Creative Space with Jennifer Logue

Michael McDonald of Xhilarate On How AI is Revolutionizing Creativity

• Jennifer Logue

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On this episode of Creative Space, we chat with Michael McDonald, co-founder and lead creative at Xhilarate, a Philly-based design agency. Michael dives deep into how AI is transforming the creative landscape, sharing his personal journey as an artist and designer.

Discover how he uses AI to push the boundaries of design, from rebranding a craft brewery to exploring new creative possibilities. Michael also discusses the ethical challenges of AI in art and design and offers insights into the future of creativity. Whether you’re an artist, designer, or curious about the impact of AI on creativity, this episode is packed with valuable insights.

For more on Michael and Xhilarate, visit: xhilarate.com

For more on me, your host and creative coach, visit: jenniferlogue.com.

To sign up for the weekly Creative Space newsletter, visit: eepurl.com/h8SJ9b.

To become a patron of the Creative Space Podcast, visit: bit.ly/3ECD2Kr.

SHOW NOTES:

0:00—Introduction

1:13—Michael McDonald’s Background

4:08—Inspirations and Design Aesthetics

7:50—First Steps into Advertising and Design

9:19—Founding Xhilarate

13:39—Challenges in the Design Industry

22:52—Embracing AI in Creativity

28:11—AI and the Creative Soul

29:28—AI in Practice: Rebranding a Craft Brewery

34:55—The Role of Artists in the Age of AI

37:15—Ethical Concerns with AI

45:24—The Future of AI and Art Education

50:39—Exciting Possibilities for the Future

52:26—Conclusion and Takeaways




Jennifer Logue:

Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Creative Space, a podcast where we explore, learn and grow in creativity together. I'm your host, jennifer Logue, and today we have the pleasure of chatting with Michael McDonald, co-founder and lead creative of Exhilarate, a Philly-based design agency. A graduate of Temple University's Tyler School of Art, michael's work has been featured in esteemed design publications like Logo Lounge, www Design, simple Websites and Interface. His contributions have also graced the pages of print magazine FWA, graphic Design USA and communication arts. He's also an artist who's embracing generative AI and flexing his skills on his Instagram mid midjourneyism. I'll link to it in the show notes On this episode. We'll be diving deep into AI and creativity, so buckle your seatbelts. Welcome to Creative Space, michael.

Michael McDonald:

Hi, how are you, Jen? Nice to be here.

Jennifer Logue:

Thank you for being on the show. I'm doing well, enjoying this beautiful summer weather. It was cooler today, which was nice in Philly.

Michael McDonald:

It's not like last night with a lightning storm. We hit our building five times. Oh no, yeah, I was in the thick of it last night. It was kind of fun to sit back and watch the lightning hit all the. I have a great view of downtown. I'm about a mile from Comcast Center. I was just watching lightning hit the building. It hit our building five times. I was like, all right, I'm going to back away from the window a little bit.

Jennifer Logue:

Cool, are you originally?

Michael McDonald:

Usually it goes out. You know, with Pico or Philadelphia Electric, If there's a storm within 20 miles, your power is probably going to go out at least once.

Jennifer Logue:

Are you originally from Philly?

Michael McDonald:

Yes, I am. I grew up in southwest Philadelphia. Then from there I went to West Catholic High School. I went there First of all. It was like K through 12, I guess that's still called. It was public school and then high school. My mom wanted me to go to a Catholic school so I went to West Catholic High School. After there I went to college school bar. I stayed there for like six and a half years because I actually started liking school for the first time and I embraced it and became like a sponge, didn't want to leave but I couldn't afford to stay. So I, like, started life trying to make money doing design cool.

Jennifer Logue:

What was your first creative outlet? Were you always into the visual arts or was there something different? When you were growing up, you were into always visual.

Michael McDonald:

As a kid I really was in the painting and you know all anything with crayons and painting. Then I got a hell of a spray paint when I was 13 and became like a graffiti writer in Philly. From when I was like 13 a lot, I was 20. So we traveled up and down the east coast, had friends in New York City and Philly, subways and murals and handball courts. Just I wasn't really more like the bandel. I was doing what are called burners or wild style pieces.

Michael McDonald:

And then I just loved the use of color and the kind of idea of trying to avoid getting caught by the cops, your neighbors and your family, right, I didn't want my parents to find out, so it was very secretive. It was kind of like this kind of you're in a kgb of the art world and now I found that really alluring and exciting and it was really good. I mean, I made a pretty good name for myself, got published in a bunch of books early in the 80s and 90s and taught me a lot about art design. And that's where I just kind of said, okay, how can I I can't really make.

Michael McDonald:

I would be a fine artist, be a starving artist, uh, and my parents couldn't afford to. You know, we grow up poor. So I had to go figure out I had to go get a real job and go get educated if I want to like have a life. So that's where I then I went to college temple uh, found found myself there, uh, and said, okay, I really like this design and typography and photography, and then morphed that into some sort of career.

Jennifer Logue:

Very cool. Who are your greatest inspirations?

Michael McDonald:

Oh, my God, I thought about that. You asked that question. I really can't seem to think of anyone in particular. I really don't have any childhood heroes or inspiration. That was like my guiding light.

Michael McDonald:

My inspiration was more or less growing up, you know, in the kind of urban concrete jungle, exploring the city, all the good, the bad, the ugly that was my inspiration.

