in sales,it has to be sales to PM to
delivery, is here's the process.
Even show, here's how wework with AI, here's how
we will not work with AI.
And I think it's importantto build on Sara, what you
were saying is to show thatif we simply just rely on
(09:34):
AI to do these things forus, we're gonna get generic.
We're crap.
There's not gonna be anythingunique and speak to the bringing
the humanity to it and thetrust and you know, solving
the user problems or what iswhatever we're trying to do.
Distinctive AI willnot do that for you.
It won't, it just won't.
Galen Low (09:52):
I love that you brought it back to the, the
sales strategy of it, and I'mlike looking at some of the
larger agencies, you know,the global behemoths and
it's front and center, right?
Where you said here's howwe use AI, here's how we
don't, here's our stance.
We're building this AI tool.
I think, I can't remember if itwas WPP, you know, they're like.
They're being very clear aboutwhat lane they've selected
and how that delivers value.
(10:13):
I think there's a lotto learn from that.
Even if you're a smallerboutique agency, if you
were like, you could be afive person agency and I
think it's important to havethat stance and communicate
that value as part of thevalue proposition, not by
accident during the project.
So I love that the, likeat the beginning it is
the value proposition.
I thought maybe I couldjust go from there and talk
(10:33):
about the process because.
I'm imagining Sara andSara, you're like in
the trenches every day.
You're leading teamsof creative folks.
How should creative teams decidewhen to use AI and when not
to, like in their workflow?
Like what are some ofthe criteria that you're
using to guide the teams?
Sara Fisher (10:50):
It's really important, first and foremost
to make sure that you're alignedwith clients on what AI usage
is going to be happening,just so that they're aware.
I'm always a fan of consentculture, just people need
to know what's happeningand be on board with it.
And if they're not okaywith something, you can
still deliver a product,a deliverable without it.
(11:11):
Just talk it through.
Have that honesty and that buildthat trust with your clients.
So that's reallyimportant to me.
So just being really clearhow you're using AI and
your projects, and I thinkthere's a few questions
that you can ask yourselfwhen you're trying to decide
should this be an AI thing?
Do we wanna try and use it here?
Will the use of AIsignificantly impact the and
(11:35):
deliverable and the clientrelationship in a positive way?
If not, maybe it'snot the best use case.
And touching back on whatI said in that last answer,
just being able to augmentwhat humans do with AI to
deliver something better.
Like I try to view it like that.
Another question you can ask is.
(11:55):
Have we originated ourselvesand left our mark before adding
AI to the mix again, let'sfocus on that human element.
AI can be really helpful,like some tests are
better suited for AI.
I'm remembering my days in likeCraig mentioned Photoshop one
having to edit out backgrounds.
Now we have content A Aware,and you can just click it
(12:17):
and remove clouds in the sky,and it's things like that.
I'm all for it.
But when you're doing likebig campaign ideas and I feel
like that's where you needto lean on human expertise,
human experience, rather thanlet's just plug this in AI and
see what it throws out at us.
Galen Low (12:35):
I love like picturing that line item.
It's like a really goodway to bring it into
sharp relief, right?
I'm imagining the line item onthe invoice, it's like cloud
removal, you know, 17 hours.
Yeah.
That, that seems like a lotto pay to remove clouds.
Yeah.
It's lot.
But if you said a, youknow, deliver creative
campaign that's gonna youknow, 10x your revenue go.
(12:55):
Yeah.
Cool.
That, that seems like value.
That seems worth it.
A really interestingframing on what you do.
I was at a conference earlierthis week and someone in
the context of developers.
They're like, you know,writing code is only a
part of a developer's job.
There's strategic decisionmaking, there's communication.
And I'm like, wow.
There's you know, that'sgreat because there's a lot
of parallels here, right?
And in the creative field,there's a lot of parallels
(13:16):
in project management.
You know, there's these chunks.
And Greg, you, you know, whenyou, we mentioned like we've
been through these thingsbefore, especially the creative
industry where change hashappened and you know, it's
like an easy target becauseeveryone kind of understands
this visual language and canhave an opinion about it.
Then we feel attacked and weforget, and everyone kind of
forgets that there's more to thejob than like removing clouds or
(13:39):
you know, generating an image.
There's a strategicthought behind it.
And Sara, coming back towhat you were saying about
yeah, goal oriented on brief.
Presently, humans are stillbetter at that in terms of
approaching that creativelyand not just doing something
that's been done before.
Sara Doubleday (13:54):
Yeah.
I really feel like AIis not a replacement for
thinking and strategy.
Also, as we're working with ourclients, that transparency piece
is so important because if we'retaking important documents,
like brand guidelines, thereare platforms, strategic
documents, and feeding thatinto AI, we need to make sure
that, you know, the algorithmsaren't taking that learning off
(14:14):
of it, creating opportunitiesfor other companies to
be able to use that.
That's something that wetake really, really seriously
and make sure that anytimewe are using AI, it's in a
closed sandbox where that'snot being released anywhere.
And I just always bring itback to, you know, we're
managing client brands.
Most of these brands haveinvested millions of dollars
(14:34):
into their reputation andtheir standards, and we really
shouldn't treat that lightly.
As designers that are creatingbranded elements, our client
is putting trust in us thatwe're not just gonna grind
that up in the AI machine.
So I say that not to be anti AI.
I think there's a lot offantastic use cases for it,
but just to be mindful andaware, going back to that
Spider-Man quote of whenand why we're using it, so.
(14:57):
Our team will oftenuse it whenever we're
needing to distill downa ton of information.
So recently we just had a eighthour client workshop, and we ran
all of the notes and transcriptsthat we had through AI to pull
out themes that would've takenat least half a day's work,
otherwise, or we'll often beusing AI for production work.
So resizing campaignassets, creating imagery
(15:18):
or iconography, and that'sall really downstream.
After we've solidified thestrategy, after we've decided
how and where we wanna use AI.
Galen Low (15:26):
Those are all such good use cases, right?
Because like in the processthere is tedious work that is
not necessarily high value, andespecially like the workshop
thing I find really interestingbecause you know, AI.
The way we use it today at,you know, like the sort of
mainstream AI is excellentwith language, right?
It's excellent at likeparsing language, natural
(15:47):
language processing.
Like it's a, it's avery good use of it and
it's quite good at it.
And also I remember the dayscoming back with the rolled
butcher paper full of stickynotes, hoping that we roll it
carefully enough that all thesticky notes are still there.
Free fly off andyou're like, oh gosh.
And then we have totranscribe 'em and in a way
I'm like, I can't believewe did that actually.
You know, it wasn't, and peopleare still doing it today, right?
Sara Fisher (16:09):
It's hard to think back to that time 'cause I
feel like using transcriptiontools like Otter is one of the
ones that I frequently use.
I think back toall the years of.
Like feverish notetaking on the side while
trying to lead a meeting.
And it's three conversations atonce and I'm constantly going
back and trying to edit orpeople will ask for my notes.
This was pre auter days oh Sara,I saw you were taking notes.
(16:32):
Can I have them?
I'm like, you can't makesense of them yet 'cause
it's in my weird shorthand.
Give me like 30 minutesand I will clean these up.
So it's really nice to nothave to do that anymore.
It's so helpful.
Galen Low (16:44):
Or like the book days where you're
like, let me just put itin the photocopier for you.
Yeah, yeah.
Game is different.
Sara Fisher, earlier you said,you know, almost giving clients
a choice, being like, listen,we could do this with AI, but if
you know you're not really coolwith that, we have another way.
Is that like a key decisionpoint in your flow?
Like at the start to be like,we have this path that goes,
(17:06):
we can use AI and then we havethis path that's like AI free.
Is that built intoyour operation?
Sara Fisher (17:10):
Right now it's not, but it's being talked about for
sure, and some of the placesI've been at in the past that
was more at the forefront.
