What is an AI design tool and why beginners need to use it

Many new designers are experiencing multiple situations where they have a lot of ideas in their heads but don't know how to express the design. Fortunately, the rise of artificial intelligence technology is providing designers with a new way to help with design inspiration. Turning your ideas into reality with the help of an efficient AI design aid is now the new way to solve problems. These AI tools not only help designers to transform the ideas in their heads into actual designs that can be seen, but they can also help designers to optimise personalised colour schemes, design web pages, optimise images and create unique and creative works. It can even provide an in-depth analysis of existing designs. The addition of Artificial Intelligence opens up endless possibilities in the field of design.

Best AI design tools for beginners

1. Wegic

Wegic is a newly developed code-free development platform based on GPT-4o. Users directly describe what they want their website to look like through an intuitive chat-based interface. When Wegic generates the website we can take on the role of "Party A" and directly say anything we want to do, such as changing the theme colour of the website, or adding some animation effects to the images, etc. Wegic will make the changes according to our requests.

Pros:

• Wegic has three attractive IP characters that add to the overall interactive experience.
• The Edit Mode provides a highly flexible and user-friendly interface that enables users to easily customise and edit website content.
• Users can request changes to a web page or its specific section by talking to the AI.

Cons:

• Wegic has just been in use for a short while and many of its features are not particularly well developed. For example, when making changes again, you need to say exactly what the changes are in detail, and the general description may not be what you expected.

Applicable Crowd:

• Whether you're an entrepreneur, or an artist or an independent writer or a non-profit organisation, Wegic AI can achieve your goals at the lowest possible price!

Pricing: New users have 70 credits for the free generation of 1 website or 7 revisions. Follow-ups cost $9.90 a month

2. Midjourney

Midjourney is currently the most versatile AI design tool for designers in the design field. It helps designers create any image, including drawings, vector graphics, icon sets, surreal photos, and more. Users can directly enter text descriptions to generate high-quality images that fit the theme. Currently, the latest version of Midjourney v6 Alpha can do more. In earlier versions long text detailed descriptions had led to discrepancies in results. But with v6 it is now possible to understand complex descriptive instructions more accurately. It also allows the user to include hexadecimal colour codes or colour names in the prompts.

Pros:

• Midjourney is the most widely used AI design tool on the market today, so it has a large and active online community where users can share creations and hints.
• Midjourney is able to generate not only traditional drawings and vectors, but also create icon sets and surrealistic photographs, catering to designers' needs for different styles and types of images.
• Designers who use it during the process can keep their Midjourney conversations private, increasing design security

Cons:

• According to numerous user feedback, Midjourney requires a Discord account. And it offers a small selection of plugins.

Applicable Crowd:

• If you need to plan creative projects, you can choose MidJourney. If it's just about turning imagination into reality, then it might be too surreal.

Pricing:

• Free, plans start at $10 per month.

3. Uizard

Uizard is an AI-driven design software that allows users to design web apps, mobile apps, websites, and desktop software through an intuitive drag-and-drop interface. Uizard offers a rich library of templates, making it easy to pick and choose the design that suits your preferences. In addition, it has a unique feature that allows users to upload hand-drawn sketches and intelligently convert them into usable wireframes.

Uizard may feel very much like Figma or Adobe XD in its use, but Uizard is much easier to use than them. Users can choose from hundreds of design elements or create your design from scratch. Either way, Uizard has you covered.

Pros:

• Uizard is very intuitive and easy to use - just drag and drop, so even new designers can get started.
• The user-friendly interface simplifies the design process and makes design work more efficient and intuitive.
• With hundreds of templates to choose from, users have a wide range of design options. And Uizard offers countless design elements

Cons:

• Some users have noted that Uizard currently only offers square/rectangular shapes, and adding more shape options could enhance the tool's versatility.
• While Uizard offers a free plan, it is limited to a maximum of 2 projects and 5 screens per project.

Applicable Crowd:

• Uizard is suitable for students who are just starting to learn the design skills of a design professional, and it's easy to build great websites or apps with Uizard.

Pricing:

• Free, with plans starting at $19 per month.

4. Designs.ai

Designs.ai is an AI-based online design platform that offers a range of design tools to help users quickly create a variety of designs. It has a user-friendly interface with versatile AI templates and editing tools to create icons, logos, social media graphics, presentations and more. Perfect for beginners.Design.ai has a range of design elements and an extensive template library to help you get started quickly.

