I painted my first mural 😃 But I only had a few hours to design it 😱 So I used ChatGPT as my creative partner.

Written By Natalie Garnett

I got the green light on my mural spot the night before painting and needed to move fast. I had a bookworm pigeon I’d recently designed, but was missing a header font, accents, and potential color variations.

How AI helped (and where it didn't):

  • Script font creation: Art directed ChatGPT to create a vintage bookstore-style script for "Rooftop Reading Club." Achieved my vision with a few iterations. (Though executing the font with paint was a different beast.) 8/10

  • Vintage stickers: Asked for bird-themed quotes like "flight-approved" and "guaranteed to ruffle you" that I could paint around the pigeon as little stickers. Once I started painting, I realized how ambitious all of this hand-lettering was, so I dropped it. 10/10 for ideas, 2/10 for self-awareness.

  • Color variations: Wanted to explore different palettes. Maybe my prompting wasn't clear enough, I kept getting single color options instead of multiple colorways. 5/10

The takeaway

AI is a solid partner for rapid ideation, but always factor in real-world constraints. Turns out I'm not a printer, but just a human, standing in the sun, with a little paintbrush.

Natalie Garnett
Previous

I developed new creative testing strategies for Ramp’s paid ads.