So it's like thisis a new technology.
It's starting to catch on.
It's definitely being talkedabout on a daily basis.
Used on a daily basis.
I had a client in the past.
This was a few years agowhere they specified in their
(17:34):
contract that we could notput any of their proprietary
information in ChatGPT.
And this was like at thevery beginning of it.
Mm-hmm.
So at the time, I hadn'treally even tested ChatGPT
yet, but that was like myintroduction to it with clients.
'cause this was a clientwith a household name and
technology, like they're alsomaking products like that.
(17:55):
Yeah, it's a scary thing.
Like you don't wanna plug intheir proprietary information,
even if you're privately workingon a campaign and it's not being
shared out publicly, but itis being shared into the tool,
which adds to the hive mind.
And it's like you just have tobe really careful about things
like that because there is adomino effect that can happen.
And it's just, I likebeing on the safe side.
(18:18):
Yeah.
Just have that upfrontconversation first.
If there's anythingthat's in question.
So that you don't have todeal with the maybe some
messy dominoes down the road.
Galen Low (18:27):
Yeah, I like that due caution comes back to that
transparency and Sara Doubledayyou had mentioned, I hadn't
even thought about it, but likewe're always like, oh yeah,
like personally identifiableinformation, financial data, you
know, really confidential stuff.
Wait.
Yeah, right.
You know, people spend millionson their brand and it's not
always the thing that are like,I don't know, I'm not a, I don't
have a creative background.
You know, I'd be like,yeah, brand guidelines
(18:47):
perfect, like Chuck it intoGPT, you know, off we go.
'cause that's gonna tell me,you know, whether a lot or not,
I'm aligned with, you know,what this company's all about.
But also is that anartifact that requires
sort of more caution?
More safety aroundthat actually.
And Sara, double date is thatpart of the sort of value
prop as well when you'rebeing transparent with clients
like, we're only using closedsystems with your brand.
(19:09):
That's policy.
That's how we work.
Sara Doubleday (19:11):
Absolutely.
Yeah.
We have language that we'llsign off with a client on if
we're ever using AI for anyof our processes with them.
And there's clients that optin and there's clients that opt
out for a variety of reasons.
Like they might be workingin finance or healthcare and
just have a lot of sensitiveinformation, or they might
just be hesitant about AI.
So we are very respectfulof that and definitely don't
(19:33):
wanna put any information inthat they're not okay with.
The other consideration hereis, I do this all the time,
is the knee jerk reactionto use AI is so strong.
Something ha an email comesin, a design request comes in,
and you think, oh, just use AI.
And we need to reallyspeed bump that and ask
ourselves why we're using AI.
(19:53):
Is it actually useful to use AI?
Or could I just take twoseconds to look at the brand
guidelines and say, yes,this is accurate or not.
Sometimes we don't need thatadditional layer of feeding
something through AI toknow if it's working or not.
Galen Low (20:05):
I love that.
And Greg actually in the greenroom, you mentioned something,
and I won't give away thespoiler, but that idea that it's
still important for the humanto understand something before.
Also think with AI, right?
Get that involved and almostjust that the comparison is
actually the collaboration.
Not necessarily one isright or one is wrong.
It's just, yeah, I don't know.
(20:26):
It's that kind of what you dowith a human colleague as well.
I wouldn't necessarily justtrust my day two intern to
be like, cool, read thesebrand guidelines do a thing.
Greg Storey (20:35):
Yeah.
In fact, I have a, a chapternear the end of the book
about recognizing if you'rerelying on AI too much.
Cure warning signs and SaraDoubleday you're spot on.
You know, like when you, oh,cut paste, you know, it's
too easy and it's we can loseour ability to just think for
ourselves pretty quickly withoutrecognizing, realizing it.
(20:57):
So I wanna go back to one thingabout the comment about the
using AI and the process and,and that it speeds things up
because, you know, I don't knowabout you all and your results.
But just using AI to do athing doesn't mean that you're
gonna get, you're likely notgonna get good results for one.
(21:19):
And we talk about being adesigner, when you use AI in
this way, you're really beingmore of like the creative
director or, or director, right?
So your role is simplyjust gone up one level.
At the same time, you're stillhaving to say, nope, make
the logo bigger or move thebutton over, but you're still
(21:39):
gonna have the same problems.
It's just a roll of the dice ifyou're gonna get proper output
and not on the first time,more like after your 40th try.
What I've found in my useof, of these tools is that.
You can go from just like Dan,this thing is just clicking
and then five minutes laterit's whoa, what just happened?
(22:02):
I went from universityprofessor, academic quality
output to I'm dealingwith a five-year-old.
And I don't know what happenson that technology and I
can't explain what happens.
I just know that evenin in a half hour's use,
you can all of a sudden.
What it's doing is justfalling off a cliff.
(22:24):
And there's been a couple timesI just had to say, I gotta go.
I gotta walk away, I gottago, go do something else.
'cause no matter what, I tryin my response, if I work
with this thing, it's just notcapable of doing it right now.
So I just bring that upbecause there was mention
of Canva earlier in the chatway back in the day, we had
a thing called Quill draw.
(22:45):
I remember when people wouldsay that they were a designer,
you know, like you'd go toa Kinko's back when people
did that, and there was aquote designer at Kinko's,
and you could buy a logo andyour business card and they
would give you the Curl drawbook and say, pick your logo.
Pick your clip art image.
And that's what passedis as design, right?
(23:06):
And so again, people are alwaysgonna be looking for shortcuts.
They assume thatit's easy to do.
I don't, back to the questionof the client that does wanna
pay for design, they wantto use AI, they shouldn't
be your client anymore.
If that's the type of peoplethat you're working with and
you are in design, or Sara,I know you Sara, double that.
(23:27):
You guys work at SEO, Icould use the robot to come
up with my SEO strategy.
And if I don't value it,then I'm, I'm probably gonna
be okay with the output.
Whereas I know if I satdown with you and, and will.
The rest of the crew, I would begetting so much better results.
So it's just a matter of,you know, I like this idea
of being upfront to weed out,are these people that I should
(23:51):
be working with, are theygonna value me and my work?
Galen Low (23:53):
I'd love to dig in there because that is, you
know, what I'm seeing in thechat, you know, folks are like,
I'm losing clients because.
They don't wanna payfor graphic design.
And Greg, what you're saying isthose probably aren't the right
clients, but they're out there,there are clients that do want,
you know, sorry, double day.
What you, you mentionedat the beginning, right?
It's like, how do we achievea strategic outcome, right?
How do we hit the goal?
What decisions do wemake to get there?
(24:15):
Not how do we, you know,resize a bunch of images.
How do we like, you know,draw a line on a page that's
not what the design is about.
That's not its role.
It's a tough one though, becauseI'm coming at this from a bit
of an agency context, but alot of agencies, the smaller
ones are struggling because insome ways they don't have that
buffer, the cushion to losea bunch of clients and then
acquire a bunch of new clientsthat are the right clients.
(24:36):
That all takes time andenergy, like the, the cost
of acquisition is actually,you know, really expensive.
I don't remember whereI was gonna go with that
other than to say that.
Are there strategies that youall are using to say, yeah,
listen, like actually thisclient, I might have to make
the recommendation that thisis not a client that we work
with and, or hey, we need tobe like more clear upfront
about who we're selling to.
(24:58):
You know, the economy is tough.
Everyone wants to land thedeal, but some of these deals
are gonna be the wrong deals.
And are you drivingthat conversation in
the organizations thatyou're working with?
Sara Doubleday (25:06):
I'd say it's really important that we
consider ourselves, not justcreatives, but also consultants,
whether we're workinginternally or with clients.
Because if someone is workingwith us, odds are they are
not a designer or a creative,they're coming to us for that.
