223 - Michael McDonald talks AI and Packaging

People of Packaging · 3 Nov 2023 · 37m

AI in practice: 2 real uses of AI described

What this episode covers

Michael McDonald, a partner at the Philadelphia-based design agency Xhilarate, discusses the transformative impact of AI on packaging design. He compares the current AI revolution to the disruption of the internet in the 1990s, arguing that prompt engineering with tools like Midjourney allows designers to bypass traditional career ladders and amplify human creativity rather than replace it. McDonald shares specific examples of using AI for rapid ideation, such as generating complex beer label concepts and movie scripts, while acknowledging the serious societal risks of deepfakes and misinformation.

AI in practice

Where this conversation describes AI being used to build or deliver a product. Part of the AI in practice tracker.

DesignMidjourney40 hours reduced to 4 minutes

The designer used Midjourney to generate a complex visual scene for a beer label concept, replacing what would have taken 40 hours of manual illustration with a 4-minute generation process.

“we got a tractor on a farm … import it in the mid-journey, and then had wrote proms over, and then created a whole entire scene … if you were to illustrate something like that, we're talking a good 40 hours. We did it in 4 minutes.”

Speaker 3 · Hear it at 23:04

DesignChatGPTunder 10 minutes

The speaker used ChatGPT to write a full movie script and synopsis from a basic idea, including formatting advice, in under 10 minutes.

“I wrote the basic gist of what I want to do down and I put it in the chat GDP. It wrote me an entire movie script. A synopsis, everything, within 5 minutes … I fear this all out in under 10 minutes.”

Speaker 3 · Hear it at 30:01

Mentioned

Companies
Xhilarate, HP, Nike, Adidas
Tools
Midjourney, Adobe Illustrator, Quark, PageMaker, FreeHand, Adobe Flash, Leonardo AI, ChatGPT
Also
Temple University, Tyler School of Art, Kirby Ferguson

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