alt Hacker NewsThe biggest problem that I have with most AI posters is that they are too busy, you have to look for information instead of seeing it popping right away.
Amateurs posters of before AI didn't have this problem. White background, the important info in big letters, maybe one clipart or to. So I'm not talking about how pro artists could make a better job, but even the small local non-profit used to produce better posters. Not in the sense of "better looking", but in the sense that they were more readable.
At least the examples of this blog are more readable than what we usually see.
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Well what's better ? I have so many pictures of posters of old events or storefronts saved on my phone because they were so astronomically bad it'd have been better to not have any poster at all. Today's AI makes it look even worse but I'm hopeful that in five years we'll all live in a world generally more agreeable to look at and not "concrete with pink and yellow fluo paper smashed on top of it" like https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo/music-poster-wall.html or https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo/france-poster-wall.html?ps... because the cost of making things enjoyable with more colour and detail will have come down. Maybe we can finally go back to Art Nouveau if the cost of making it comes down!
> too busy, you have to look for information
Have you ever seen a bus schedule, or a parking sign, or a list of events at a local library or an “open hours” sign at a restaurant? Those are 99.9% unreadable, busy, and you have to look for information. And even then it’s not always clear if you got it right. And that was all before the AI.
The biggest problem in my view is: It's not editable by hand. There is no production data I could open in InDesign, Illustrator or Photoshop (Layers) and change things to my or my clients liking.
This is very true and after rendering 100 prompts twice for https://john.hartnup.uk/poster-prompts/ I realised that the prompts could be improved by asking for much less clutter. The best examples on there pick out one main visual subject, but many of them are too fussy.
I may do a V2 one of these days.
Clutter comes with the territory to some extent though. I was recently asked to do a real world PTA fayre poster, and the client (my wife) very firmly wanted 12+ attractions mentioned on the poster. Tombola, hook a duck, bar, BBQ, blah, blah, blah as well as date, location, sponsor, ...
To get a really clean design, you need to edit it down to the essentials. I don't know what pro designers do - convince the client to say less?
Unless the prompt says otherwise, AI will try to get a visual element in for every single word too.