So it makes sense thatpeople would be attracted
to the new and shiny AI.
They can get somethingimmediately that
previously they couldn't.
(25:27):
If suddenly I could use AIto do my accounting, I'm
not saying I would do that,but you know, just comparing
it to something outside ofdesign and something that I
don't have the skillset to do.
It is our job to explainwhy creative is important
and why creative is solvingour clients, our internal
team's business problems.
We're not just pullingtogether wire frames or mood
(25:48):
boards or design elements.
We're using these to supporta larger strategy and
to hopefully, ultimatelycreate more revenue and
grow our client's business.
And I don't have aexplanation as to how AI
is currently doing that.
So that's where the human mindis really plugging in at that
point and saying, you know,you can go this AI route, you
can generate these assets, butin one month, two months, when
(26:12):
these aren't performing, comeback and we'll put together
a sound strategy that willactually get you the results
that you're looking for.
So then the money that you'reinvesting is now, paying off
because you're seeing that ROI.
Galen Low (26:22):
I like that.
It's yeah, you go and try it.
I'll see you in a few months.
And then we're gonna be thatpuzzle piece that fits into the
bigger puzzle rather than, yououtsource to AI a piece of the
puzzle that's just not gonna fitin the, in the broader strategy.
Very cool.
I wonder if I can shiftinto workflow a little
bit because I think we'resegueing there anyways.
Obviously things have changed.
How we're spending time isdifferent and we're also
(26:43):
talking about value and likein this particular, like what
we were just talking about,like the the clients client
value and what they're payingfor, I guess I should say.
I'm just wondering likehow is AI changing the
workflow in your creativeprojects today, for example.
Is there really less time neededon some of the things like we've
been talking about, like notetaking and like synthesis from
(27:05):
workshops, but like the actuallike the more visual stuff.
Things like mood boardsand wire framing.
You know, I'm seeingexamples online of yeah,
it can just spit it out.
Is it really that muchof a time savings?
And if it is, then like howdoes that change the workflow
and how you estimate time andyou know, if it's great, we
needed two weeks to do wireframes, now we need two days.
Then how does that impactlike the rest of the work?
(27:28):
That was probably threequestions, but either way
I'm going to challengeMs. Doubleday over here.
Sara Doubleday (27:33):
This is definitely a topic I could
talk about all day, soI'll share my thoughts.
One, definitely wanna hearfrom everybody else, but
we really plug in AI forproduction and scaling.
It has a huge impact on speed tomarket, so we're using it less
upfront with the mood boards andwith the wire frames because.
That is all being informedby user research, customer
journeys, businessstrategy, brand, platform.
(27:55):
And those are elementsthat if we plugged into
AI, we would not be gettinga really great result.
So if you're just lookingfor a design to be created,
you could certainly plugit into AI, but it won't
necessarily move the needle.
So we're taking the time that weoriginally spent on production
and putting that upfront instrategy, and then moving
much, much more quickly onproduction and speed to market.
(28:18):
So, you know.
Hopefully gone are the daysof versioning out hundreds
of assets for campaigns, likehaving to make copy updates,
having to resize things.
I will happily trade allof that for more time and
ideation and strategy, andour clients seem to really
respond to that as well.
Greg Storey (28:33):
Can I build on that real quick?
I imagine a future takingyour, your, what you just said
back to the personalizationthing you talked about
at the very beginning.
When you have toolslike design systems.
Where you don't have to havea bunch of assets, you simply
are evolving or iterating them.
But going back to thepersonalization thing of there's
gonna come a time when we goto the web and we're gonna
(28:56):
be seeing different versionsof the same site, different
images, different language.
And I don't just meandifferent language of English
versus Spanish, different.
It's gonna speak in the voicethat we most resonate with.
And that to me is.
Where it's gonna be sointeresting when you get to
the having more time to ideateand come with the strategy.
(29:18):
Right now we're lookingat that as like a single
channel or like a, alocalization problem challenge.
But I see a table, we're gonnahave to be like, no, there's
actually 12 different personasand just this language, or
something along those lines.
Right?
The different data pointsthat we have to then come
up with these multivariate.
(29:38):
Campaigns and thestrategies for them.
That's, I'll say, you know,buckle up because I see that
kind of work that Sara, youjust mentioned as being vital
to develop the cognition,the, the capacity to do
that kind of work becausethe demand will be there.
Galen Low (29:54):
I love idea and if I'm understanding you
correctly, like the upfrontwork is creating the personas
so that the downstream workis like that multivariate,
the like multiplicity.
You're not spending likewhatever, if you have
eight personas, you'renot doing eight projects.
You're actually spendingyour time up front and
using AI and humans tocreate a more personalized
experience that is gonna bedifferent for those personas.
Greg Storey (30:14):
Yeah.
Psychographics is gonna be,I think, become more and more
relevant the farther we get intothis new world that we're in.
Galen Low (30:22):
Boom.
I love that.
Fisher, what does workflowlook like for you today
going down an AI path?
Similar, like more timespent in the upfronts,
more AI use downstream, ormaybe something different?
Sara Fisher (30:34):
For me, it's similar to what
Sara Doubleday shared.
I'm not seeing a big changeon the overall workflow, but
I am seeing things sped up.
Once you get to thecreative production phase.
Like I mentioned, it's realquick and easy to use generative
AI to fill in a background ifyou need to do quick edits.
That said, it still requiresa human eye at the end of
(30:55):
it, if you're doing videotransitions, it might make a
really weird, funky transition.
And this came up recently whereit was like, and it was a hand
thing, AI hands are gettingbetter, but it was still just
like not a smooth transition.
So I keep using theword augment, like AI is
augmenting the workflows.
But I think the general start tofinish the steps and the process
(31:18):
has been largely the same.
It's just using AI to shortenbits and pieces here and there.
Or maybe ideate somethings and synthesize.
Meeting notes from clientsand that kind of thing.
Galen Low (31:30):
I think that's really interesting, this
idea of sort of like themeaningful human interaction.
I like, great.
You mentioned like your,your role is leveled up.
You're kinda like overseeingwork whether you like it or
not, and that's like a skilland also like a, a sort of
threshold to mind, right?
Of like how many revisionsis too many revisions you
know, with a junior designeryou know, like it's 12
too many and they're like,okay, well listen, this is
(31:51):
let's just go another route.
Then what is it for sort ofeach, whatever, each AI tool
that you're working with.
That's really interesting.
I thought maybe I'd like.
Dial it back a little bit, zooma bit out, because the other
thing that, like we were talkingabout as we were putting this
together was just this notion oflike creative role stereotypes.
Right?
And especially as a projectmanager, I got that a lot.
(32:12):
I witnessed it a lot.
I maybe have been guiltyof it sometimes too.
It's the oh yeah, you know.
The design team, theyjust draw pretty pictures.
They just, they never careabout the business constraints.
They always go over budget.
Then we've blown the budgetup front and you know, like
there's not enough time to doall the other things because
you know, they've just beencreatives doing creative stuff.
Does AI present an opportunityto rise above these
(32:35):
stereotypes, or could itactually maybe deepen them?
Sara Fisher (32:38):
I feel like it's going to be a recurring theme,
whether AI is included or not.
I feel like.
In my career, like starting outas a designer, trying to explain
what you do again, like Galen,you were mentioning, you're
just making pretty pictures.
Like I could just sitdown and pull up Microsoft
Word and plug in, like.
Galen Low (32:58):
Type out.
Sara Fisher (32:59):
Yeah.
It's more, for me, itcomes down to, in order to
overcome that stereotype,it's all about education.
Educating your clients, yourpotential clients, people around
you to let them know what reallyis it that you're doing, what is
the value that you're bringing?
And if AI is part of it,you can incorporate that
as part of the, the answer.
(33:20):
But I feel like the heartof it is, is really that
education piece of tellingthe world what are you doing
as a creative professional?