Michael McDonald:

I even seen broken glass, the shards of glass, really broken glass, the shards of glass really. This is kind of odd that the broken glass I grew up a lot around broken bottles, glass windows, stuff really influenced kind of like my aesthetic and style even today. So when I do more of the fine art or even some of the AI stuff, if you looked at some of my work you'll see a lot of like very angular type projects and I try to lean into that a little bit when I can. It's not always appropriate for a client, usually it's never appropriate for a client, but when I can't push that my own creative agenda, I try to infuse that into the design where it makes sense. But when I'm doing my fine art and like, whether it's AI or painting it's usually very angular, geometric. So I get a lot of my geometry and all this growing up the city, you know buildings that are very geometric, uh, even some of the older architectural pieces.

Michael McDonald:

It's all about geometry cool philly that's where I, kind of like, grew up with understanding my own design aesthetic and following particular artists. This wasn't really in for me. The closest I could find is maybe pablo picasso in his Cubism period is more close to where I'm more, I think, closely aligned with.

Jennifer Logue:

Other than that, I appreciate all the art out there.

Michael McDonald:

I studied, obviously, for six years, taking art history and philosophy et cetera. I just never really grew or felt attached to any particular art or art movement or even design a movement. And then in college I kind of evolved into really liking the use of typography and photography.

Jennifer Logue:

I wasn't really into illustration.

Michael McDonald:

And I know there's a bunch of different styles and subsets of styles that people kind of adhere to or kind of really embrace themselves within the design. Not me. I just have my own little bag of tricks. I just stick with typography, photography when it comes to the design and then the abstract stuff when it comes to the fine art so when you went to temple, what did you focus on in terms of art?

Michael McDonald:

so when I first started I had like I was at, I was had, I was dueling, I was between I I was a dual major, so I was doing fine art, more in the painting aspect, and design. I don't even know what they I forget what the courses were called. I guess it was design, graphic design, visual communications. They changed their curriculum so many times over the last 20 years that I can't keep track but it was basically design and painting. Then it was design, then I got rid of. My other major was philosophy, so I was kind of, you know, reading like Plato and things of that nature and trying to figure out how to incorporate that into painting. I couldn't figure it out. So I said let me stick with design and graduate a degree in design and visual communications.

Jennifer Logue:

After six and a half years of trying and failing, cool, uh, so when did you know you wanted to get into advertising? Because, I'll be honest, we talked about this a little bit before we started rolling, but I didn't know advertising was an industry like until I fell into it, but it's been around for a long time. How did you know you wanted to get into the world of design and advertising?

Michael McDonald:

my first job right out of college was I worked at Bally's casino, did an advertising department, and the person running it at the time she took me on their wing like I had no experience, and she said said I'm going to give you the experience of doing billboards and advertising for the casino. And I actually really enjoyed it. So I had a commute from Philadelphia to Atlantic City at least four days a week. I wasn't full-time, I was like full-time but like part-time. They didn't really give you full-time because of the benefits, so they made me wear like two hours, which was fine. So either I'd have a Monday or Friday off, which was either a long weekend or a short week, depending on how you look at it.

Michael McDonald:

But I really enjoyed working. I started like, oh, this is what your billboard looks like. And I'm cruising down Lake City and I'm seeing my billboards I'm like, wow, I can make money at this. And then I was driven at that stage by a paycheck, not really understanding design or what I want to become. So that was kind of like my first kind of hooray into the whole design and advertising world and then from there I started getting more passionate about the design as I started understanding how to use design and make money doing it. So it became like a duality of like paycheck and creativity and find start. Sometimes finding that balance is challenging oh, it is now it's the analysis about design.

Michael McDonald:

I mean, I make you know I could make a living. I just do what I want creatively what was the inspiration to start exhilarate?

Jennifer Logue:

where did that come from for you guys?

Michael McDonald:

from. I can speak for myself. I just got tired of working for other people. I wanted to have my own hours. I wanted to dictate what the job may or may not look like. To a degree, Some of that's, you think you have that control and a lot of times you don't, because the client tells you hey, it looks like crap and we're right, you're wrong, and I don't wanna be. I, I you have to be diplomatic about it with them, but I feel the best that we have zave and russ are interfacing the clients and I can just kind of don't have to deal with it because that drives me nuts. The amount of changes you can do to an initial idea. It gets so diluted and boring and ugly. At the end it no longer looks like anything you created yeah yeah, but at least I can control that.

Michael McDonald:

If I you work in a larger advertising firm or studio, that's not your own. You have to listen to traffic managers, project managers, client relations people and they and then the client next. You know you're you're working for six different people opposed to one. Person doesn't know what they're talking about, and I have six people don't so? The freedom to have to make your own decisions and your own destiny and actually create your own hours yes, a thing that drove all of us to create exhilarate, and that's where we're at right now.

Jennifer Logue:

Freedom is such an important thing. It is yeah, yeah. I think that is like a key. One of the major keys to happiness is just having that autonomy. I was having this conversation just the other night with a friend of mine. He's like the most important thing to me is that I have my autonomy and I'm like that is that's a really big insight. I'm writing that down for myself. Uh, do you remember your first client at exhilarate?

Michael McDonald:

well I can name my first client that I started when I got out of college and that was with a uh, they were called 69th street commercial printers in upper darby. I went there to have my first business card printed up and I'm like oh, kind of threw out, like hey, which stock to use? And the owner's son happened to work there. I guess he was like an apprentice's father. We bonded pretty quickly and he gave me a tour of the shop and we spent hours going through paper and the, the old printing presses all they had, like an old heidelberg press, like traditional, and we got into it. I ended up doing a card I really liked and his father really liked my work, like me. He offered me some work. He had even new business cards and some signage from our clients. I'm like sure that's why I'm in this game now I don't have to advertise, I can you guys just fulfill. So I worked there with them for a couple years. So it was a lot of different.

