My graphic design journey started on Fiverr. I used to sell banners and background removal services for $5. I am not the best designer. Far from it. However, tools like Photoshop and Canva helped me create decent graphics by editing my way through their premium templates.
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Even with these shortcuts, it was still a lot of work. I used to spend hours tweaking graphics, adjusting colors and fonts, exploring new presets, and watching YouTube tutorials on how to create specific effects in Photoshop.
Now, with AI tools for graphic design, I can spin up on-brand banner variations in just a few clicks. I’m also able to give more detailed design briefs to my team, do minor edits myself, and overall, deliver higher-quality designs in half the time.
But which tools give you the usable results and, most importantly, the best ROI? I tested the top 8 AI tools for graphic design to find out.
In this article, I’ll walk you through the exact testing process, including the prompts I used and the results, and whether I would recommend using AI graphic design tools at all.
Table of Contents
- Why use AI for graphic design?
- How I Tested the Best AI Graphic Design Tools
- Best AI Tools for Graphic Design
Why use AI for graphic design?
Here are the top 3 benefits of using AI for graphic design.
Faster Time to Design
According to HubSpot’s State of AI survey, over 40% of marketers use image and design generators like DALL-E and Synthesia. The most common reason? To help them generate designs faster.
Here are the most common graphic design use cases I’m seeing for AI:
- Quick edits: AI is great at resizing, cropping, removing, or changing backgrounds, and making other quick edits to designs.
- Media content: 38% of marketers use AI to create image-based and video content for social media, print, and more. Tools like ChatGPT, Veo-3, Canva, etc., can render scenes faster, create assets, and generate AI videos.
- Personalized AI images: With AI, you can easily create dynamic assets for customer segments or seasonal holidays.
- Image-based trends: AI can help you hop on trends like Studio Ghibli art or create custom memes quickly.
Expert tip: I spoke to Robert Avila, an art director from Platinum Black, who shared how he uses AI to create animations: “You can prompt your AI tool to render an entire scene or create assets to composite your scenes manually. When inevitable revisions arise, it’s much faster to update them through AI prompts rather than re-drawing an entire scene.”
Remove Creative Blocks
From creating design briefs to helping me choose color palettes, I find that AI is a great strategic partner. AI is also quite helpful when I have creative fatigue.
For instance, if I am stuck on a social media campaign design, I can prompt AI tools to give me five different concepts. I can even generate creative briefs by providing the tool with additional context, such as design references, rough sketches, or campaign documents.
Creative Experimentation
A/B testing graphics is a huge part of my job. I’m constantly testing which graphics perform better on social media or ad variations that give us better ROAS. With AI, I can quickly spin up dozens of on-brand designs and choose the best based on audience response.
The best part? AI tools help me experiment with color combinations I’d have never considered and wacky, trend-based layouts. Some AI-generated designs have actually been top performers.
How I Tested the Best AI Graphic Design Tools
I tested AI graphic design tools with two optimized design “mega” prompts. Basic prompts weren’t giving the output I wanted, so I decided to go all out.
Each prompt covers a common marketing use case and includes detailed instructions to keep the model on track (AI can be notoriously distracted!).
Prompt #1 — Blog Banner/Featured Image
“Design a clean, modern blog banner for an article titled ‘The Rise of AI in Graphic Design’ using a minimalist layout (1200x628px) optimized for web and social sharing. Prioritize a bold, high-contrast headline in a contemporary, tech-inspired font. Use a subtle background texture or gradient that enhances, but doesn’t compete with, text legibility. Incorporate understated AI-themed motifs like neural nodes, abstract chips, or creative lightbulb icons. Maintain visual harmony with generous white space and balanced composition. Enhance the title’s visual impact through font weight, spacing, or soft shadowing, and ensure strong text-to-background contrast for clarity. Export as a high-res PNG or JPG.”
Prompt #2 — Social Media Post
“Design a high-impact Instagram post (1080×1080 px) to announce a new AI-powered design tool, featuring the bold tagline ‘Design Smarter. Not Harder.’ in large, modern sans-serif typography with layered effects, dimensional shadows, or motion-inspired blurs for depth. Use a vibrant, futuristic background with gradients (blue, purple, teal, pink), abstract shapes, and subtle tech motifs like HUD overlays or network nodes. Include the product logo or name subtly in the bottom corner, with an optional CTA like “Try It Free Today.” Ensure clean balance, mobile readability, and visual clarity on both light and dark interfaces. Export as a high-res PNG or JPG under 1MB.”
Note: I also considered other factors like cost, ease of use, design capabilities, and copyright usage before arriving at my final list of AI-based graphic design tools below.
Pro tip: If you want to learn how to write prompts like these, you can read my list of the 33 best ChatGPT prompts for inspiration.