That could mean many things.
Graphic designer's, one thing,videographer's one thing,
and creative professional.
Some people have thattitle and it's like.
What is that?
Does that strategy,is that so Yeah, come
sounds education for me.
Galen Low (33:40):
I love that about the education and having the
words to frame it and spoileralert, like you three have
been using that languageall throughout the session.
So like folks in the audience,if you're looking for the
language, just figure outhow to frame and educate
people about what you do.
Like I've been hearing alot of it throughout, so
yeah, bonus, a bonus there.
I dunno.
Greg, Ms. Doubleday, thoughts onstereotypes and where it can go?
Sara Doubleday (34:04):
I would say that the best way to overcome
those types of stereotypesis to not bury your head
in the sand around AI.
You need to understand itin order to properly explain
where your job is happeningand where AI is happening and
how the two are combining.
Because I do think that movingforward, creative and AI are
going to be combined just likeso many other professions.
(34:26):
And we need to evolve beyond,just having Figma or the Adobe
Suite, other design tools weneed to be able to show on our
resumes and in our processesthat we are incorporating
AI rather than ignoring it.
And I have found that once youare open to AI explaining it,
talking about it with colleaguesoutside of creative, you see
(34:46):
their ears perk up a little bit.
They become a bit moreinterested because they
see, you know, you're notjust a. Designer sitting
around making pictures.
You are, you know, talkingabout that strategy piece, how
you are developing impactfulcreative for your clients
and using AI to save timefor yourself and for them.
So I think that by grabbingAI by the horns, instead of
(35:07):
letting it push you around,that is the best path forward.
Greg Storey (35:11):
So I was trying to think well, what is the
stereotype to rise above?
And the one that comes tomind is the creative that.
It doesn't take critiquewell, it's too personal.
It's my passion.
That's me in that designand that button color,
you know, or whatever.
I think to build on what'salready been said is
(35:33):
using AI to understand thecritique that comes at you.
And to take it and try touse it to translate what
that person is trying to say.
Often in my career when I'vereceived critique and it just
pissed me off, or it hurtmy feelings or whatever, the
language being communicatedto me, the words being said
(35:54):
didn't reflect the tone ofhow it was said, or even
the, physical languagethat was being expressed.
But it's, you know, design.
It's so funny, everybody hassuch a, a visceral, immediate
reaction to design creativework, but they don't know
how to talk about it, right?
They don't knowhow to express it.
And so you use words liketype out and, made up language
(36:18):
and try to understand like,what the hell did that
person just say to me?
I, I don't know whatto do with this.
And I think it's tryingto use it to help improve
the communication.
To take then that feedbackso that not only can you
understand it, but to use itto turn it into a positive.
Because a lot of timesthe, you know, when people
(36:39):
give a response, thereis some meaning to it.
They're trying, they justdon't, they don't know how to
say the what's in their brain,what's in their reaction and
meaning that what they'resaying is actually very helpful.
But when we take it, 'causeyou know, we're, let's face
it, people are snowflakes.
Especially with the younger,when, when you don't have,
(36:59):
just simply having thattime to, to live through
some of these experiences,the, you know, feedback.
I think that's a way to use AIis to take all of that in and
help you build your perspectiveand see better work from it.
Galen Low (37:15):
To my lovely panelists, thank you for
volunteering your time, yourexpertise, your insights.
I appreciate you all.
Thank you so much forbeing a part of this.
Today's session is all about how AI is impacting
the creative process and theway that we lead projects.
I thought maybe we could startby meeting our panelists.
Who should I pick on first?
Sara Fisher is the directorof project management at Vye.
And Sara, when I first met you,you were a designer and then we
re-met when you were a PM andnow you're heading up an entire
(00:26):
PM team over there at at Vye.
What's something thatyou learned as a designer
that you still use everyday as a senior leader?
Sara Fisher (00:34):
Yeah, so I definitely still use file naming
conventions, date codes andversioning, Google Doc titles,
just everything, meeting notes.
It's so helpful, just notingthose things in the file
name and it's a habit thatI can't break it 'cause
it's so good and helpful.
Galen Low (00:54):
It is a helpful one.
I saw a post the other day,I can't remember for the
life of me, who it was.
I was like, you know, yourwhatever, when you have a file
on your desktop that's called,or files on your desktop, it's
called Final final use this one.
And I'm like, that is 75%of the like deliverables
I've ever had on a project.
It's like version 11.151, final, final share.
(01:15):
But I love that.
It's a great way to stayorganized for sure, and
like totally necessary.
Totally necessary.
I think I'll pickon the other Sara.
Sara Doubleday is the creativelead at Seer Interactive.
And Sara, I actually sawyou give a talk about
change management at lastyear's digital PM Summit.
Now you're heading up the visualdesign brand and campaigns
team at Seer Interactive.
(01:36):
How has your experience inchange management helped
you navigate change withyour creative departments?
Sara Doub (01:42):
Yeah, great question.
So my background is in design.
So when I first came to Seer,oh gosh, over five years ago
at this point, I joined areally small but very mighty
creative team where I worea ton of hats beyond project
management, as I'm sure manypeople here can understand.
So I really think thechange management isn't
just for operations and PMs.
It's really for everyone.
(02:03):
So last year when I made theintentional shift back into
full-time creative strategy,I never stopped using the
change management principles.
So leaning into change has beenhuge for our team and our growth
as well as for understandingand learning about AI.
Galen Low (02:18):
Actually, your talk was so instrumental.
Now it's a life skill, right?
It's like running water.
It's, it's like youneed to understand how
change can be done.
Well, to the point of whatwe're seeing in chat, right?
Like things are changingso fast, entire teams
are being asked to pivot.
We're gonna get into that aswe get into the discussion, but
what a useful slash superheroskill change management.
Last but not least,Mr. Greg Storey.
(02:39):
Greg is a designer, a creativestrategist, and honestly one
of the coolest humans I know.
So I'm really honoredto have you here, Greg.
You actually surprised mein our prep call because you
literally just published a bookon like almost this exact topic.
The book is called “CreativeIntelligence: Don’t Ask
AI, Think With AI”, andit's been getting a lot
of praise in the communityright now in our community.
I remember way back, not thatfar back, but anyways, way
(03:03):
back in the day, years, ayear ago, couple years ago,
I remember you not beingvery hot on AI at the outset.
I'm wondering at what pointyou like turned a corner
and embraced AI in thecreative process, and then
also what made you decideto write a book about it?
Greg Storey (03:14):
The switch flipped for me, when I saw it was a
incredible tool beyond thegeneration point, the generating
things, whether it was cartoonsor video or whatever, that
just didn't impress me.
But once I saw that, oh mygosh, this thing can help
me expand my thinking, it'san incredible research tool.
(03:35):
The more I dug into that andused actually my background
in design as a researcher,explorer, designer, being
curious and in creative ways.
And when I talked to otherpeople about how they were
using AI and people talkingto me, it was clear that
nobody knows how to usethis, or nobody has a really
good idea of how to use it.
And so that made methink I, well, I'll
(03:56):
write a book about it.
Basically documentedeverything that I had been
doing in a more friendly way.
Galen Low (04:02):
I like that.
And it's in therein the title, right?
It's like facilitatingthe creative process, not
doing the thing for me.
Right.
And like generating the thingand that's the output and
off we go, ship it to client.
Ship it to stakeholder X. Yeah.
And it's not thetechnology problem, it's
like the human problem.
We just weren't using it.
Well.
Yes, I love that.
User error.
Yeah, user.
Somehow.
It's always a human, you know?
(04:23):
That's the problem.
Alright, let me tee this up.
I would say arguably oneof the areas that felt the
most immediate impact ofAI was the creative field.
