The Creative Person’s New AI Toolkit
If you’re ready to take the plunge and go freelance. Warning, it’s going to be an expensive monthly bill.
I teach web design and UX design and for the last ten years I have made a distinction for my students. Since most of them want to have creative careers, I try to specify that certain paths are ‘Capital C- Creative’ or ‘Capital D-Design’ and by that I mean the truly creative paths are in branding and packaging and advertising. Paths like UX design and UI design can be rewarding and even pay well, but they are closer to assembly then creativity. Especially in recent years, with the rise of Design Systems, I have begun to refer to this process as the “lego-ification” of design.
However, with all the tech layoffs in recent years, Seattle has seen a significant drop in UX job listings and for the first time in a decade I am steering my students away from this career path. This is also because I’ve seen a fundamental shift in late stage UX design, something Cory Doctorow has referred to the ‘enshitification of design’. While I’m sure there are still good UX jobs and good UX teams out there, my observation is that many jobs are just dragging components onto a Figma art board so the devs can build something that meets some business need.
Go solo! Freelance. Make cool stuff. Break cool stuff. Make less money but have the freedom to do things your way. ~MM
Michal Malewicz and Michael F. Buckley have said it better than me, but I’ll pick up where they left off and ask, “What if Design could be fun again?”. While there seems to be a drop in design jobs (at least here in Seattle) I still think there is a huge opportunity in the space between freelancer and agency. So if you’re young and ambitious, or old and tired (of dragging rectangles), or suspect you’re about to be ‘made redundant’, now is the time to jump in and start your own agency. Let’s pretend, just for a moment, that you still have that “I can do anything” energy and that you have big ideas and you’re looking for a gigantic canvas. If I was to do it all over again, these are the tools I’d use.
The Image Generators
You have a fantastic imagination, you’ve learned the basics of prompting, and you’re ready to start illustrating your grandiose visions. The best tool is still Midjourney, because you can truly make anything and it has it’s own upscaler so you more image to manipulate. If you know you want to iterate and brainstorm and make lots of variations, you’re going to need to pay for the pro plan at $33/month. If you only need it occasionally, you can try the $10/month plan, which is what I do. If your budget and needs are a little smaller, Ideogram is my second choice. Their entry level plan is $8/month and their free plan allows up to 100 images a day. However, you’ll still need an upscaler (more on that later). And finally, I’d pay $10/month for Vectorizer because you will always need to turn some of these creations into points and paths. You’re also going to need to continue paying for Photoshop (or whatever image editor you’re using) because no AI image is going to be perfect. You’re never going to be free from making selections and cutting them out and moving them into different layers.
The Video Generators
A month ago, this paragraph would have been easier to write, but since the teaser release of OpenAI’s Sora, everything seems inadequate. However, if you want to be an AI video maker, you should be practicing everyday and getting better. So I’m going to give you two options: way too expensive, and free. If you’ve got the funds, spend $95 a month on RunwayML’s unlimited plan and generate everything you can imagine. You’ll become a master of their tools and you’ll build up a portfolio of amazing examples. RunwayML is amazing when it works, but it has a high failure rate. It get’s really frustrating to see your credits trickle away for mediocre results. Don’t want to pay, but want to keep experimenting every day? Go with Pixverse.ai and Haiper.ai. However, you’re still going to need Adobe Premier or Da Vinci Resolve or whatever you’re using to edit these clips together.
You’re Still Gonna Need an Upscaler
One thing generative AI does really well is upscale images and video. We used to say “you can’t just generate more pixels” when given a small photo, but apparently now you can. So if you want buttery smooth 4K video or you want to send those AI images to print, you should really look into Topaz Labs. However, it’s $200 for the image upscaler and $300 for the video upscaler, but at least it’s a one time purchase. If you can’t commit and want to go monthly, Magnific is a great bet, but it’s also expensive. Need a cheaper solution? Clipdrop.co is only $10/month and provides a whole bunch of other tools in addition to a 16x upscaler, but it’s limited to images. Note: If you’re committed to Midjourney, you can skip the upscaler, it does a fantastic job on it’s own.
The Best AI Audio Tools
AI audio is having a moment, and there are a bunch of tools to choose from. My favorite tool for voice synthesis is Eleven Labs and it will do text to audio as well as voice to audio so you can control timing and cadence. They can also output your audio in 29 languages and have text generated sound effects. Pricing starts at $5/month, I use this tool every day. However, if you need it to be free, head on over to Meta’s Audiobox, where you will find a similar suite of tools. Note: free means, that sometimes it doesn’t work, so be patient. If you just need AI generated music, head on over to Google’s Test Kitchen, where you can generate up to 70 seconds of audio just with a text prompt. The interface is very intuitive and fun to play with and I can usually get what I need in a few minutes. Are you ready to make an AI generated song? With vocals, and lyrics, and instruments? Suno.ai isn’t perfect yet, but it’s getting better every day. Real musicians would probably scoff at it, but for my hobbyist level projects, the free plan is just fine, and the $10/month plan is more than enough.
The Writing Assistant/Personal Research Assistant
Everybody is using ChatGPT or something similar now, and you should be too. In this week’s news, Claude is now the fastest, but that’s always changing. I’m currently using Gemini, despite their PR disaster, and I when I need to do a deep dive, I use Perplexity.ai. The key here is to pick one, get good at it, and never arrive at a meeting unprepared again. You should be able to always impress your clients because you were knowledgeable about their industry and your subject matter. Remember that they’re hiring you because you’re the expert. Try to get by on the free plan, but if you see the value in it, they’re all about $20/month for the pro plan.
AI Web Design Tools
Alright, I’m sure I’m going to offend a few people here and I have to confess I’m a little biased..perhaps because I’ve taught hand-coding for 20 years. All the AI website generators suck, and I’m not even going to mention them by name. However, if you want to build great websites, and do it quickly, and make more money, go with Webflow as your platform. And if you want even more options, use the Relume Library. These aren’t so much AI tools as they are a super-powered system of efficiency. They are also part of the problem I described at the beginning of this essay in that they are formulaic, but you can still be creative on top of their structure. Bottom line, Webflow and Relume are the best way to make websites right now. Both products have a generous free plan so you can easily lear how to use them. After that, it gets expensive; Webflow’s plan for small teams is $28/month, but allows up to three users. if you’re ready to start a small web design agency, you can charge a lot of money and be finished in a quarter of the time. Relume is even more expensive, but I would just stick with their free plan because it’s more than enough to get started.
Summary:
The frugal starter plan. Midjourney (basic)/$10, Vectorizer/$10, Eleven Labs/$5. For $25/month, you can have a basic AI toolkit. This is how I’m allocating my funds right now and I feel like I can accomplish a lot of creative projects. I’m also using Haiper and Pixverse for free, but just experimenting. And you’ll still need probably Photoshop and Illustrator.
The big budget studio plan: Midjourney (pro)/$30, Vectorizer/$10, Runway/$95, ChatGPT/$20, Suno.ai/$10. This adds up to $165/month, plus a one time purchase of Topaz Labs for $300. And you’ll still need probably Premiere and AfterEffects.
Equipping yourself as an AI powered creative person isn’t going to be cheap and I’m sure there are other subscription software products to consider. If you want to take the plunge, you’ll need to use these numbers as a bare minimum, cost of doing business, and then charge as much as you can while still undercutting the big agencies.
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