Pros:

• Designs.ai has a simple and intuitive interface, which makes it easy to create designs without having too many professional design skills or being a non-professional designer at the moment.
• One of the reasons Designs.ai is so popular with start-up companies is that it automatically generates a range of logo designs for you to choose from, based on the name of your company and the type of industry you enter.

Cons:

• Users have limited control over complex designs that may appear similar to other users' designs.
• Since it doesn't focus on out-of-the-box images, it may not produce unique visuals.

Applicable Crowd:

• Startups as well as beginners and non-designers for users who don't have professional design skills but want to create professional designs. Much-needed users looking for logo models, Designs.ai offers AI tools to help users quickly realise their creative vision.

Pricing:

• Free, paid plans start at $19 per month.

5. Adobe Firefly

If you're studying design professionally, you're no stranger to Adobe and its innovative range of products. Adobe Firefly, part of the Adobe Creative Cloud, offers powerful AI support features for a wide range of users who need technical assistance in their creative work. It is capable of creating striking text effects, enabling text-to-image conversions, and recolouring vector graphics to create colourful colour variations. While Firefly is exclusive to subscribers to Adobe's cloud service, it is also available to users as a free web-based application.

Pros:

• If you use other Adobe tools as well, Adobe Firefly is tightly integrated with Adobe's flagship apps and Adobe Stock for a seamless creative experience.
• The Adobe Firefly web service, now available globally, supports text prompts in 100 languages and a user interface that supports 20 languages, including German, French, Japanese, Spanish and Portuguese.
• It enables generative recolouring and easy swapping of colour palettes on uploaded SVGs.
• Adobe says Firefly creates work that can be used for commercial purposes and includes metadata to prove its AI-generated parts, helping to protect artists from copyright issues.

Cons:

• According to user feedback, Adobe Firefly's generation can be slow compared to some other AI drawing software, especially when working with complex vector graphics and icons.
• Although you can make quick edits in the generative fills, the tools are still limited.

Applicable crowd:

• Firefly is definitely an ideal choice if your previous design software is Adobe XD, Adobe PS, Adobe Illustrator.

Pricing:

• Firefly has two plans, free and premium. Free subscribers are entitled to up to 25 generator credits per month, while premium subscribers get 100 credits per month, unlimited use of Adobe fonts without watermarks, for $4.99 per month.

6. Autodraw

AutoDraw is an online drawing tool developed by Google Creative Labs based on artificial intelligence technology that helps users create visuals quickly and easily. The software is used differently from other AI tools in that the user simply draws anything to the best of their ability, whether it's a cat, a house or anything else, and AutoDraw will attempt to recognise the user's intentions. After recognising it, the software will provide a range of relevant professional drawings for the user to choose from. This tool is available for all platforms and users can easily download their work in PNG format for various creative projects.

Pros:

• Users can draw the graphics they want on their own, and Autodraw can turn your random doodles into a work of art.
• A large number of high-quality graphic materials drawn by artists are integrated, and users can use them directly or combine them with their own sketches.
• AutoDraw runs on any device with a web browser, including smartphones, tablets, laptops and desktops!
• Authodraw is completely free to use.

Cons:

• AutoDraw is mainly suitable for user-drawn sketches and simple clip art, and may have limited functionality for more complex designs and drawings
• Users can draw or add shape fills, but can't add much else
• The output format is very limited and can only be downloaded in PNG format

Applicable crowd:

• You can use AutoDraw for instructional presentations. Or use AutoDraw to quickly sketch out ideas and concepts in brainstorming sessions.

Price:

• Free

7. Khroma

Khroma is an AI palette generation tool that helps users create and explore colour schemes through artificial intelligence technology. For designers who are often looking for the ideal colour scheme for their projects, Khroma offers a great solution. With Khroma, 50 preferred colours are first selected, and then the tool creates colour combinations, full palettes showcasing images of these colours based on these colours. With marked favourite options, Khroma offers even more varied colour schemes.

Pros:

• When users find SVG code they like, they can copy the SVG code to implement it in a web project.
• AI-generated images based on tagged favourite colours
• Once the palette is generated, you can copy the hex code for colour implementation.

Cons:

• Khroma is mainly focused on generating colour schemes and may be limited in other design features.
• According to extensive user feedback, it takes up to 20 minutes to generate a palette with Khroma as it goes through an AI training process to create the colours

Applicable crowd:

• Designers who need to quickly generate and test different colour schemes, especially in brand visuals, web design, etc.