One day it was promising totake on all the administrative
stuff so that creatives couldfocus on their craft and
then wham, suddenly it's likedoing the design instead.
Like tools like Mid Journey andAdobe Firefly, they like led the
(04:43):
pack with AI image manipulation.
Tools like Wizard and Figma UXPilot are like generating wire
frames, site maps, and evenfunctioning websites in seconds.
Heck, even ChatGPT's imagegeneration engine, you
know, we give it flack.
But it is also startingto get labeled.
As you know, a creativemarketing team killer for
all its disruptiveness.
Looks like AI is here tostay, and some creatives are
(05:04):
embracing it with open arms.
New creative possibilitiesare being unlocked.
Tedious parts of the processcan move quicker, and in
some ways it can be easierto get on the same page
creatively before pouringweeks of work into something
that a client doesn't like.
The big question is value.
How do we distinguish betweenareas of our creative projects
that can be AI led with humanintervention and areas that
(05:25):
should be squarely human led,and how do we tell the story of
value while still meeting theserapidly evolving expectations
around the creative process?
With that, I thought this timewe would dive into the meaty
question first, and I'll letany of the panelists weigh in.
I guess when I talk to folks inour community, I would say that.
Saying that some creativeteams are feeling undervalued
(05:47):
in the shadow of AI might belike a huge understatement.
Clients are labeling thingsas oh, was that created by
AI even though they spentweeks laboring over it?
Or on the other hand, somefolks, including project
managers are like, Hey, couldn'twe just use AI for that?
And we're often simplifyingthe value that a
creative team delivers.
So the meaty question is,how should digital creatives
(06:10):
frame the value of theirwork in an age of AI?
And also how can projectleaders help uphold that value?
Sara Doubleday (06:17):
One of my favorite quotes
is from Spider-Man.
With great power comesgreat responsibility.
It's something I referencefrequently because, you know,
we have this amazing newtechnology at our fingertips.
It's changed how we workedovernight, and we're
so focused on outputs.
So the next question thatI'm always asking is, why are
clients paying us all thismoney if we're just gonna
use AI to give them assets?
(06:38):
And to me, the focus reallyneeds to be on as a creative,
what is the strategy andwhy are we doing this?
Because now that anyone cancreate an image, you have
to really think about howis the image that you're
generating driving value ona website or on a campaign?
How is it standing out?
How is it addressing the problemyou're trying to solve in a
time where users are expectingmore personalization, more
(06:59):
answers to their questions,so just creating an image
and slapping it somewhere isnot gonna be addressing that.
Galen Low (07:05):
Like Goal orientedness and always
love a Spider-Man reference.
How about from yourperspective, Sara Fisher?
Sara Fisher (07:12):
For me, I think that teams should lean on,
like humans bring authenticitythat AI just can't ever claim.
So if we can find ways touse language when we're
talking to our clients andour customers about what
are we bringing as humans?
That are human elements,and also tying that together
(07:35):
with goals that mightappeal to like leadership.
And I'm talking aboutelements like trust,
emotional engagement, loyalty.
Those are things that, I mean,AI, it's not really trusted
very well, and people aregonna be skeptical about it.
It's new, everyone'sgetting used to it.
So leaning on those humanelements and what we bring as
humans to the projects, likeeven if AI is being used.
(07:59):
Let's enhance itwith our humanness.
That's how I see it.
Galen Low (08:03):
I love that.
Yeah.
I agree with thatsort of authenticity.
Greg?
Greg Storey (08:07):
Before I get to the AI thing, just to add some
perspective to this, to that,in my career, we're talking
Photoshop one, you know?
Right.
I feel like as, as technologyhas evolved, design
has always taken a hit.
There's always been anassumption that what we do is
just, I had one client one time.
(08:28):
Look at a logo word markthat we'd created with
the logo branding package.
And he said, thatlooks like a type out.
And he kept using this wordtype out and it's like,
what do you, I can't stop.
What does that mean to you?
And he's it looks like youjust went into Microsoft Word
and just, you know, selecteda font and typed it out and,
you know, I was like, whoa.
Like how do youcome back from that?
(08:48):
It's the same,same thing, right?
Of I had a boss one timethat just assumed that.
We scanned designs and thecomputer coded the web for us.
There's always been assumptionsand, and design has been one of
those things that I think it'sbecause it's so visual, right?
It's one thing that everybodyhas an opinion on or they
have an opinion not to havean opinion, but it's an easy
(09:11):
mark and I, I think one ofthe things that especially PMs
can do, especially in sales,it has to be sales to PM to
delivery, is here's the process.
Even show, here's how wework with AI, here's how
we will not work with AI.
And I think it's importantto build on Sara, what you
were saying is to show thatif we simply just rely on
(09:34):
AI to do these things forus, we're gonna get generic.
We're crap.
There's not gonna be anythingunique and speak to the bringing
the humanity to it and thetrust and you know, solving
the user problems or what iswhatever we're trying to do.
Distinctive AI willnot do that for you.
It won't, it just won't.
Galen Low (09:52):
I love that you brought it back to the, the
sales strategy of it, and I'mlike looking at some of the
larger agencies, you know,the global behemoths and
it's front and center, right?
Where you said here's howwe use AI, here's how we
don't, here's our stance.
We're building this AI tool.
I think, I can't remember if itwas WPP, you know, they're like.
They're being very clear aboutwhat lane they've selected
and how that delivers value.
(10:13):
I think there's a lotto learn from that.
Even if you're a smallerboutique agency, if you
were like, you could be afive person agency and I
think it's important to havethat stance and communicate
that value as part of thevalue proposition, not by
accident during the project.
So I love that the, likeat the beginning it is
the value proposition.
I thought maybe I couldjust go from there and talk
(10:33):
about the process because.
I'm imagining Sara andSara, you're like in
the trenches every day.
You're leading teamsof creative folks.
How should creative teams decidewhen to use AI and when not
to, like in their workflow?
Like what are some ofthe criteria that you're
using to guide the teams?
Sara Fisher (10:50):
It's really important, first and foremost
to make sure that you're alignedwith clients on what AI usage
is going to be happening,just so that they're aware.
I'm always a fan of consentculture, just people need
to know what's happeningand be on board with it.
And if they're not okaywith something, you can
still deliver a product,a deliverable without it.
(11:11):
Just talk it through.
Have that honesty and that buildthat trust with your clients.
So that's reallyimportant to me.
So just being really clearhow you're using AI and
your projects, and I thinkthere's a few questions
that you can ask yourselfwhen you're trying to decide
should this be an AI thing?
Do we wanna try and use it here?
Will the use of AIsignificantly impact the and
(11:35):
deliverable and the clientrelationship in a positive way?
If not, maybe it'snot the best use case.
And touching back on whatI said in that last answer,
just being able to augmentwhat humans do with AI to
deliver something better.
Like I try to view it like that.
Another question you can ask is.
(11:55):
Have we originated ourselvesand left our mark before adding
AI to the mix again, let'sfocus on that human element.
AI can be really helpful,like some tests are
better suited for AI.
I'm remembering my days in likeCraig mentioned Photoshop one
having to edit out backgrounds.
Now we have content A Aware,and you can just click it
(12:17):
and remove clouds in the sky,and it's things like that.
I'm all for it.
But when you're doing likebig campaign ideas and I feel
like that's where you needto lean on human expertise,
human experience, rather thanlet's just plug this in AI and
see what it throws out at us.
Galen Low (12:35):
I love like picturing that line item.
It's like a really goodway to bring it into
sharp relief, right?
I'm imagining the line item onthe invoice, it's like cloud
removal, you know, 17 hours.
Yeah.
That, that seems like a lotto pay to remove clouds.
Yeah.
It's lot.
But if you said a, youknow, deliver creative
campaign that's gonna youknow, 10x your revenue go.
(12:55):
Yeah.
Cool.
That, that seems like value.