Michael McDonald:

I don't know every specific project but I remember there's a lot of business cards that I look back at, probably want to throw out, and signs that you're you know. You look back at your younger self and you're like, what was I thinking? But it was my start and it was hum humbling and it was kind of exciting and that was like one of my first peer-to-peer friendships I made with another creator in the real world, not like donated to you at college, like here's your roommate or here's the person you're going to be syncing up with on a project. This was like my first connection that I made on my own. It went well and that gave me, I think, not only the liberty but the kind of, I guess, motivation or not living with the fear of rejection and like this gave me that the gun hose to go out and just go for it.

Jennifer Logue:

Yeah, it was a confidence boost.

Michael McDonald:

Exactly. Confidence, yeah, and that's another understated, underwhelming kind of like use that people don't really focus on is the confidence. You need the confidence, but it needs to be humbling confidence. It can't be, you know, that's of self-brancher and all.

Jennifer Logue:

Oh yeah, that does not feel good to anyone. What is the biggest challenge you've witnessed in your years in design and advertising over the course of your career so far?

Michael McDonald:

So far. I think there's probably three that I can think of. One is always the rapidly changing software technologies that are you and I were kind of talking about this before we started was, like you know, every week there's a new software application, a new update, a new technology platform. Now you have generative AI right, so it's just your tool belt weighs you down with the amount of information thrown at you on a daily basis. So you have that.

Michael McDonald:

Then there's the whole idea of designing quick, easy and cheap solutions. That seems to be what's client-driven Right now. They want it quick, they want it cheap and they want it fast. And it's really diluted, I think, a lot of the design and creativity that's out there, either at an agency level, an advertising level, depending on what discipline you're at, whether you're in the large advertising agency, you look at some of the commercials out there, both on radio TV or on the web. They're pretty terrible for the most part, and then even print collateral brochure. You get a little brochure in a mail and it's just like what is this? It has no impact, it doesn't resonate with you, it doesn't emotionally affect the way you want to either buy or how do I respond. So that's really diluted a lot of creativity. And then the other big thing is that the templatizing, cookie cutter approach that websites have brochures have.

Michael McDonald:

You go on. You go to Canva, or clients are like, oh, I was on Canva, look at this brochure, can you just clean it up for me? Or say we're getting back into the cheap thing. I can get this done for 30 bucks. And if you don't want to do it, I can go to Fiverr or Upwork and I'll find someone in Bangladesh who'll do unlimited changes for $50. I'm like, okay, good luck, I don't, I don't want to do it.

Michael McDonald:

But they're like the three biggest challenges within our field right now is staying up to speed with the rapidly changing software and technologies. Okay, I got that checkmark. Fine, with that Demand quick, easy, cheap. I'm sure this has been kind of a problem that a lot of people before me and after me we'll be dealing with. I think we all have right when you go buy a car, you want it like, you want the right car on the lot, you want the cheapest right and you want to quick. So it's kind of the same thing. So, okay, but the whole templatizing and Um cookie cutter approach, and then, if that's not good enough. They want to go to like some online platform like Fiverr or Upwork that's who we're competing against now Like it's kind of like they submit their design or like the amount you want to spend, and so 800 people will go out underbid each other for 50 bucks.

Jennifer Logue:

Yeah, that is the reality of the world. I mean, it opens up. There's so much more opportunity than there's ever been before, but there's so much more competition, even when it's you know people are out, you know creatives are out competing each other with low prices and just watering down the work so much it's hurting everything hurting everything.

Michael McDonald:

Well, talking a lot of my peers over the last, say, five years, the focus has been on the whole, everything is templatized, or cook, it's a cookie cutter, and even look at that, the housing industry. Like you and you get married, you're ready to have a child, you look for houses, they all they're up if you're in either a city, the suburbs or royal, they all look the same. It's like there have like three maybe manufacturers in these houses and they're. There's no character, no appeal, nothing unique, nothing innovative about it. Like they might say, oh, here's a new microwave you can talk to, like that's the innovation they're presenting.

Michael McDonald:

You're like this is supposed to like get me excited. Like no, it really doesn't. Um, so it's happening in music as well. Now you have like have you're in the music scene. So you see what's going on with the whole pop thing, all the boy and girl bands, and there's nothing really originally unique or something that really hooks your heart right, like wow, where's this music been my whole life moment? You don't really have those two often anymore. Every blue moon.

Jennifer Logue:

In the indie scene there is, like, I think, the most amazing for me. I I love listening to artists in different cities and you know they're not the artists you hear on mainstream radio or anything but like, I think there's. I think we're in a golden age of music when it comes to talent, but they may not be famous. That's the thing like I can have. There's so many artists that I listen to that my friends are like who's that you know? Or even artists from back in the day that weren't super famous beyond their home country. And my friends would be like, oh, I love that song. What? Who is that mike? Oh, it's someone from like the 60s, 70s.

Michael McDonald:

Like it was spotify. These things you're not gonna. It's all algorithms. There's nothing like. It's really hard to find whether it's independent visual artists, an independent musician, anyone in an independent filmmaker they sit there.

Michael McDonald:

Oh, you have to go to the indie film website, but they're like, that's even as the the, the archetype and the hierarchy of like gatekeepers, and they're all in it for like, oh, I want to promote or push this one agenda. You know, whether it's creative or political, it's everything is siloed, so it's really hard to find those nuggets, and that's been my experience, and opinion is like it's hard to find really cool, innovative, creative stuff.

