AI Graphic Tools For A Non-Designer: Practical Advice For Startups

What the Money? is a boutique consultancy bureau focused on fintech and Web3. We closely watch developing trends in the modern technology sector. However, our team lacks technicians, back-enders, and designers at the startup level. Being far from a pure tech background, we are welcoming and eagerly exploring AI-powered technologies and tools to facilitate solving our current tasks, mainly tackled by web and graphic design.

This article is a reflection of our personal experience with several AI tools. We specialize in producing various digital products based on research and business intelligence, with the help of up-to-date online design and data management tools. We always continue improving the tactics and technics of packing and delivering WTM reports and news in the best and most attractive way.

That’s why we came to AI as a prospective solution to accelerate the ‘graphic design part’ of our daily routine.

What digital products do we seek AI-graphic tools for?

Mini reports or country reviews. Their main aim is to provide a basic understanding of the key financial, economic, and technological aspects of a country — for example, check out the UK or South Africa and many more on the WTM website:

While formatting these reports, we utilize and explore new AI tools. For instance, we are currently training a built-in AI tool in Notion (Notion AI, lifehack #1) to transform it into a WTM team helper that assists us with formatting mini reports, which we publish on the Notion platform. Thanks to the assistance of AI, our mini reports are turning out well, and Notion inherently provides the necessary and intuitively understandable functionality for customizing pages to meet any requirements. The size and format of these reports don’t require any additional external tools.

For context:

• Mini reports are a pleasant prelude to transitioning to WTM extended reports.

  
  

• Extended reports (coming soon) are approximately 50–70 pages and require more attention to designing and formatting.

This task led us to ask: Can we use AI tools to format reports where the work would be mainly in the hands of AI?

WTM news channel on Telegram is dedicated to posting top fintech news and monthly digests. Occasionally, we curate specific posts from various news sources, which raises the question of how to gather all the essential information while adhering to the post's character limit. We aim to provide detailed descriptions for each case, but it can be challenging to fit within the constraints.

To address this challenge, we have explored AI text-generative tools like ChatGPT and Jasper.

These tools have proven to be highly effective in handling the summary task. They excel at condensing information and generating concise yet informative summaries of the original content. Leveraging such tools allows us to present comprehensive coverage of fintech developments while ensuring our posts remain concise and engaging for our audience.

The task we are solving

Given: a completed text document formatted according to all the principles of readable material.

Needed: an AI application or applications where we can upload the entire document as a whole (not in fragments, this is important) and, as a result, get a designed report. The AI provides its vision for fonts, color schemes, possible decorative elements, build-up infographics, and paragraph formatting while preserving all the links embedded in the document. Essentially, we need a ready-made template with variable pages and basic settings (fonts, colors, decorations) into which we can simply upload a document as a file with a single click and obtain a finished product as output.

And now, let’s delve into the search for the AI tool we need. In addition to personal experience, this article briefly overviews the AI apps market.

Testing AI tools: a step-by-step guide

Step 1: Taking the straightforward approach

I started with the chart collecting the most popular AI-powered apps categorized by type.

I reviewed and tested all the applications in the “Text” category. Some allow users to create a collaborative workspace, while others help build email newsletters and generate texts. None of them came close to my task. The main drawback was the inability to work with my existing document. Therefore, let’s move to the next step.

Okay, no success with text, but I also need to add images to any formats of our work to make products more understandable and attractive, and of course, I want my visual elements to be unique. For this purpose, I found Fotor, an AI tool that creates images out of text and has different image styles to make precisely what you want.

Step 2: Basic browser search

Here, I tried different combinations of words to search for the specific application I needed. It started with “AI that works with existing text,” “can design the text into a report,” “can transform the text into a document,” “find design solutions,” “work with fonts and highlights,” and so on. I came across various interesting AI applications, but once again, none of them were suitable for my needs. The issue persisted: AI was eager to write the text for me but did not format it appropriately.

I found one helpful tool that helps in building up an infographic. It is called Visme, consists of templates, and is similar to Canva. I watched a tutorial on how to use it, and its interface is very user-friendly and intuitive; there is an extensive collection of elements so that it can be suitable for any kind of business or personal use. I worked here to create the infographic for our Green eCommerce article, and it took me a little time to make the requested image.

Step 3: Changing tactics — presentation format comes into play

I recalled encountering reports formatted as presentations rather than in A4 format, and the market for AI applications for presentations would surely not disappoint. There are indeed numerous options available, catering to various preferences. Some even function as plugins in Figma. However, the major obstacle I faced was that only some applications I found could seamlessly insert the entire document text into the slides while evenly distributing the information. They would truncate the text or suggest again, “Just provide the idea, and I will handle everything for you.” No, thank you. Automation is necessary; I need to prepare to painstakingly insert the text into predefined cells myself, as it would be a time-consuming task.

Later we decided that the presentation format differed from how we wanted to see our extended reports. However, this type of info presentation can find a place in our other tasks, so I suppose that SlidesAI is a tool that deserves attention. It is a plugin that works in Google Workspace, and it creates slides out of your text and fulfills it with design and pictures by installing an AI machine. I downloaded the first part of its article to see its power. SlidesAI transformed my text into a minimalistic presentation where I could work with design:

Step 4: AI for AI — not a tautology but a necessary solution

I came across a resource that gathered various AI tools and categorized them. The user had to enter keywords to search for the desired AI app, and it displayed subscription costs and brief descriptions. Desperation and inflated expectations played a significant role here. I tried numerous combinations and spent hours searching, but my AI grail remained elusive.

Step 5: Acceptance

By then, the most suitable tool (not AI) for us is Canva. Yes, it has some AI tools, but they are simple and less potent than a self-sufficient application. However, it has enormous potential, like Google Docs, but in addition to text, it has different decorative elements. Now we are developing the design of our extended reports, monthly digests, and social media posts here, and its page with Brand Templates is beneficial. Its primary disadvantage is that it takes time to upload all text by dividing it into pieces for each page and adding space.

The search is not over; we hope to find the perfect solution for our task. After all, new AI solutions are emerging right before our eyes. Of course, I may have missed out on a particular application or failed to recognize the potential of a specific tool.

Wanted: AI solution for our request.

Reward: infinite gratitude and Part II of this story with a mention.

‘What the Money?’ is a fintech consultancy bureau that advises on doing business globally and talks about digital innovations, payment landscapes, and e-commerce. WTM releases monthly digests, regular reports, and articles on hot topics in these industries.

Find available reports on the website, or follow WTM socials to learn more fintech insights and news: official blog, LinkedIn community, and Telegram-channel.