That seems worth it.
A really interestingframing on what you do.
I was at a conference earlierthis week and someone in
the context of developers.
They're like, you know,writing code is only a
part of a developer's job.
There's strategic decisionmaking, there's communication.
And I'm like, wow.
There's you know, that'sgreat because there's a lot
of parallels here, right?
And in the creative field,there's a lot of parallels
(13:16):
in project management.
You know, there's these chunks.
And Greg, you, you know, whenyou, we mentioned like we've
been through these thingsbefore, especially the creative
industry where change hashappened and you know, it's
like an easy target becauseeveryone kind of understands
this visual language and canhave an opinion about it.
Then we feel attacked and weforget, and everyone kind of
forgets that there's more to thejob than like removing clouds or
(13:39):
you know, generating an image.
There's a strategicthought behind it.
And Sara, coming back towhat you were saying about
yeah, goal oriented on brief.
Presently, humans are stillbetter at that in terms of
approaching that creativelyand not just doing something
that's been done before.
Sara Doubleday (13:54):
Yeah.
I really feel like AIis not a replacement for
thinking and strategy.
Also, as we're working with ourclients, that transparency piece
is so important because if we'retaking important documents,
like brand guidelines, thereare platforms, strategic
documents, and feeding thatinto AI, we need to make sure
that, you know, the algorithmsaren't taking that learning off
(14:14):
of it, creating opportunitiesfor other companies to
be able to use that.
That's something that wetake really, really seriously
and make sure that anytimewe are using AI, it's in a
closed sandbox where that'snot being released anywhere.
And I just always bring itback to, you know, we're
managing client brands.
Most of these brands haveinvested millions of dollars
(14:34):
into their reputation andtheir standards, and we really
shouldn't treat that lightly.
As designers that are creatingbranded elements, our client
is putting trust in us thatwe're not just gonna grind
that up in the AI machine.
So I say that not to be anti AI.
I think there's a lot offantastic use cases for it,
but just to be mindful andaware, going back to that
Spider-Man quote of whenand why we're using it, so.
(14:57):
Our team will oftenuse it whenever we're
needing to distill downa ton of information.
So recently we just had a eighthour client workshop, and we ran
all of the notes and transcriptsthat we had through AI to pull
out themes that would've takenat least half a day's work,
otherwise, or we'll often beusing AI for production work.
So resizing campaignassets, creating imagery
(15:18):
or iconography, and that'sall really downstream.
After we've solidified thestrategy, after we've decided
how and where we wanna use AI.
Galen Low (15:26):
Those are all such good use cases, right?
Because like in the processthere is tedious work that is
not necessarily high value, andespecially like the workshop
thing I find really interestingbecause you know, AI.
The way we use it today at,you know, like the sort of
mainstream AI is excellentwith language, right?
It's excellent at likeparsing language, natural
(15:47):
language processing.
Like it's a, it's avery good use of it and
it's quite good at it.
And also I remember the dayscoming back with the rolled
butcher paper full of stickynotes, hoping that we roll it
carefully enough that all thesticky notes are still there.
Free fly off andyou're like, oh gosh.
And then we have totranscribe 'em and in a way
I'm like, I can't believewe did that actually.
You know, it wasn't, and peopleare still doing it today, right?
Sara Fisher (16:09):
It's hard to think back to that time 'cause I
feel like using transcriptiontools like Otter is one of the
ones that I frequently use.
I think back toall the years of.
Like feverish notetaking on the side while
trying to lead a meeting.
And it's three conversations atonce and I'm constantly going
back and trying to edit orpeople will ask for my notes.
This was pre auter days oh Sara,I saw you were taking notes.
(16:32):
Can I have them?
I'm like, you can't makesense of them yet 'cause
it's in my weird shorthand.
Give me like 30 minutesand I will clean these up.
So it's really nice to nothave to do that anymore.
It's so helpful.
Galen Low (16:44):
Or like the book days where you're
like, let me just put itin the photocopier for you.
Yeah, yeah.
Game is different.
Sara Fisher, earlier you said,you know, almost giving clients
a choice, being like, listen,we could do this with AI, but if
you know you're not really coolwith that, we have another way.
Is that like a key decisionpoint in your flow?
Like at the start to be like,we have this path that goes,
(17:06):
we can use AI and then we havethis path that's like AI free.
Is that built intoyour operation?
Sara Fisher (17:10):
Right now it's not, but it's being talked about for
sure, and some of the placesI've been at in the past that
was more at the forefront.
So it's like thisis a new technology.
It's starting to catch on.
It's definitely being talkedabout on a daily basis.
Used on a daily basis.
I had a client in the past.
This was a few years agowhere they specified in their
(17:34):
contract that we could notput any of their proprietary
information in ChatGPT.
And this was like at thevery beginning of it.
Mm-hmm.
So at the time, I hadn'treally even tested ChatGPT
yet, but that was like myintroduction to it with clients.
'cause this was a clientwith a household name and
technology, like they're alsomaking products like that.
(17:55):
Yeah, it's a scary thing.
Like you don't wanna plug intheir proprietary information,
even if you're privately workingon a campaign and it's not being
shared out publicly, but itis being shared into the tool,
which adds to the hive mind.
And it's like you just have tobe really careful about things
like that because there is adomino effect that can happen.
And it's just, I likebeing on the safe side.
(18:18):
Yeah.
Just have that upfrontconversation first.
If there's anythingthat's in question.
So that you don't have todeal with the maybe some
messy dominoes down the road.
Galen Low (18:27):
Yeah, I like that due caution comes back to that
transparency and Sara Doubledayyou had mentioned, I hadn't
even thought about it, but likewe're always like, oh yeah,
like personally identifiableinformation, financial data, you
know, really confidential stuff.
Wait.
Yeah, right.
You know, people spend millionson their brand and it's not
always the thing that are like,I don't know, I'm not a, I don't
have a creative background.
You know, I'd be like,yeah, brand guidelines
(18:47):
perfect, like Chuck it intoGPT, you know, off we go.
'cause that's gonna tell me,you know, whether a lot or not,
I'm aligned with, you know,what this company's all about.
But also is that anartifact that requires
sort of more caution?
More safety aroundthat actually.
And Sara, double date is thatpart of the sort of value
prop as well when you'rebeing transparent with clients
like, we're only using closedsystems with your brand.
(19:09):
That's policy.
That's how we work.
Sara Doubleday (19:11):
Absolutely.
Yeah.
We have language that we'llsign off with a client on if
we're ever using AI for anyof our processes with them.
And there's clients that optin and there's clients that opt
out for a variety of reasons.
Like they might be workingin finance or healthcare and
just have a lot of sensitiveinformation, or they might
just be hesitant about AI.
So we are very respectfulof that and definitely don't
(19:33):
wanna put any information inthat they're not okay with.
The other consideration hereis, I do this all the time,
is the knee jerk reactionto use AI is so strong.
Something ha an email comesin, a design request comes in,
and you think, oh, just use AI.
And we need to reallyspeed bump that and ask
ourselves why we're using AI.
(19:53):
Is it actually useful to use AI?
Or could I just take twoseconds to look at the brand
guidelines and say, yes,this is accurate or not.
Sometimes we don't need thatadditional layer of feeding
something through AI toknow if it's working or not.
Galen Low (20:05):
I love that.
And Greg actually in the greenroom, you mentioned something,
and I won't give away thespoiler, but that idea that it's
still important for the humanto understand something before.
Also think with AI, right?
Get that involved and almostjust that the comparison is
actually the collaboration.
Not necessarily one isright or one is wrong.
It's just, yeah, I don't know.
(20:26):
It's that kind of what you dowith a human colleague as well.
I wouldn't necessarily justtrust my day two intern to
be like, cool, read thesebrand guidelines do a thing.
Greg Storey (20:35):
Yeah.
