Turning ideas into visuals is one of the most exciting and time-consuming parts of creative work. Whether you’re developing a new brand concept, preparing a campaign, or creating a pitch deck, the early stages often involve collecting inspiration, building moodboards, and sketching out directions.
Generative AI tools are starting to make this process faster and more flexible. Platforms like Midjourney and DALL·E(ChaGPT/OpenAI’s AI model, that generates images from text descriptions (prompts)) can produce visuals from simple text prompts, offering a new way to explore visual ideas without needing a full design team in place.
As someone working in marketing for a Data/AI company like COMPUTD, I’ve been experimenting with these tools to speed up creative workflows, test ideas, and find visual directions more efficiently. They’re not a replacement for design expertise, but they are quickly becoming useful companions in the early stages of concept development.
In this month’s blog article, I’ll explore how AI can support visual brainstorming and creative planning, what these tools are capable of today, and where they still fall short. The goal isn’t to automate creativity, but to unlock more of it.
For many marketers and content creators, the biggest creative bottleneck is not having quick access to design support. When you need to test a campaign concept or build a visual draft for a meeting, waiting for polished assets is not always an option.
This is where generative AI tools become genuinely useful. They allow you to prototype visuals on your own, without opening design software or relying on templated stock images. Think quick social posts to test a message, rough visuals for an internal presentation, or a variety of layout styles to explore before settling on a direction.
You can generate several visual ideas in less time than it takes to brief a designer, helping you validate concepts and sharpen your thinking before investing more time in production.
The results are not production-ready, and they are often imperfect. But that is not the point. The value lies in speed and creative range, not polish. These tools help you explore options, notice patterns, and communicate your ideas more clearly, even without a full team behind you.
If you give them a clear prompt, they will give you something to react to. You stay in control of the vision. The AI is just there to support it.
AI tools can generate a lot of ideas quickly, but they do not understand your brand. They cannot see the bigger picture of what you are trying to communicate or why certain details matter. That is why the person behind the prompt still plays the most important role.
In my experience, getting useful results means writing prompts with purpose. You have to think like a creative director. The more clearly you describe the mood, the colors, the setting, and even the style of lighting or layout, the more likely you are to get results that fit your direction.
Instead of a vague prompt like “minimal futuristic ad background,” I would write something like “clean minimalistic styled white background, with soft blue gradients, glowing icons, and a subtle isometric layout in the style of modern tech ads.” That level of detail gives the tool something to work with.
I often create several versions of the same prompt with small variations. This helps me explore tone and composition while giving me more options to work from. The results are not perfect. Text is usually distorted, layouts can be messy, and the overall style still needs refining. But that is fine. I treat these outputs like moodboard material or sketch work, not final assets.
The more you practice, the more you learn how the tool responds. You start to recognize which words trigger specific aesthetics, and how to steer the results closer to your brand identity. It becomes a creative process where you are still in charge. The AI just helps you get there faster.
The quality of your AI-generated visuals depends on how you prompt. A vague idea will give you a vague image. A clear, detailed prompt opens up much better creative options.
Through a lot of trial and error, I’ve found that breaking prompts into parts helps guide the AI more effectively. Most strong prompts follow a simple structure: subject, description, style. You can build on that with extra layers like perspective, mood, and detail level.
Here is what I look for in a solid prompt:
Here is a simple before-and-after example:
The second version gives clearer instructions and helps the AI focus. You get fewer surprises and more useful results.
Prompting is a skill, and like any creative process, you will get better with practice. The more intentional you are, the more control you gain over the visual outcome.
AI tools are helpful, but they do not replace the thinking behind the work. What they do well is help you get started. When you need to try out a few directions or explain an idea quickly, they can save time.
The images are not always polished. They often miss small details. But that is not a problem if you use them early in your process. I treat them like sketches or visual drafts. They help shape ideas and keep projects moving when there is no time to wait for final designs.
For campaign planning, content pitches, or brand concept work, this speed matters. It helps you test ideas without overthinking them. You can see what works and what does not before spending too much time on production.
AI tools give you something to react to. You are still the one deciding what fits and what needs work. When used this way, they become part of your creative process, not a shortcut around it.
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