Jennifer Logue:

Right, design, art, music, I mean if you just go to venues and a lot of shows, you end up bumping into cool stuff like um, when I had rock on philly, I went to live shows. I lived at music venues it was amazing and festivals, and I discovered so many bands that I loved from that time and even even before then, like when I was a musician I'm still a musician myself, but when I was focused on just doing music in New York, I'll never forget. I was at Rockwood Music Hall and it was like maybe a Thursday night and there was this amazing band that played like the small stage and I was blown away. Now, granted, they did pack the room, so they already had some of a following then, but they crushed it.

Michael McDonald:

How big was the? So the small.

Jennifer Logue:

Rockwood has expanded. I actually I got an email that I don't want to talk about Rockwood now. I want to talk about it then, cause I'm I can't really quote what the state of the venue is now. They did expand for a time, but I'm not sure what happened post-pandemic, but at this time they had a smaller room. I want to say like 100 people maybe. If you jam them in, it's really tiny. It's a standing room. You stand there with your glass of wine and there's like a grand piano on the stage. But they packed the venue and it was an amazing show. And then afterwards I just had to talk to them. I'm like God, I want to know where they're from. Like I want to know, like where they got the inspiration, like behind these songs. Like I just wanted, wanted to. I was so mesmerized by their set and it was the lumineers and I chatted with them. They had a uh, they drove from, I think, colorado. They were living in colorado at the time and they, they just like drove themselves touring yeah, badass cheap motels.

Jennifer Logue:

Yeah, but so many artists that I listen to are just artists that I've heard play live somewhere, so it's like it's not the algorithm, it's just or friends' recommendations.

Michael McDonald:

There's no venue for design or advertising like that right.

Michael McDonald:

Yeah, you can just go to the bar, go on Google. Okay, there's some interesting band I've ever heard of. Let's go to I don't know. Let's go to middle Ohio for the weekend. Right, you can create a road trip. There's no road trip for design or advertising, it's the web. It's like what you find, right, it's. You know Pinterest is already old, right? That's kind of like an algorithm facing. That was fun and exciting three, four years ago. Instagram's an algorithm. Finding the right content on there is impossible. Facebook websites it's all it's over.

Michael McDonald:

It's like it's really hard to find those golden nuggets for me, music, I think is a little bit different, where you still have people that will pick up an instrument and say, hey, I'm going to go play at that corner bar there's three people there because they love it, they're passionate, they're driven by the music. Where design and advertising it's about finding the right client that will give you money and they like you, like them, they like you and you want to build something together. Right, that is becoming really, really difficult to find because of all the interference they're getting online. Oh, you need to be doing this and don't forget about your digital media strategy and you should be using this color palette and if you don't have that, use canva candle creative for you, for cheap, right and like, and that's what we're competing with, like so many different influences and it influencers that derail any original thought, and that's kind of where our industry is right now. And thank God for AI.

Jennifer Logue:

Yeah cool, so that's a great segue.

Michael McDonald:

It's a good segue, right.

Jennifer Logue:

Beautiful, oh man, beautiful segue. So you have embraced AI as an artist. Did you fear it initially? Did you have like a feeling, oh man, this is like. Oh, I don't know about this.

Michael McDonald:

Or were you immediately like whoa, this is amazing. I, for the first time in a long time, I actually just jumped in and embraced it. I put away all fears, apprehensions. I know there's a lot being the creative person, designer, where you have to supposedly oh, you have to have your own unique thought, and that's what separated you from everyone else which is a bunch of hogwash is that the ai has given me the ability to see things like like it, like rapid speed, like time warping, ideas coming up with ideas.

Michael McDonald:

You infusing what I already know in my head, what I want and potentially what the client wants, and then getting something completely different blows my mind and it's really. It's well, like a really well-conceived idea that I personally or I don't know anyone who personally would have came up with that idea or thought. Because the AI is generally taking your general population. It's collecting everyone's ideas, thoughts, collective knowledge, and come smashing together like a neutron star and spitting stuff out that you could never create on your own, whether it's by yourself, in a small design group at a top 10 ad agency where you have 50 creators on a project. It transfers, it democratizes creativity for anyone, for anything you want.

Michael McDonald:

It could be for music, it could be for fine art, it could be for design, advertising, copywriting, the list goes on. Filmmaking I created a film. I had a film idea from when I was a child yeah, eight years old. I used to do like little dioramas of big cardboard cutouts from where I had to do like little activity scenes yeah, like little dioramas of paint cardboard cutouts from where I had to do like little activity scenes and he put something on the front.

Michael McDonald:

Well, I had this movie idea called diorama since I was nine, ten years old, never thought about what I would do with it, always like I would love to make a movie out of it. Why created a movie script in 30 minutes? Wow and then I researched how would a movie producer produce a script. I never realized. There's a certain font you had to use. There can only be so many words on a page.

Jennifer Logue:

There's a whole formatting process.

Michael McDonald:

Oh, yeah, so I literally, I can literally if I want to hand a script to somebody and I kept inputting all my ideas and it said give me 16 different outcomes, then what would happen with this? Then learning how to structure everything for me in a proper scripting format? And I read I was like I would buy this as if I was a film producer. So I haven't really released it yet, it's still on the backburns when there's side projects, but I never would be able to write a a movie script, even with some. I had a bunch of ideas, always written down, like maybe 100 words and little thoughts, nothing more. I just put all those little thoughts in the ai and said give me 14 different outcomes, no, I don't want that outcome, I want this. And that transforms, it flips everything on its back. So it makes you think where you think you're not supposed to think and it makes you go places you weren't supposed to go. And that could be in with writing or with visuals, and that's why I find I was excited by it. I can see why people fear it, like, oh, you're stealing my artwork and that's my idea. No one has it right. Everything is iterative in life, creativity. So you think of like, oh, I came up with an idea. No, you didn't. You gather an idea either by researching and subliminally or just on the back of your head. You know you? Basically you're a camera. You take photographs everything you see in life. So when you're definitely journey, going down your story, you look at a sign and our bus goes by with an ad or a sun sets going down and you're inspired by the light that gives you an idea for a song or that. Everyone does the same. It's very similar process for for anyone who's ever created anything and you just gather all that material up over the years like on your hard drive in your brain and at some point it spits out little pieces of it, right? And all this whole AI is doing is taking every once and making like it's super human creativity so you can figure out how to tap into that and then pull it back and then make it your own.

