A stronger case for AI

If you’re someone who still wavers on exactly how useful AI can be in your daily life, this issue may nudge you toward the acceptance stage. It seems to me as if somewhere along the way during the rollout of AI, we started to view it as either “all-in” or “avoid at all costs.” I was in the latter category for quite some time. Beyond concerns about the environmental impact of widespread AI use, I also worried about what it would do to our collective creativity when prompts replaced pens and brushes.

On page 38 of this issue, Cole Lundstrom says it best straight from the headline of his article: “AI art sucks & I can’t stop using it.” That’s Cole’s headline, by the way — though I’d love to have written it. What Cole says aligns with my initial hesitation to use AI. That is to say, you don’t have to use it all the time. You don’t have to be all-in. Even though people are now creating art with AI, by no means does that mean it’s good art. In many cases, it doesn’t need to be. In Cole’s case, and that of most print shops, AI art has a purpose: it saves time by generating quick ideas and multiple options for customers looking for basic orders. See Cole’s article to learn the good, the bad, and the best use cases for all of the AI tools his shop has experimented with.

Aaron Montgomery also tackles the topic of AI in the workplace on page 42. In another article that came into my inbox with the perfect headline, “AI won’t save your business, but it can save your time,” Aaron lays out tactics that you can use right now that will save you and your team members’ time. Again, Aaron points out that AI should “never be your final draft. It is a starting point.”

There’s much more than AI to be found in these pages. On page 14, Liz Haas shares how to sandcarve on champagne bottles. On page 20, Susan Caldwell discusses establishing a culture of safety in sign shops. Charity Jackson shares tips for pricing and selling commercial vehicle wraps on page 26. And our apparel decoration section features Megan Griffith’s article (p. 30) on producing and selling on-demand merch for live events.

As always, we hope to share news and tips that can help you grow your business, whether that’s through step-by-step content like Liz’s sandcarving or Lon Winter’s patriotic T-shirts on page 32, or through AI use cases by Cole and Aaron. If you have tips and tricks you’re interested in sharing with our readers, either here in print or online, we’d love to hear from you.

James Anderson

Editor-in-chief