Talks & Community
Sharing knowledge and building community around AI-assisted creative work.
Charting New Horizons in Visual Design With AI
I co-presented an internal talk with Clint Branch for the Bankrate design team on how AI tools like Midjourney can improve visual design workflows. Our core message was that AI doesn't replace designers. It reduces friction in the process, especially when concepting, hunting for stock imagery, or doing time-heavy compositing, so we can spend more energy on storytelling, craft, and brand evolution. We walked through practical ways to use Midjourney effectively, treating prompting as a real design skill: be clear about style and tone, use constraints like composition and aspect ratio, and save what works as reusable templates for consistency. We also covered current limitations like consistency across multiple images and ethical/copyright considerations, then closed with a simple takeaway: use AI to explore faster and iterate more, while keeping human judgment in control.
What attendees learned:
- • A clear mental model: AI is a workflow accelerator, not a designer replacement. Your taste and judgment still drive the outcome.
- • Where AI helps most: fast concept exploration, breaking creative blocks, replacing long stock-image searches, and speeding up rough comps.
- • How to get better results: prompting fundamentals (tone, mood, composition, constraints like aspect ratio), plus using reference imagery to stay on-brand.
- • A repeatable process: save winning prompts and build simple templates for consistent output over time.
- • Realistic expectations: what AI still struggles with (consistency across multiple images, complex concepts, weird details like hands/text).
- • Risk awareness: basic ethical/copyright considerations and why teams should treat prompting as a skill worth training.
AI Happy Hour (Monthly)
Monthly show-and-tell where creatives from different industries share AI tools, workflows, and learnings. A collaborative space for cross-pollination of ideas and techniques.
Community impact:
- • Helped others build custom GPTs aligned to their brand guidelines
- • Shared reusable prompt templates and systems
- • Facilitated cross-industry learning and tool discovery
- • Created a safe space to experiment and fail together
- • Built a network of AI-curious creatives
Admin Dashboard
Built a custom admin dashboard where organizers can manage AI Happy Hour sessions, archive previous recordings, add Zoom links, and update the next session date displayed on the homepage. This tool streamlines the monthly workflow and keeps the community informed.