Michael McDonald:

Because if you're doing design traditionally, say you, you're on a computer, the typefaces, you're using the typography. You didn't create the typeface, so you're like I'm gonna put doni and I'm gonna use albedica. Well, you didn't create either one of those fonts, so that's not yours. So you're stealing photography you're using whether it's stock, or you hire a photographer. You didn't shoot it. You didn't create the scene um the script. You're writing like you're selling, trying to sell hairspray or some sort of like beauty product. You didn't create the lotion. Someone else did. They tweaked the formula to smell like kiwi and lime, opposed to strawberries and passion fruit, right, um. But you didn't create the fragrance. So we have this false sense of importance and our ego is telling us as individuals that AI is wrong and AI impedes or creates the worst of humanity in design and creativity and art. And it really doesn't.

Jennifer Logue:

So do you believe AI can ever possess a creative soul that's similar to that of a human artist?

Michael McDonald:

Oh, these questions are getting harder and harder.

Jennifer Logue:

I'm getting philosophical now. The juicy stuff.

Michael McDonald:

Oh, give me a second to think about that too. I don't think we'll ever have a soul, but I think AI is gonna increasingly be more sophisticated in mimicking the outputs of human creativity. They said at some point in the next 15 years it'll be like 20 times. First it'll be like 10 to 20 times smarter than humans, then it'll be like 20,000 times smarter.

Jennifer Logue:

In how many years?

Michael McDonald:

Within 10. They're saying singularity within five to seven years is the latest thing I heard about a week ago.

Jennifer Logue:

Wow.

Michael McDonald:

And that's really well, leading futurists. And what's his name? Kurt, something. I can't think of his name, but he mentioned that like yeah, it was 20 years, about five years ago. Now they're saying five to seven years. They think it ought to be sooner than that.

Jennifer Logue:

Wow.

Michael McDonald:

So be prepared. But I don't think. I don't know if it will ever be sold. I don't know. I know it's going to be more intelligent than us and more creative. It's already almost. It's as creative and more creative than it is already. People don't want to see it or believe it, but it already is.

Jennifer Logue:

Can you talk about or can you share an example of how AI has driven you know the innovation behind some of your recent projects that exhilarate A specific project.

Michael McDonald:

Yeah, yeah. Well, we just recently I'd say this is like within the last year we did a. We rebranded a craft brewery in hamilton, new jersey.

Michael McDonald:

So doing the logo and identity and the strategy. Up front, that was more traditional sort of ad agency, design agency sort of process. But when we got to actually, the meat of the project was they want us to redesign all their beer labels and they had, like they had like 24 different beers so they would come up with the name of the beer. They would give us a creative brief. This is what we're looking for, right, we have a. It's South Jersey centric. We want it to have a South Jersey vibe. It should speak South Jersey.

Michael McDonald:

So what we did for all the different beer labels was we used AI to help us write a script, come up with some prompting, then we customized prompting and then we created artwork based on a theme so the Jersey theme. We came up with themes like there's the nightlife nightclubs, right, jersey's known for. There's the diners, new Jersey's known for Agriculture and Atlantic City, like the boardwalks in New Jersey. So we're trying to come up with things that people would identify as something that was Jersey-centric. So we came up with a bunch of like, we came up with a hundred ideas for all those different themes and we used AI to assist us. Come down and we created, like all the hundreds of labels and hours client and chose one. We went back in the photoshop and illustrator, cleaned it up, edited it and they had a final product the same day, where that would mean and we literally did a whole, all we did. We did, like, I think, 24 labels in two weeks time and we did them in a few, like, if you really look at the time, maybe a few days to do all from finish to end.

Michael McDonald:

And then they had to get approved through the state, right, because I have certain um, their alcohol police I don't know what division they use or with the, but through new jersey, that your labels have to be approved before they get the own product and be sold. So they had to do a little process. But we came up with a process where they got approved instantly. We made sure we adhered to all their standards the state standards, the local municipalities and we kind of came up with our own theme. So we didn't rely on someone else to create a theme for us. We created our own theme for all of them. So we created a structure for the packaging and all the labels and stuff like that and then plastered the new brand and different color palettes in each one, so each one would feel unique, but part of it, you know. If you put them all next to each other, you know it's from the same craft brewing place.

Jennifer Logue:

Cool.

Michael McDonald:

But creating the whole, all the labels was all done with using Midjourney and ChatGP and things of that nature and then just going to photoshop and illustrator to refine them.

Jennifer Logue:

um, how long have I taken without, if before, you know ai? How long would that process have taken an?

Michael McDonald:

agency I think the largest, probably saw for them, like for each label, that you'll hire an illustrator, an artist right a, a local artist, and pricing and time would vary from artist to artist. Sometimes it would be a week, sometimes a month. Sometimes you get the person, the artist, on the phone, they would ghost them or go disappear. So we eliminated all that not throwing like AI stole their jobs there we go. But we were able to go there and facilitate and create there we go. But we were able to go there and facilitate and create stuff almost instantly, within a week they were done. It would have took months, a few months, to do all the labels because you have to go to all the different artists and finding the right artists for the right job.

