AI For Designers And Creative Businesses (Without Losing The Creative Bit)
How designers and creative small businesses can use AI for the admin around the work: proposals, content, CPD notes and client comms, with a real example.
Short answer: designers should use AI for everything around the design. Proposals, client emails, marketing content, CPD notes and project admin. The design itself stays yours. That’s the whole point.
Creative people are often the most nervous about AI, and fair enough. So here’s what it looks like in practice, from a garden designer I’m mentoring on a UK council-funded AI programme (details anonymised).
What we set up
1. A workspace that knows her business. We created a Claude Project called “Garden Design Projects” with her services, her style and her past work loaded in. Every chat starts from there, so nothing sounds generic.
2. Content from things she’s already made. She had a leaflet she’d written about why she doesn’t use plastic grass. Claude turned it into a LinkedIn article draft in her voice. She already had the thinking, AI did the reformatting.
3. Training videos into notes. A CPD video, transcribed and summarised into one page she’ll read.
4. Voice notes from site. The Claude app on her phone, so site visit notes get captured by talking instead of typing with muddy hands.
3 tips that made the difference
- Talk to it like a person. Voice prompting gave her more natural results than typing short commands.
- Use the right model. The everyday model for most jobs, the bigger ones only for complex builds. Which Claude model when.
- Tell it when it’s wrong. Specific feedback (“too formal, shorter, no jargon”) makes the next draft better. Teach it to write like you.
What to keep human
The creative decisions, the client relationship and anything with your name on it. AI is brilliant at the admin that’s stopping you from designing. Let it have that.
Where to start
Set up the workspace first: your first 30 minutes with Claude. Then pick one piece of content you’ve already written and let AI reshape it.
If you want it built around your studio with me beside you, that’s my 1:1 AI consultancy. And for the full picture, how to use Claude for a small business.
Quick answers
Will AI replace designers?
Not the design part. AI is useful for the admin around creative work: proposals, client emails, marketing content and notes. The creative decisions and client relationship stay yours.
How can a designer use AI without it looking generic?
Give it your own material first. Load your services, style and past writing into a Claude Project, and ask it to reshape things you've already made rather than invent from scratch.
What's the easiest AI win for a creative business?
Turning something you've already written, like a leaflet or a blog post, into social content in your voice. You already did the thinking, AI does the reformatting.