We Don’t Start from Zero Anymore: How AI Design Tools Workflow is Changing the Way We Create

Do you remember when we used to do our presentations in Forms 3 or 4? And you would just see a blank piece of white paper on your PowerPoint? No template, no colour – just white? And your blinking cursor? Scary right? That feeling of looking at the “blank canvas” is a huge mental problem for anyone trying to create something. However, things are different now. We’re no longer “starting from zero”. Whether you’re a freelancer in PJ, an intern in Penang or just designing a social media post for your small business, there is a different way of working now. It’s not magic; it’s just a different way of using the workflow of AI design tools. Don’t roll your eyes saying “Oh no, not another article about AI,” I ask that you stop and listen because this isn’t about firing employees or robots taking over your creative abilities. It’s about bypassing the difficult “blank page” stage and getting the good part done quicker. So let me explain how this works with real people, not just technology company CEOs.

What Even Is an AI Design Tools Workflow?

Let’s take a step back for a moment. For many people out there when we say “AI design tools,” many people instantly think of the hyper-realistic looking pictures you see on Instagram (i.e. someone with 6 fingers on one hand or a picture of a “Rendang Burger floating in space”). However, AI design tools workflow are much more than simply creating weird images. It’s actually a much more practical use of these tools. Think of them as design productivity tools that sit between your personalities (you) and the software you use to create.

To explain that better, think about how Waze works. If I say, “I want to go to Pavilion KL.” Waze does the boring parts, such as calculating traffic routes, figuring out how to avoid Jalan Kuching traffic, and finding shortcuts. You still drive the car, but Waze does the navigating. AI in design will do exactly the same thing. The AI will do the navigating, and you will do the steering. It is an assistant – a very fast assistant – but still just an assistant. And there’s so many companies developing generative design platforms to create more options for you to “iterate” while also providing you with ten new options instead of having you think of just one over a three-hour period. Therefore, the most important part of the use of AI in design is speed.

Why We Actually Need This for Creative Automation Workflow

Let’s be frank. The act of “creating” may seem fun but can actually be draining at times. If you operate inside of a studio, as well as manage a small business through WhatsApp for custom sneakers or kuih, then you’re familiar with struggle of creating an image to use when marketing. The “fun” part of creating an image is drawing it. The hard part of image creation is working through the repetition such as resizing, and exporting, and this is exactly where creative automation workflows provide peace of mind. An example: Suppose you operate a small cafe in SS15 and would like to advertise your café’s “Special Nasi Lemak Ayam Rempah” with three different types of digital design content – one portrait format for Instagram. One landscape format for Facebook; and one banner-like design for your WhatsApp Status. Previously you would have spent two hours using Adobe Photoshop to do all of the design work manually with each of these three produced digital design formats. This is now boring work. Now you would simply upload one (1) image to an AI image generation tool, and it would have formatted each required digital design format within seconds, and yo would only need to edit the text from the original image uploaded.

It takes the “manual labor” out of visual content automation. You no longer need to be a computer genius to utilize AI graphic design tools – now they can be found on and/or in Canva, and Adobe, and most likely your phone even has built-in capabilities that utilize AI graphic design technologies. The tools that have emerged as a result of these AI graphic design technologies has eliminated entry barriers that once existed causing individuals to require a professional graphic designer to develop functional graphic images.

How Does the Actual Daily Design Workflow Look?

To get specific let’s say: what does the design process look like for a typical Malaysian on Tuesday afternoon? For example, step 1 is the brainstorm. When you start your text-to-image design process, you will enter “modern kopitiam logo; retro vibe; blue and white; minimal.” The AI will generate four different variations. You did not like any of them, however you liked a design element from number three, and the font from number one. So now you mix the two elements together. You are not replacing your brain. You’re actually giving your brain raw materials to work from. Most individuals are currently using AI design tools for this task – to obtain a 70 percent solution and supplement it with their own unique human creativity for the remaining 30 percent.

The next step is the UI/UX flow. If you are designing an app/website, you may use an AI-based UI/UX design tool. These types of tools have come a long way since they were first released. They are extremely sophisticated. Using a piece of paper to create a rough box, or on your iPad using a sketch, take a picture and the AI turns your image into a clickable prototype. The prototype may not be a perfect piece of code, but it certainly is a wireframe and is often the least exciting component of an app/website. By outsourcing this task to AI, you can spend your time developing the fun visual elements of the app/website.

Finally, there are video. Traditional video editing used to be a very painful process. Video rendering was extremely slow. Now with the emerging AI video editing tool market, that all is changing quickly. Instead of having to scrub through two hours of raw video footage to locate the video of the customer that is enjoying eating a hamburger, you simply enter “close up of a happy person eating” and the AI provides you with an instant video clip to be used in the social content creation for frameworks.

But Is This Cheating?

You might have asked this question, “If I start my designs with the help of AI will I be less of a designer?” The thing to remember about this is, when you were a child learning how to draw, did you trace things at some time? Almost everyone traced as they were learning to draw and develop their understanding of how things work and placement and proportion through tracing. Using AI forAI design tools workflow is simply an extension of how we use tracing, like “smart tracing”. You still need to know what looks nice with design and how to use design elements effectively because the AI won’t do that for you. AI doesn’t know what the “vibe” of your designs is. For example, it doesn’t know that Malay people prefer certain warmth in colours or that they like certain fonts that are reminiscent of a village environment but still modern. That preference is something we all have as human beings.

Although companies like BidaTech AI can assist in facilitating the infrastructure of your work, at the end of the day, your work will have a human touch because that’s where the soul of the work resides. The danger is that the work itself will appear “dead” or have a generic “AI” look if you become too dependent on the AI-generated aspect of the design. On the other hand, using the AI-generated content as a base will allow you to complete work much faster than if you didn’t use the AI. For instance, while you are creating designs and developing concepts, you may have created five design concepts before noon, whereas someone else is still attempting to choose their font.

What Nobody Tells You About the Content Creation Pipeline AI

I’ll let you in on a little-known “insider” tip: content creation pipeline AI tools are becoming much better at consistency. The major complaint last year was, “I created a character, but he looks different in every picture.” That problem has now been addressed through design automation software. You can train a style, now.

So, as a small business owner in Kuching or Kota Kinabalu, you can build a complete brand identity – an entire creative AI tool stack – without hiring a full-time agency to do it for you. You can create 50 images of your “product” in various locations: on the beach. In a café; in a boardroom. Previously, this would have cost thousands to do a photoshoot. Now it costs only a few Ringgits in electricity and compute time. But keep in mind the rule: this is a tool. We are entering an era where AI prototyping tools are so efficient that the only limit is your imagination. And your imagination, your life experience, and your “feel” for the Malaysian market? Those are the things that no robot can replicate. At least, not yet.