Michael McDonald:

In AI I can change the style of the art, the look and the feel, everything about it. Is it photo-realism, is it illustrations? Is it like cartoon? Does it look like it's woodcut? Is it from the 60s? Is it futuristic? I mean you have all these different attributes you're able to create and generate on the fly and that's the blessing of an application in the agenda of AI mid-journey where you do that by hand or illustrate it I don't know if you're familiar with illustration. Sometimes it takes days, weeks to create a final piece that's really edited well, looks great, matches the code. Then you have client changes.

Michael McDonald:

Here the client will make changes I like this one, but can you add another farmer on there? Or can you, instead of a sunset, can you do a sunrise? It's like pretty instant, Wow. And the quality is like. Over the last year, the quality of generated AI just has vastly improved Just within the year.

Michael McDonald:

Wow and that's just a year. The three years I've been using. I was doing it. When you do a little cat and it would almost look like a little sponge, you couldn't even really recognize it because it's visually interesting. Yeah, now it's photorealism. It's more concise with what you want. You don't have 15 fingers on a hand and three eyeballs. They were literally some of the challenges, like 90 years ago. That stuff has been corrected and it's pretty amazing.

Jennifer Logue:

So, with AI becoming more prevalent in creative fields, how?

Michael McDonald:

do you see the role of the artist evolving? Well, I think it's kind of viewfold. You're still going to incorporate tools like Adobe creative suite. It should be used as a tool. It shouldn't be the end, all be all.

Jennifer Logue:

It's like hey, we're not an.

Michael McDonald:

AI shop. We just do AI design. We use it where it's needed. There's some applications that it's really not appropriate, some things that just doesn't do well right now. It doesn't do logos or branding. The branding strategy is more canned Like. The branding. The branding strategy is more canned Like.

Michael McDonald:

If you ask for some of the strategy, you get more canned approaches, which means everyone else can do the same, come up with the same solution, because basically it's doing a Google search Like these are the here's the strategy for coming up with a craft brew and it's going to go look for case studies. So they actually want to spit out what's on spell to you, maybe in some different verbiage, but more or less the same. So I don't think it's there yet, but it will be in, say, the next 18 months. But it really helps enable artists to help explore their ideas and become, you know, create solutions more efficiently and effectively. But a lot of the creative direction is really going to be driven by the artist. You know the design firm or the design team that can kind of really expound on an idea and implement. It is always going to be what a design designer, design firm will do.

Michael McDonald:

Uh, it's just really knowing how to use that tool to really help speed things up, or a couple for ideation. It's just incredible. Um and the ideation process. Is this really I can do things almost instantaneously that it would take me hours, days, sometimes weeks, to do, to get over that hurdle, to really get into like, okay, what is this? What are the color palette, how's the fonts or what's the messaging? There's so many different little aspects that go along to make something really a good design. A good design. Well, this allows you to see a lot of blind spots and if you look at that as I help you figure that out, I mean it could really be used as a useful tool. And not just that, but coming with ideas and some of the things you create, it's absolutely wild. It's just every day I blown away that I was working on something, I was like, wow, I still couldn't have created that, even if I thought I could.

Jennifer Logue:

Wow, what ethical concerns come up for you when using AI in art and design.

Michael McDonald:

The biggest.

Michael McDonald:

Well, I think the biggest thing I think for most people are a few things it's how original something is, the copyright and the transparency, usage of both right. So like, if we're creating something for someone, we'll tell them up front, hey, we're going to be using AI to assist us, not to create your whole thing, but are they okay with it? So you get the client approval on that. So we're not like this, give them ai something. Yeah, we create this, we're geniuses. Now it's it's where ai is helping us.

Michael McDonald:

The copyright issue, it's this whole thing is tricky. It's a big gray area, even though in legal debates right now, because it's going to be really I don't know, I don't think anyone really knows. I think the latest decision was like to like, there, really it's hard. But if I were to create something purely in AI, I'd spit some out. Now that's not copyrightable. But if I go into Photoshop or Illustrator and edit it, it becomes copyrightable because you actually I think the copyright law is that you have to have your hand. It has to be made by hand, right or by the human. So getting around that like, is that loophole? The loophole's huge. All you do is change the color palette, maybe make it duotone instead of full color, change a couple of characters and it's now copyrightable. So it really becomes the ethical question, like, hey, hey, if you're writing something like, oh, make it look like a famous artist, right, picasso, I'm using Picasso, because everyone probably knows Picasso. But if you use it like in a style of Picasso, that's where I think I draw the line. I don't like using other artists as references per se. If the AI decides that, okay, I think this is the style I'm looking for. I don't like using other artists' references per se. If the AI decides that, okay, I think this is the style you're looking for. But I don't use it as a predictive all-in-within-a-prompt. That's kind of cheating and you're cheating the artist. And now there's a lot of well-known contemporary artists, both musicians and artists like make the sound like Dolly Park.

Michael McDonald:

I think that's where you get it. That's where the gray it becomes black and white. It becomes like a slap on the wrist, like you're really shouldn't be doing that. I think it's wrong, but it's happening already. There's nothing. The cat's out, you know bags. So there's nothing no one can do about it. Um, so it's really got to do with individuals. How they feel about this is going to be an individual ethical concern, how they want to approach it. I just have a motto adapt, evolve or go extinct. If you don't really embrace this, you're basically you're forcing. No one's going to take a job from you. You're going to take the job from yourself if you don't figure out how to make this work for you in your life.

