Old Ideas, New Tools
I love photography. I love retro travel posters à la WPA. I also have more things to do than time to do them. So, for this project, I made a compromise with AI.
Jefferson County recently launched a campaign promoting a new mission and vision. To commemorate this, sets of notecards tied to the new vision were printed and delivered to all staff members, intended to be shared with colleagues and students.
Part of the mission statement is “Grounded in What Works.” In keeping with that statement, the district also recently launched two tech-free days per week. What better way to embrace the tried-and-true than by sending a handwritten note?
There’s probably some irony in creating something designed to encourage people to put down their devices with the help of AI.
For this project, I shot photos around (beautiful!) Jefferson County and tweaked them in Photoshop. It was like 100º and super humid when I shot some of these, so the lens fogged up between shots. That wasn't exactly part of the plan, but in a few cases, I ended up liking the effect.
Then I worked with an AI generation tool in Illustrator to create the postcard illustrations. It took a bit of back and forth to get them where I wanted them, but eventually I got them pretty darn close to how I would have done them by hand.
Instead of taking hours and hours per picture, it took less than an hour each to get them where I wanted them.
I don’t know what this does to the illustration trade, and I’m sure there are some very legitimate concerns there. But I’m not an illustrator. I had an idea for something I wanted to make, and AI helped me execute that idea in a way I probably couldn't have justified spending the time to do otherwise.
I believe that, when the creative direction and much of the work are original, AI can be a fine tool to assist. Just like a painter might use a particular brush or a photographer might choose a particular lens, it’s another tool for getting to a result.
And in this case, it helped me make something that celebrates a pretty old-fashioned idea: sometimes, the best way to communicate is to put down the phone, pick up a pen, and write someone a note. Now, if I could just figure out how to do that…
