AI-AIDED GRAPHIC DESIGN

Kick things off with a clear game plan for the course — how it works, what you’ll build, and how AI becomes your design co-pilot. Get set up, meet your cohort, and choose your project direction so you’re ready to hit the ground running from session one.

• Instructor intro
• Course premise & philosophy
• Course structure & tool setup
• Assignments & final project overview

Kickstart your AI creative journey by learning what AI can and can’t do, building a sharp eye for visual quality, and getting hands-on with your first image and film generation exercises. Think of it as training your taste, vocabulary, and experimentation muscle.

• What AI can & can't do: Building accurate mental models
• Creative critique, taste, visual literacy
• Key terms & vocabulary
• Staying ahead: Resources & experimentation mindset
• Demo: Hands-on generation & cow herd branding

Assignment #1: Speculative Brand Definition
Define your brand and product in writing via an LLM. What does it do? Who is it for? What makes it provocative or forward-thinking?

Learn to speak AI fluently. Craft, tweak, and compare prompts across models, build your personal prompt toolkit, and direct AI visuals like a pro.

• Strong prompt: Subject, style, mood, composition, colour, texture, constraints
• Iterative process: Prompt, evaluate, adjust, re-prompt
• Building a personal prompt vocabulary
• Model comparison across aggregators
• Group software discussion & reflection
• Visual research strategies

Assignment #2: Prompt Portfolio & Model Comparison
Develop and refine one prompt over at least five iterations, document evolution, and build 30+ word prompt vocabulary. Create the same visual artefact in two models, analyse differences in output, behaviour, and limitations.

Turn AI into your research partner. Learn to harness LLMs for rapid market analysis, spot trends, map positioning, and translate insights into creative strategies that hold up under pressure — with insights from a guest expert.

• LLMs for category analysis, trends, segmentation, positioning
• Perplexity for cited research
• Claude for strategic thinking & narrative
• Translating strategy into creative territory
• Pressure-testing concepts
• Demo: Live brand research session

Learn to weave generative AI straight into your design workflow, enhancing work in Photoshop and Illustrator without losing your creative control, and make every edit smarter, faster, and more polished.

• Illustrator & Photoshop
• Firefly integration
• AI for photo editing & enhancement
• Generation-to-production workflow
• When to generate vs. refine manually
• Exercise: Enhance real work & document decisions

Learn to push AI beyond cookie-cutter outputs and define your own typographic voice. Develop clear curatorial criteria, explore aesthetic choices, and guide AI to reflect your personal style.

• Brand research & aesthetic explorations
• Understanding average outputs & model homogeneity
• Redirecting away from defaults
• Developing curatorial criteria
• Articulating personal taste for AI direction
• Demo: Pushing beyond obvious outputs

Assignment #3: Brand Research & Aesthetic Voice
Write a strategic research document including market insights, audience, competitors, and positioning. Generate 20–30 images across 3 directions; curate to 2–3 directions with articulated criteria and strategic alignment.

Learn to bend AI to your vision: refine prompts, stack outputs, and post-process results to create a consistent, professional visual language that feels intentional.

• Advanced control: Parameters, references, negative prompting
• Reusable prompt templates
• Compounding outputs
• Post-processing for coherence
• Shifting to consistent visual language

Assignment #4: Advanced Aesthetic Direction Log
Push AI beyond its comfort zone. Document prompt templates, parameters, references, iteration process, failures, and refinements.

Build a brand world that makes sense — define clear visual rules, colour systems, and verbal guidelines so your logos, motifs, and narratives stay consistent and memorable across every touchpoint.

• Codifying visual system rules in writing
• Colour, imagery, textural systems
• Logo & mark-making: AI vs. craft
• Verbal identity development with Claude
• Advanced image references for system anchoring

Assignment #5: World System v1 – Core Visual References & Verbal Identity
Develop v1 of the brand world with 5–10 key visuals. Finalise name, tagline, positioning paragraph, and tone of voice guidelines developed with AI collaboration and refined by judgement.

Step back and see your brand with fresh eyes. Use a practical scoring framework to pinpoint what’s working and what needs tweaking in your verbal and visual identity. By the end, you’ll have clear priorities to sharpen your brand before final delivery.

• Mid-Course Crit presentations
• Codifying belonging & disqualification rules
• Evaluation scoring framework
• Deepening verbal identity: Manifesto & micro-copy
• Identifying priority refinements

Take a brand from concept to context — apply your system across six-plus digital and physical touchpoints, use AI to generate mockups and scenes, and test how consistently your identity holds up in the real world.

• Touchpoint experiments
• Thinking in touchpoints & context demands
• AI mockups & scene generation
• Applying system across different mediums
• Translation vs. repetition
• Coherence stress-testing

Assignment #6: Multi-Touchpoint Stress Test
Create 6–8 brand touchpoints across digital and physical mediums. Identify system strengths and weaknesses. Refine guidelines and document adjustments.

Final Project: AI-Directed Brand Book
Submit a complete 12–18 slide brand book including strategy, visual system rules, multi-touchpoint demonstrations, verbal identity, and AI Context Appendix.

Define your own AI playbook — tackle ethics, copyright, and scalable workflows while learning how to price your expertise in an AI-accelerated world. Walk away ready to position AI as value, not just a tool.

• Scalable workflows: Nodes, agents, pipelines
• Ethics, copyright, legal landscape
• Client disclosure & positioning AI as value
• Pricing shift: Selling thinking over hours
• Build personal AI policy

Build a standout digital portfolio and brand book that shows off your skills so you can position yourself confidently for senior-level roles. You’ll learn what makes a portfolio strong, showcase your AI edge, and put it all together in a professional package.

• Strong vs. weak portfolio examples
• Presenting AI-assisted work
• AI Context Appendix as differentiator
• Portfolio platform comparison
• Emerging AI tools & irreplaceable skills
• Final assembly & quality control

Share your finished brand worlds, get honest feedback from peers, and reflect on how timeless creative thinking stays relevant even as AI and design tools evolve.

• Final presentations
• Cohort critique & peer feedback
• Revisiting concepts over tools
• Closing reflection on AI & creative practise