Michael McDonald:

I'm not saying, you have to do everything, but it should be an integral part of how you operate on a daily basis. You know, like writing, creating music, creating art, designing, writing copy. You have that thought. Why work super hard at it? Let AI do it and go off doing something else that you really love doing, you know, spending time with your family, going out for a walk, going to see a band you want to see, right? I mean, there are some of the things that you mentioned that you enjoy doing. Spend more time enjoying.

Michael McDonald:

let AI do the stuff that no one else wants to do, or it's just really time consuming and if you like to do it, I mean, I like doing research for projects. But sometimes I do research for a week, like 40 hours of research. I can now do that research in a few hours.

Jennifer Logue:

Yes, and it's probably more efficient, too Much more efficient. Do you think AI generated art compares to human created art in terms of evoking emotions and creating connections with an audience?

Michael McDonald:

I think it does. But there's some of the AI art that already has this canned. Look to it. It almost feels templatized. A lot of it looks repetitive. There's like, oh yeah, that looks like AI, I get it. But then the whole idea is the trick Someone doesn't know it's AI. It should be seamless, right? You look at it, that's either good or bad, Whereas some of the AI you know instantly that's bad AI.

Jennifer Logue:

Good.

Michael McDonald:

AI means you know it's-huh that's what I'm trying to achieve is like how do you make something like it doesn't know? You don't know if it's ai or not that's a good point I was just listening to some music. I think it was suno to google as a suno thing. That was ai music and some of the some of the lyrics was creating and sounds like I couldn't tell the difference. It was AI that actually created, wrote the sound or actually sang the song.

Michael McDonald:

I was just dumbfounded like and then other songs like okay, I can hear that weird echoey cadence of the voice. That's definitely AI. So there's a little telltale signs to like an experienced person, either listening the same thing with visually, but you can mask those real easy. Like I said, you go into like an editing tool and you want to get rid of a reverb, or you want to add another layer component. You can then make it more humanistic, less synthetic or AI-ish. I know that it's a loaded term and thought, but there's ways around it. I think.

Michael McDonald:

Using it again, using it as a tool to really help you hone in on something. If you're a writer and you want to be a music writer, it can really help you. You shouldn't sit there and rely on it to write your lyrics, but it can really help express like oh, I want another word from Void. Give me 40 different variations of the voided space between two ears. Right, that's your phrase and it may not be the perfect one. It's going to be that aha moment Like yep, that's the one right there. Let me just add it to like get rid of void and put negativity there and you have oh, that's the new song.

Jennifer Logue:

I mean a few of my songwriting partners over the years. We would always have a rhyming dictionary with us, you know, in the studio.

Michael McDonald:

So you actually call a physical one, like a physical one.

Jennifer Logue:

I mean, I've been so is that cheating?

Michael McDonald:

is that is that I mean? That's exactly.

Jennifer Logue:

I mean it's, it's another tool, right? So it's just spur thoughts. You know, maybe we didn't use the exact word, but it just got our brains out of this little silo we were in it.

Michael McDonald:

It was like a trigger for new thoughts, um, but oh, you, a lot of people, a lot of creatives, use drugs, right, whether it's it's it's marijuana or it's alcohol or heavier, to come up with their ideas. You know, you hear all these like creative legends, like during enlightenment drink a lot of coffee and tea, right, because it it got their brain and gets you ramped up. Uh, and we're still using, right, I drink a lot. I'm a very caffeinated person, so I have to do, I have to sit there and give credit to coffee and caffeine is like oh, that's like creative. There's my creative inspiration you asked for earlier. That answers one question. Is caffeine?

Jennifer Logue:

caffeinate what's caffeinate?

Michael McDonald:

what's caffeine? It's not just like I feel tired, I just love the taste and it just keeps me energized and going. We all play the same role in everyday life. I mean it's all the same thing. This is no different from using a computer like my. My grandfather used a press and he like changed each type type letter out there, you know, to go on a Gootberg to write out. Now they did. They're like they went to a better Heidelberg. Now they're doing digital. Now it's like now they use here, now they're using their iPhone or do a brochure. I mean, at some point, like you're sort of thinking and it's going to spit out and you're literally just going to in your mind. It's going to melt with the technology and just think of an idea and it just manifests itself. Is that cheating?

Michael McDonald:

You know, because you don't have to put all the hard labor in and you have to learn how to use the press. That's kind of like the argument I have with all these people that may say, oh, it's cheating. And well, the computer like the type, the photographs. Did you shoot it to come with the idea? Did you create the film? Okay, you're a film person. Did you actually manufacture the film about the cameras? You create all the lenses and all that, like no, you're using. Basically, that's ai in a different type of technology. It's just that this ai is just much smarter than that. That's where everyone's scared.

Jennifer Logue:

It's really, really, really smart and we don't know what to expect either. Like we don't know where it's going. Really, it keeps getting smarter and smarter, and smarter, but we don't know. It's like what's gonna happen next? It's a-.

Michael McDonald:

Yeah, I just hope a bad actor comes on scene and like takes it and like uses it to destroy us. That's my biggest fear. That's my fear. With AI is the the kind of destruction mode of some an actor going there and like sending it on a wild goose chase and it's going out just destroying humanity.

Jennifer Logue:

Oh, let's hope that doesn't happen. I'm going to be optimistic.

Michael McDonald:

That's what scares me. I mean, I'm optimistic about AI, everything but that.

Jennifer Logue:

I'm just going to hope that we all get led to a utopia. I want to be an optimist with it.

