Designing in the Dark: Why I’m Moving Away from AI Art

One of my goals recently has been to move away from AI generated art for my book covers. I’ve talked more about it in a different post, but I thought I’d share my latest efforts. The image attached to this post is a simple but (I think) fantastic cover for my upcoming book Subterrania. I know it isn’t jaw dropping, but I spent a few hours on it, watched some YouTube tutorials, and I’m pleased with how it turned out.

I realized that my covers don’t need to be highly detailed paintings or masterful artwork. In fact, as I took a look at my own little library, I realized that some of my favorite covers are ones that didn’t go overboard. That’s why I went with the design I did. If you look carefully, it still tells a story, though.

I don’t want to spoil anything, but I thought I would share some of the inspiration behind the design. The main image features an eight toothed gear cracked in half by a glowing blue line. In Subterrania, the main character joins a secret organization called the Engineers. The eight toothed gear is their symbol.

As for the crack, it represents several aspects of the novel. Divide, hidden light, and so much more. Like I said, I don’t want to spoil anything, but I thought it was a fun touch to add to the cover.

In any case, as an author, I think the effort to create needs to be celebrated. AI is an incredible tool, but it needs to be used responsibly. If we rely on it too much, we can ultimately end up stunting our own growth. I could have stuck to AI. It gets the job done hours faster than I can, yet it feels hollow.

There’s been a lot of talk about AI these last few years. I’ve shared some of my thoughts before about it, and I’ve been taking steps to rely on it less and less. I’ve never used it to help me write my books, and I realized that I should try to avoid using it in any creative endeavor.

Like I said though, AI is an incredible tool. In fact, it still played it’s part in this new cover design. Instead of asking an image generator to create something for me, I used a combination of AI models to help me analyze my book, find the most common or recognizable symbols, then brainstorm a plan. For example here’s the prompt I used:

“Create a detailed text guide on how to design a book cover (just the front image and text) using adobe illustrator. Assume I have intermediate experience with the program. The key here is that I want to design something simple and clean for a YA sci-fi novel I wrote. Before you write your guide, let’s brain storm a design concept. For starters, here’s a list of iconic symbols I could use:

8 Tooth Iron Cog Tattoo
A Cyber Arm
A small Round Robot
Trains
Earthquakes
Tunnels

Take all this info and ask me a series of questions for me to answer, then use those answers to generate some ideas. From there we will create a illustrator guide.”

Instead of using AI to generate everything for me, I used it as a sounding board. When it came back with a few ideas, I took bits and pieces of them, strung them together, then asked it to create a guide on illustrator. Ultimately, it’s illustrator guide didn’t give me an easy to understand process, but it did create a scaffolding to start from.

I write all this to share that, even as an artist/author, I think AI has massive potential. The truth is, it’s up to us to decide if that potential is damaging, or building us. What I want to know is: What do you think? Do you use AI often? Have you found ways that it helps or harms you? The worlds technology seems to be ever evolving, and I enjoy participating in that evolution. Like it or not, AI is here, but what are your thoughts?

(p.s. I’m officially half-way done with my final edit of Subterrania! Stay tuned, I’m sure it’ll be out soon!)