And so, it finally happened!
During our first meeting, as I was collecting a new project’s brief, the client pulled out 2 AI images she had generated herself and casually said: “I played around with AI and this is sort of what I’m after.”
And I admit it stumped me a bit… and after the meeting made me rather self-conscious and nervous.
To be fair, this was coming and I should have been better prepared.
So what exactly made me nervous? To be clear, I know my worth as a retail designer. I have enough experience to be confident in my strategic ideas and the creative concepts I extract from these.
What made me anxious was in fact the presentation style! Let me explain: this project was limited to strategic planning and an initial concept idea. And for these project stages I always favour hand sketches. Why? Because I have found that when using more finished 3D visuals for such early phases clients don’t focus on conceptual principles but instead tend to get stuck on details such as colours, finishes, cabinet handles or the style of an accent flower pot.
A sketch visual is thus safer in my eyes because it focuses on translating the basic principles of a concept.
I tend to turn to more finished visualisations with the help of digital tools for the next phase of work: when the “base” has been signed off and we are refining it to agree on specific finishes.
Now I know AI can also provide sketch visualisations for such early concept phases, but my personal preference remains to hand sketch as this works better with my own creative flow. Besides the fact that I sketch faster than I prompt, I also design through the process of sketching.
Because we had agreed with this client on a limited number of hours to keep my fee down, I was reluctant to switch my presentation style… but as a result of her showing me her AI images, I was also concerned she might get stuck on the visual style versus the actual content of the design.
The verdict? She LOVED the concept. AND was actually impressed with my sketches: “oh wow, so you actually drew all of that yourself?”
Conclusion: my fears were completely unfounded. So why did I have them to begin with? Because all I read about these days is AI! And that sadly led me to think that my hand sketching and I were outdated software…
…when in reality there is a world out there where both AI and hand drawn visualisations CAN coexist and both be appreciated for their own unique worth! To all my designer contacts: have you had similar experiences? Doubts? What’s your preference for visualising conceptual ideas? And what’s been your experience with client reactions to hand or AI generated images? Let’s discuss.
And check out the beautiful discussion this post originally shared on LinkedIn already triggered with some of our peers.