Michael McDonald:

I love that, the way things just go. Now I don't know about that.

Jennifer Logue:

On the subject of education, do you think people should still go to school to study art the way you did? How do you think AI is going to change the way we create in the future, and how?

Michael McDonald:

people prepare for careers in the arts? Um, I think there's a few different. Um, I have a few different feelings about that. Like I you spoke about this a little earlier is it really depends on the individual and their circumstances? Um, something considered is like the person's finances, right, their parents usually the parents and the parents afford to send them to a college. Are they mentally and physically prepared to go to college and study something? I don't know what? Like you're talking about 16th century. You're like hey, I want to be a doctor. Not everyone knows I want to be a doctor. I want to be a lawyer. Not everyone knows who want to be a lawyer. Like I kind of knew I wanted to get an artist designer. When going there I was, luckily I had that in my head.

Michael McDonald:

Most 16, 17 year olds don't know that. And are they right for that? Like some people are like, and can they afford to give up four to possibly eight years of their life going to school, making no really contribution to society other than smudging off their parents or something, or financial aid they're going to have to pay back, or a scholarship, which not many people get. It's not for everyone. Some people just want to be a mechanic, right? I mean, I find that some of my friends are mechanics Actually you need a mechanic are mechanics.

Michael McDonald:

Actually, you need a mechanic probably more than you need a designer, in my opinion. It's true my, my friends up here go from doctors, lawyers, to like people who own little restaurants that sell cheesesteaks yeah, yeah I don't care, because I I mean they make great food.

Michael McDonald:

You know, it could be fast food or it could be a really good healthy meal. I have a few of those friends and you know I mean, when I go on a street sweep on the street, having them at a bar and a beer, I'll talk to them. I have no problem. I don't think I'm better than them, but they're making a contribution, probably more contribution than some of the people that are lawyers. So you have that aspect. And then you have entrepreneurs like you. Look at some of the most successful, uh, wealthiest people right now. They're all dropouts from college. So was college right for them?

Michael McDonald:

you know, I mean, even though I can't stand the guy elon musk, he lasted how long? Six months steve jobs a year and a half. Bill gates, I nobody go for like two weeks and they go out and start my own business.

Michael McDonald:

I have this great idea and they become multi-billionaires. Um, not that it was easier, it was some of us luck, but they didn't. They didn't finish their college. So who are they or who might have reached someone say, you need to go to college to be somebody, and then now, with ai here, I don't, I don't know if you want to consider going to college. Do you need to go? I mean, ai has democratized creativity, education, information. It's making the tool really accessible to anyone at a really low cost. I mean it costs you can get ChachiP4 for 20 bucks a month. That's like what it's like 50 cents a day. I think most americans can afford that if they want to get into it and they can figure out what they want to do.

Michael McDonald:

They become you almost become a brain surgeon it's pretty wild, but I mean, it's opening the door for anyone. So if your college isn't for you, and even you don't become a mechanic, you don't know, use chat gp to figure out. You know what you want to do. You might say, hey, I want to decide, I want to make a new brick pattern and make bricks for buildings like I have this formula that I created, you know, with the help of chat gdp, and my research is telling me that, that I can make x amount of money a year doing this, that some people's just about money. That's driven by money. How much money can I make a year? Should be, you know, should I work at walmart and I? Okay, I can make 24 grand a year versus I? I can't be a doctor, I don't have that degree and I'll have, like the you know um brains about it to do it. Uh, you kind of have to find your sweet spot. I think this opens up a lot more doors and opportunities for people opens perspective.

Jennifer Logue:

Um, how do you see ai shaping the future of art and design? What's and what's the most exciting thing for you about the future of art and design with ai of art and design?

Michael McDonald:

with ai. I think it's the potential to open up and transform art design again by democratizing education and like, like information, like me, like I've had and still having, like it's like I'm a child all over again, exploring things for the first time. When I'm working with gender of ai, um, whether it's music art I'm not really a music person when I go play around music, it's like oh, that's easy, okay, I know how I figured out how someone else did something, uh, and then I can decide if I want to pursue it any further. So I'm not wasting time with all these different pursuits, right? Uh, this really doesn't do it for me, whether it's music or art or, you know, uh, research or education.

Michael McDonald:

Some people find a little niche within politics and, like they become a little kind of sidebar reports. You watch all these people on youtube. I'm not saying a lot of them are good, but it's interesting to see that, like they're not just some news reporter with 30 years experience telling you what you should do or not do, or vote for and not vote for. They give a slightly different perspective and it just opens your mind and I think this is the idea of it opening up your, your mind, uh, and not making someone like we become very rigid in our age and kind of the way we were brought up and then our society.

Michael McDonald:

Depending on where you live, you have this kind of rigid. You become very rigid in your thought process and what you believe and not believe. This kind of like throws things wide open and you have to accept it and be open to it. I think that's the most exciting part about AI generally from my perspective. I know other people may have different perspectives good, bad and ugly but I think that is where the future is is just opening up, expanding your mindset. Well, thanks for having me, jen. It's an interesting and fun conversation.

Jennifer Logue:

I've learned a ton and I'm sure listeners will have a lot more insight when it comes to how they approach AI themselves.

Michael McDonald:

It helps them yeah.

Jennifer Logue:

And thank you so much for tuning in and growing in creativity with us. I'd love to know what you thought of today's episode, what you found most interesting, what you found most helpful. You can reach out to me on social media, at Jennifer Logue, or leave a review for Creative Space on Apple Podcasts so more people can discover it. I appreciate you so much for being here. My name is Jennifer Logue and thanks for listening to this episode of Creative Space. Until next time you.