Designers Fight Back
April 21, 2025
A few quick notes from the intersection of AI, marketing, branding, and small business.
Designers fight back. Following up on Friday’s post where I mentioned the “action figure in a blister pack” meme that’s all over LinkedIn thanks to the insane visual capabilities of ChatGPT’s 4o model, designers have put a flag in the, let’s say, AI created sand. Check out this post on Creative Boom. Designers are hand-drawing the action figure packs. I love the fight, and many of the action hero designs are great, and much more visually varied than the meme.
Adobe claims its agents are coming. Call me a skeptic on this one. Yes, I’m sure Adobe has big plans, and we’ll get some AI support when using their tools. My feeling, however, is that they’ve lagged way behind in innovation ever since sewing up a virtual monopoly in creative tools. If they continue lagging, it’s a certainty that other creative tools will become much better. Maybe they already are! Nonetheless, here’s an article from 4K Shooters that likely comes directly from the Adobe hype machine.
More from the Adobe machine: Imagine creating designs, videos, or pitches faster than you thought possible, with tools that actually do the heavy lifting for you. At Adobe, they are imagining a world where agentic AI works with you, not for you, empowering professionals and solopreneurs alike to scale your creative potential. Adobe Express has an agentic guide that simplifies content creation, turning your ideas into stunning visuals—including animations in minutes. Creative Cloud and Photoshop feature agentic tools like Distraction Removal, plus a new Actions Panel debuting at MAX London that suggests—and makes—context-aware image edits.
Meanwhile. Riley Brown keeps up his non-stop posting on LinkedIn. His app VibeCode is due in the App Store on May 1. In this post he demos creating an app in a few minutes using just a couple of simple text prompts. I doubt we’ll be seeing this kind of magic from Adobe anytime soon.