Price:

• Khroma is free to use.

8. DALL-E 3

DALL-E 3 is a text-to-image generation model released by OpenAI in September 2023 that represents a major advance in image generation technology. It generates images with superior image clarity, diverse style generation capabilities. and high fidelity to textual cues. Whether you want a colourful personalised image or a professional corporate logo design, it will meet your needs.

Pros:

• Generating image quality is more clear and detailed than other AI tools. Supports higher resolution images up to 2048x2048.
• Compared to DALL-E 2, it provides an image editing function that allows users to edit and adjust the generated images. It also improves the speed of image generation.

Cons:

• DALL-E 3 also suffers from generating blurry or distorted images and does not understand some abstract concepts well enough.
• Extensive use of the images it generates may raise copyright, ethical, and social impact concerns. It may be used to produce false information or counterfeit works.
• Compared with DALL-E 2, it is more expensive. It is currently only available to some users and cannot be used publicly.

Applicable crowd:

• More suited to the film, game and other media industries, DALL-E 3 allows users to pre-visualise scenes and character designs, reducing production costs and increasing productivity.

Pricing:

• DALL-E 3 requires an Open AI subscription, including the latest version of ChatGPT, which starts at $20 per month.

What You Can Do with AI Design Tools

When a novice designer is working on a design, he or she may not be familiar with the workflow or may not yet know how to transform imagination into reality. This can be automated by applying artificial intelligence graphic design tools. But these tools are not perfect - they can be confusing when working with complex instructions, produce meaningless text or make small errors, so they can be used only for creating simple basic tasks. Specifically, the following tasks can be accomplished:

• AI can automatically generate design elements such as layouts, colour schemes, typography and composition based on user input. This automation speeds up the creative process and can provide designers with inspiration.
• AI image editing tools can retouch images, change backgrounds, identify objects and correct colours. These tools allow users to improve the quality of images and manipulate them in a variety of ways without a lot of manual work.
• AI design tools help user experience Designers prototype, user test and optimise interfaces.
• AI website design allows small and micro businesses that can't code or can't afford high-priced designers to find the easiest solution. And it reduces the design cycle, compared to the 1-3 weeks it used to take to design, Wegic takes only a few minutes to do the job.

For example, the Wegic website displays the complete personal website design in front of the user. If you are not satisfied with your existing visual material, you can use the AI capabilities of the Midjourney platform to create new images or layouts, customising the style, colour palette and level of detail you want. Once created, you can import these AI-generated design elements into the Wegic editor to build the perfect visual piece you need.

AI design tools FAQ

• What is the best free AI website design tool?

Wegic stands out as the best free AI website design tool that offers intimate dialogue, and a user-friendly interface for AI design tools. And it can accurately create quality websites based on the dialogue

• What is the cost of an AI design tool?

The cost of an AI design tool depends on the specific tool and subscription plan. For example, Adobe Firefly starts at $20.99 per month, while DALL-E 3 requires an Open AI subscription with the latest version of ChatGPT. Subscriptions start at $20 per month.

• Can AI tools be used for graphic design?

Yes, AI tools can be used for graphic design. Adobe Firefly is an example of a tool that can enhance SVG, photos, etc. using generative AI techniques and text-to-speech prompts.

• What are the best AI tools for beginners?

Wegic and Uizard are great AI tools for beginners that offer easy-to-use interfaces, useful features, and photo generation, editing, and downloading capabilities.

Conclusion

Artificial Intelligence is not only capable of creating stunning designs, but is gradually transforming the way the graphic design industry works. AI design tools are capable of providing personalised solutions based on the user's specific goals. For example, if your goal is to build a website of your own, then Wegic is definitely the way to go. If you want to increase the efficiency of your design workflow, a tool like Adobe Firefly can be the perfect partner. For situations where you need to find colour inspiration for new branding or marketing materials, tools such as Khroma can provide a wealth of colour schemes to help you create a visual design that matches the ethos of your brand.

As AI technology continues to advance, design tools are expanding and deepening their capabilities. They not only provide creative inspiration, but also offer strong support during the design execution process. Whether you are a professional designer or a novice just starting out, these tools can be a powerful assistant for you to improve your design ability and realise your creative vision. However, the purpose of AI design tools is not to replace designers, but to empower them with more capabilities to make the creative process smoother and freer. As these tools continue to evolve, we can expect them to play a bigger role in the future of design work and create more possibilities.