In fact, I have a, a chapternear the end of the book
about recognizing if you'rerelying on AI too much.
Cure warning signs and SaraDoubleday you're spot on.
You know, like when you, oh,cut paste, you know, it's
too easy and it's we can loseour ability to just think for
ourselves pretty quickly withoutrecognizing, realizing it.
(20:57):
So I wanna go back to one thingabout the comment about the
using AI and the process and,and that it speeds things up
because, you know, I don't knowabout you all and your results.
But just using AI to do athing doesn't mean that you're
gonna get, you're likely notgonna get good results for one.
(21:19):
And we talk about being adesigner, when you use AI in
this way, you're really beingmore of like the creative
director or, or director, right?
So your role is simplyjust gone up one level.
At the same time, you're stillhaving to say, nope, make
the logo bigger or move thebutton over, but you're still
(21:39):
gonna have the same problems.
It's just a roll of the dice ifyou're gonna get proper output
and not on the first time,more like after your 40th try.
What I've found in my useof, of these tools is that.
You can go from just like Dan,this thing is just clicking
and then five minutes laterit's whoa, what just happened?
(22:02):
I went from universityprofessor, academic quality
output to I'm dealingwith a five-year-old.
And I don't know what happenson that technology and I
can't explain what happens.
I just know that evenin in a half hour's use,
you can all of a sudden.
What it's doing is justfalling off a cliff.
(22:24):
And there's been a couple timesI just had to say, I gotta go.
I gotta walk away, I gottago, go do something else.
'cause no matter what, I tryin my response, if I work
with this thing, it's just notcapable of doing it right now.
So I just bring that upbecause there was mention
of Canva earlier in the chatway back in the day, we had
a thing called Quill draw.
(22:45):
I remember when people wouldsay that they were a designer,
you know, like you'd go toa Kinko's back when people
did that, and there was aquote designer at Kinko's,
and you could buy a logo andyour business card and they
would give you the Curl drawbook and say, pick your logo.
Pick your clip art image.
And that's what passedis as design, right?
(23:06):
And so again, people are alwaysgonna be looking for shortcuts.
They assume thatit's easy to do.
I don't, back to the questionof the client that does wanna
pay for design, they wantto use AI, they shouldn't
be your client anymore.
If that's the type of peoplethat you're working with and
you are in design, or Sara,I know you Sara, double that.
(23:27):
You guys work at SEO, Icould use the robot to come
up with my SEO strategy.
And if I don't value it,then I'm, I'm probably gonna
be okay with the output.
Whereas I know if I satdown with you and, and will.
The rest of the crew, I would begetting so much better results.
So it's just a matter of,you know, I like this idea
of being upfront to weed out,are these people that I should
(23:51):
be working with, are theygonna value me and my work?
Galen Low (23:53):
I'd love to dig in there because that is, you
know, what I'm seeing in thechat, you know, folks are like,
I'm losing clients because.
They don't wanna payfor graphic design.
And Greg, what you're saying isthose probably aren't the right
clients, but they're out there,there are clients that do want,
you know, sorry, double day.
What you, you mentionedat the beginning, right?
It's like, how do we achievea strategic outcome, right?
How do we hit the goal?
What decisions do wemake to get there?
(24:15):
Not how do we, you know,resize a bunch of images.
How do we like, you know,draw a line on a page that's
not what the design is about.
That's not its role.
It's a tough one though, becauseI'm coming at this from a bit
of an agency context, but alot of agencies, the smaller
ones are struggling because insome ways they don't have that
buffer, the cushion to losea bunch of clients and then
acquire a bunch of new clientsthat are the right clients.
(24:36):
That all takes time andenergy, like the, the cost
of acquisition is actually,you know, really expensive.
I don't remember whereI was gonna go with that
other than to say that.
Are there strategies that youall are using to say, yeah,
listen, like actually thisclient, I might have to make
the recommendation that thisis not a client that we work
with and, or hey, we need tobe like more clear upfront
about who we're selling to.
(24:58):
You know, the economy is tough.
Everyone wants to land thedeal, but some of these deals
are gonna be the wrong deals.
And are you drivingthat conversation in
the organizations thatyou're working with?
Sara Doubleday (25:06):
I'd say it's really important that we
consider ourselves, not justcreatives, but also consultants,
whether we're workinginternally or with clients.
Because if someone is workingwith us, odds are they are
not a designer or a creative,they're coming to us for that.
So it makes sense thatpeople would be attracted
to the new and shiny AI.
They can get somethingimmediately that
previously they couldn't.
(25:27):
If suddenly I could use AIto do my accounting, I'm
not saying I would do that,but you know, just comparing
it to something outside ofdesign and something that I
don't have the skillset to do.
It is our job to explainwhy creative is important
and why creative is solvingour clients, our internal
team's business problems.
We're not just pullingtogether wire frames or mood
(25:48):
boards or design elements.
We're using these to supporta larger strategy and
to hopefully, ultimatelycreate more revenue and
grow our client's business.
And I don't have aexplanation as to how AI
is currently doing that.
So that's where the human mindis really plugging in at that
point and saying, you know,you can go this AI route, you
can generate these assets, butin one month, two months, when
(26:12):
these aren't performing, comeback and we'll put together
a sound strategy that willactually get you the results
that you're looking for.
So then the money that you'reinvesting is now, paying off
because you're seeing that ROI.
Galen Low (26:22):
I like that.
It's yeah, you go and try it.
I'll see you in a few months.
And then we're gonna be thatpuzzle piece that fits into the
bigger puzzle rather than, yououtsource to AI a piece of the
puzzle that's just not gonna fitin the, in the broader strategy.
Very cool.
I wonder if I can shiftinto workflow a little
bit because I think we'resegueing there anyways.
Obviously things have changed.
How we're spending time isdifferent and we're also
(26:43):
talking about value and likein this particular, like what
we were just talking about,like the the clients client
value and what they're payingfor, I guess I should say.
I'm just wondering likehow is AI changing the
workflow in your creativeprojects today, for example.
Is there really less time neededon some of the things like we've
been talking about, like notetaking and like synthesis from
(27:05):
workshops, but like the actuallike the more visual stuff.
Things like mood boardsand wire framing.
You know, I'm seeingexamples online of yeah,
it can just spit it out.
Is it really that muchof a time savings?
And if it is, then like howdoes that change the workflow
and how you estimate time andyou know, if it's great, we
needed two weeks to do wireframes, now we need two days.
Then how does that impactlike the rest of the work?
(27:28):
That was probably threequestions, but either way
I'm going to challengeMs. Doubleday over here.
Sara Doubleday (27:33):
This is definitely a topic I could
talk about all day, soI'll share my thoughts.
One, definitely wanna hearfrom everybody else, but
we really plug in AI forproduction and scaling.
It has a huge impact on speed tomarket, so we're using it less
upfront with the mood boards andwith the wire frames because.
That is all being informedby user research, customer
journeys, businessstrategy, brand, platform.
(27:55):
And those are elementsthat if we plugged into
AI, we would not be gettinga really great result.
So if you're just lookingfor a design to be created,
you could certainly plugit into AI, but it won't
necessarily move the needle.
So we're taking the time that weoriginally spent on production
and putting that upfront instrategy, and then moving
much, much more quickly onproduction and speed to market.
(28:18):
So, you know.
Hopefully gone are the daysof versioning out hundreds
of assets for campaigns, likehaving to make copy updates,
having to resize things.
I will happily trade allof that for more time and
ideation and strategy, andour clients seem to really
respond to that as well.
Greg Storey (28:33):
Can I build on that real quick?
I imagine a future takingyour, your, what you just said
back to the personalizationthing you talked about
at the very beginning.
When you have toolslike design systems.
Where you don't have to havea bunch of assets, you simply
are evolving or iterating them.
