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Indeed, you can make an icon system with gen AI, but you can't make a good one. It generally sucks at consistency and fine details-- two of the most important f

Indeed, you can make an icon system with gen AI, but you can't make a good one. It generally sucks at consistency and fine details-- two of the most important factors when designing a visual language for an interface. Ultimately, Gen AI icons are just like any other generative images for serious work-- they take care of the easiest (and most enjoyable) 90%, but the final 10% is usually harder and more annoying to tackle than if it had been made by a competent human. Maybe if you really need symbolic placeholders or for a low-usage hobby project? "The details are not the details. They make the design." --Charles Eames

Lerc 3y ago
While I agree with this in general, I think there's a place for AI in conjunction with icon sets like these. Control nets give you the ability to manually design the meaningful details and AI fill the remainder.
- chefandy 3y ago
  As someone who works in the space and uses these tools, I've not seen any output without significant manual modification that was production quality, and I've only heard developers or non-designer AI-enthusiasts say otherwise. I know people who are about as close to AI->Prod pipeline as you can feasibly get right now in games, but there's still a whole lot of Adobe in that process, even for chintzy mobile games. Not to sound arrogant, but developers judging whether or not an icon system is sufficient for its intended purpose is like a designer judging whether or not a codebase is technically solid for a given use case. People who don't produce work like this at a professional level love these tools because they abstract away most of the finer-grained decisions that artists and designers must make when producing images. But without that granular control, even with all the tweaking and inpainting and whatever else you can muster up, that AI is still making more choices about what goes into that composition than the prompter, and mitigating that is often more hassle than it's worth. Text-based AI tools just don't have the consistency or the specificity required for commercial art, and maybe never will. There's just a really big conceptual disconnect.
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  - Kiro 3y ago
    The parent is talking about control nets.
    - chefandy 3y ago
      And? Control nets offer a fraction of the precision and specificity that professionals graphics tools do.
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  - holoduke 3y ago
    I also work in this space and use it already a lot. Super time and cost saving. Just less need for graphical designers. A bit of after care sometimes needed. But you dont need to be a designer for that.
    - chefandy 3y ago
      Care to share a workflow? No doubt I've seen people make shitty assets more quickly, but nothing I'd consider useful for any of my purposes. Besides, the hard part of design is figuring out the best way to solve design problems visually, not making the assets. You can definitely save money on designers if you don't care about having good design.
      - Kiro 3y ago
        It's hard to take you seriously when your argument boils down to "I know design, you do not". Not a good look.

Lerc 3y ago

While I agree with this in general, I think there's a place for AI in conjunction with icon sets like these. Control nets give you the ability to manually design the meaningful details and AI fill the remainder.

chefandy 3y ago
As someone who works in the space and uses these tools, I've not seen any output without significant manual modification that was production quality, and I've only heard developers or non-designer AI-enthusiasts say otherwise. I know people who are about as close to AI->Prod pipeline as you can feasibly get right now in games, but there's still a whole lot of Adobe in that process, even for chintzy mobile games. Not to sound arrogant, but developers judging whether or not an icon system is sufficient for its intended purpose is like a designer judging whether or not a codebase is technically solid for a given use case. People who don't produce work like this at a professional level love these tools because they abstract away most of the finer-grained decisions that artists and designers must make when producing images. But without that granular control, even with all the tweaking and inpainting and whatever else you can muster up, that AI is still making more choices about what goes into that composition than the prompter, and mitigating that is often more hassle than it's worth. Text-based AI tools just don't have the consistency or the specificity required for commercial art, and maybe never will. There's just a really big conceptual disconnect.
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- Kiro 3y ago
  The parent is talking about control nets.
  - chefandy 3y ago
    And? Control nets offer a fraction of the precision and specificity that professionals graphics tools do.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
- holoduke 3y ago
  I also work in this space and use it already a lot. Super time and cost saving. Just less need for graphical designers. A bit of after care sometimes needed. But you dont need to be a designer for that.
  - chefandy 3y ago
    Care to share a workflow? No doubt I've seen people make shitty assets more quickly, but nothing I'd consider useful for any of my purposes. Besides, the hard part of design is figuring out the best way to solve design problems visually, not making the assets. You can definitely save money on designers if you don't care about having good design.
    - Kiro 3y ago
      It's hard to take you seriously when your argument boils down to "I know design, you do not". Not a good look.