But going back to thepersonalization thing of there's
gonna come a time when we goto the web and we're gonna
(28:56):
be seeing different versionsof the same site, different
images, different language.
And I don't just meandifferent language of English
versus Spanish, different.
It's gonna speak in the voicethat we most resonate with.
And that to me is.
Where it's gonna be sointeresting when you get to
the having more time to ideateand come with the strategy.
(29:18):
Right now we're lookingat that as like a single
channel or like a, alocalization problem challenge.
But I see a table, we're gonnahave to be like, no, there's
actually 12 different personasand just this language, or
something along those lines.
Right?
The different data pointsthat we have to then come
up with these multivariate.
(29:38):
Campaigns and thestrategies for them.
That's, I'll say, you know,buckle up because I see that
kind of work that Sara, youjust mentioned as being vital
to develop the cognition,the, the capacity to do
that kind of work becausethe demand will be there.
Galen Low (29:54):
I love idea and if I'm understanding you
correctly, like the upfrontwork is creating the personas
so that the downstream workis like that multivariate,
the like multiplicity.
You're not spending likewhatever, if you have
eight personas, you'renot doing eight projects.
You're actually spendingyour time up front and
using AI and humans tocreate a more personalized
experience that is gonna bedifferent for those personas.
Greg Storey (30:14):
Yeah.
Psychographics is gonna be,I think, become more and more
relevant the farther we get intothis new world that we're in.
Galen Low (30:22):
Boom.
I love that.
Fisher, what does workflowlook like for you today
going down an AI path?
Similar, like more timespent in the upfronts,
more AI use downstream, ormaybe something different?
Sara Fisher (30:34):
For me, it's similar to what
Sara Doubleday shared.
I'm not seeing a big changeon the overall workflow, but
I am seeing things sped up.
Once you get to thecreative production phase.
Like I mentioned, it's realquick and easy to use generative
AI to fill in a background ifyou need to do quick edits.
That said, it still requiresa human eye at the end of
(30:55):
it, if you're doing videotransitions, it might make a
really weird, funky transition.
And this came up recently whereit was like, and it was a hand
thing, AI hands are gettingbetter, but it was still just
like not a smooth transition.
So I keep using theword augment, like AI is
augmenting the workflows.
But I think the general start tofinish the steps and the process
(31:18):
has been largely the same.
It's just using AI to shortenbits and pieces here and there.
Or maybe ideate somethings and synthesize.
Meeting notes from clientsand that kind of thing.
Galen Low (31:30):
I think that's really interesting, this
idea of sort of like themeaningful human interaction.
I like, great.
You mentioned like your,your role is leveled up.
You're kinda like overseeingwork whether you like it or
not, and that's like a skilland also like a, a sort of
threshold to mind, right?
Of like how many revisionsis too many revisions you
know, with a junior designeryou know, like it's 12
too many and they're like,okay, well listen, this is
(31:51):
let's just go another route.
Then what is it for sort ofeach, whatever, each AI tool
that you're working with.
That's really interesting.
I thought maybe I'd like.
Dial it back a little bit, zooma bit out, because the other
thing that, like we were talkingabout as we were putting this
together was just this notion oflike creative role stereotypes.
Right?
And especially as a projectmanager, I got that a lot.
(32:12):
I witnessed it a lot.
I maybe have been guiltyof it sometimes too.
It's the oh yeah, you know.
The design team, theyjust draw pretty pictures.
They just, they never careabout the business constraints.
They always go over budget.
Then we've blown the budgetup front and you know, like
there's not enough time to doall the other things because
you know, they've just beencreatives doing creative stuff.
Does AI present an opportunityto rise above these
(32:35):
stereotypes, or could itactually maybe deepen them?
Sara Fisher (32:38):
I feel like it's going to be a recurring theme,
whether AI is included or not.
I feel like.
In my career, like starting outas a designer, trying to explain
what you do again, like Galen,you were mentioning, you're
just making pretty pictures.
Like I could just sitdown and pull up Microsoft
Word and plug in, like.
Galen Low (32:58):
Type out.
Sara Fisher (32:59):
Yeah.
It's more, for me, itcomes down to, in order to
overcome that stereotype,it's all about education.
Educating your clients, yourpotential clients, people around
you to let them know what reallyis it that you're doing, what is
the value that you're bringing?
And if AI is part of it,you can incorporate that
as part of the, the answer.
(33:20):
But I feel like the heartof it is, is really that
education piece of tellingthe world what are you doing
as a creative professional?
That could mean many things.
Graphic designer's, one thing,videographer's one thing,
and creative professional.
Some people have thattitle and it's like.
What is that?
Does that strategy,is that so Yeah, come
sounds education for me.
Galen Low (33:40):
I love that about the education and having the
words to frame it and spoileralert, like you three have
been using that languageall throughout the session.
So like folks in the audience,if you're looking for the
language, just figure outhow to frame and educate
people about what you do.
Like I've been hearing alot of it throughout, so
yeah, bonus, a bonus there.
I dunno.
Greg, Ms. Doubleday, thoughts onstereotypes and where it can go?
Sara Doubleday (34:04):
I would say that the best way to overcome
those types of stereotypesis to not bury your head
in the sand around AI.
You need to understand itin order to properly explain
where your job is happeningand where AI is happening and
how the two are combining.
Because I do think that movingforward, creative and AI are
going to be combined just likeso many other professions.
(34:26):
And we need to evolve beyond,just having Figma or the Adobe
Suite, other design tools weneed to be able to show on our
resumes and in our processesthat we are incorporating
AI rather than ignoring it.
And I have found that once youare open to AI explaining it,
talking about it with colleaguesoutside of creative, you see
(34:46):
their ears perk up a little bit.
They become a bit moreinterested because they
see, you know, you're notjust a. Designer sitting
around making pictures.
You are, you know, talkingabout that strategy piece, how
you are developing impactfulcreative for your clients
and using AI to save timefor yourself and for them.
So I think that by grabbingAI by the horns, instead of
(35:07):
letting it push you around,that is the best path forward.
Greg Storey (35:11):
So I was trying to think well, what is the
stereotype to rise above?
And the one that comes tomind is the creative that.
It doesn't take critiquewell, it's too personal.
It's my passion.
That's me in that designand that button color,
you know, or whatever.
I think to build on what'salready been said is
(35:33):
using AI to understand thecritique that comes at you.
And to take it and try touse it to translate what
that person is trying to say.
Often in my career when I'vereceived critique and it just
pissed me off, or it hurtmy feelings or whatever, the
language being communicatedto me, the words being said
(35:54):
didn't reflect the tone ofhow it was said, or even
the, physical languagethat was being expressed.
But it's, you know, design.
It's so funny, everybody hassuch a, a visceral, immediate
reaction to design creativework, but they don't know
how to talk about it, right?
They don't knowhow to express it.
And so you use words liketype out and, made up language
(36:18):
and try to understand like,what the hell did that
person just say to me?
I, I don't know whatto do with this.
And I think it's tryingto use it to help improve
the communication.
To take then that feedbackso that not only can you
understand it, but to use itto turn it into a positive.
Because a lot of timesthe, you know, when people
(36:39):
give a response, thereis some meaning to it.
They're trying, they justdon't, they don't know how to
say the what's in their brain,what's in their reaction and
meaning that what they'resaying is actually very helpful.
But when we take it, 'causeyou know, we're, let's face
it, people are snowflakes.
Especially with the younger,when, when you don't have,
(36:59):
just simply having thattime to, to live through
some of these experiences,the, you know, feedback.
I think that's a way to use AIis to take all of that in and
help you build your perspectiveand see better work from it.
Galen Low (37:15):
To my lovely panelists, thank you for
volunteering your time, yourexpertise, your insights.
I appreciate you all.
Thank you so much forbeing a part of this.
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