Part 3: Noxivision — AI-Assisted Designs with Midjourney.
Date published: 01/02/2024
In the third part of our series on AI assistance for pharma marketing, we explore AI's potential to create campaign artwork for a new product.
Every marketing campaign needs to have visually appealing content. In this phase of our test project, we focussed on designing campaign imagery for our fictional night vision product “Noxivision”. As the head of the design team at Iguazu, I was excited to see how AI could contribute to this process.
AI image generation in Midjourney
After testing Dall-E, AdobeFirefly and Lexica, I decided that the current leader in the world of AI image generation was Midjourney. We used the product taglines generated by ChatGPT, “Illuminate your path with Noxivision” and “The power to see in the dark is now yours”, as our Midjourney prompts.
As a designer, I found it challenging to find suitable images for our campaign. Using the tagline alone did not give me what I was looking for - being more specific with descriptions led to better results.
From left to right images created in Midjourney using the prompts. (1) The power to see in the dark is now yours. (2) A glowing large eye in the background, made of light, beam of light going through eye, people walking on path, medical, pharmaceutical, voxel style, abstract, light colours. (3) A photorealistic image of a bottle of eyedrops that glow and light up the dark. product shot. ultra detailed. (4) Create a realistic image of a woman looking into a dark street where she looks the dark is illuminated by natural sunlight. Sunlight comes from her eyes, she can see in the dark. ultra detailed. (5) A medical image showing eyes that have night vision from a medical drug. ultra detailed. (6) Healthy eyesight photorealistic (7) Marketing concept art for illuminate your path. (8) Marketing concept art for illuminate your path, positive and optimistic happy colours. (9) The power to see in the dark is now yours. (10) Illuminate your path with new night vision pharmaceutical.
What do you think of the results?
While it was easy to find images that were close to what we wanted, it was difficult to get the exact image we needed. It would be more effective to have a designer work on the final 10-20% to ensure that it meets requirements. Many of the generated images were not suitable for our campaign and looked more like they belonged in a sci-fi film. Additionally, some of the images had distorted people, which was not ideal. However, we did find some images that were campaign-ready.
We created a poster to market our product using AI-generated content. It didn't take long at all!
The AI images were then given to our design team along with the previously created AI-assisted marketing content to see what they could come up with in a short space of time.
The combination of AI + a skilled designer on the finishing touches gave us some striking design concepts.
What do you think of the results?
I can see the potential in using these tools to plan out concepts before investing time in designing or creating art direction for a photoshoot. As a designer, I found it easier to create better prompts as I could visualise what I was looking for.
So what if you aren't a designer?
What if someone who is not a designer needs to brief a creative agency? I conducted an experiment asking AI to create briefs for a creative agency to create campaign artwork. The AI tool we used was ChatGPT to create art direction for a campaign based on the information we provided about the product Noxivision.
Here is what it gave us:
Option 1: “For this concept, we need an image of a dark forest trail with a trail of glowing Noxivision pills leading the way. The pills should light up the path, creating an inviting and captivating ambience. The image should inspire a sense of guidance and confidence.”
Option 2: “We want an image that vividly demonstrates how Noxivision illuminates one's journey in the dark. The concept should feature a pair of hands holding a Noxivision pill, with the pill radiating a beam of light that extends to light up a dark, winding path.”
I then gave the prompts to Midjourney to create some concept artwork. Although they are not good enough to be campaign-ready.
These when paired with the art direction would be fantastic briefs for a creative agency, like Iguazu, to be able to get started on creating imagery for the campaign.
“A photorealistic image of a dark forest trail with a trail of glowing pills leading the way. The pills should light up the path, creating an inviting and captivating ambience. The image should inspire a sense of guidance and confidence.” Created in Midjourney
“An image that vividly demonstrates how Noxivision illuminates one's journey in the dark. The concept should feature a pair of hands holding a Noxivision pill, with the pill radiating a beam of light that extends to light up a dark, winding path. The image should be dynamic and convey the idea of a guiding light..” Created in Midjourney
Summary
The speed at which AI image generators are improving is remarkable. It's clear to me that they will play an important role in the design process, from briefing and concept art to even campaign-ready visuals. However, there are still some issues that need to be addressed such as copyright, security, and editability before they can be fully integrated into the process.
Lessons learned
Like all AI programs we have tested you get out what you put in and perfect prompt crafting for Midjourney is a skill in itself.
Lack of editability: As far as design is concerned, the frustration with Midjourney is that the images are not editable. This made it difficult to modify or reuse the artwork. Updates are being made to several programs to allow editing in the future, the current real-time AI image editing is not up to par with the desired standard.
Better for complex concepts: For simpler images, the amount of time invested in using AI to create them is sometimes not worth it, as a designer can create a specific icon much quicker. For more complex and conceptual artwork, AI image creation can be incredibly beneficial and save us a lot of time. With over 20 years of experience in pharma product branding, Iguazu has seen many strange and wonderful brand imagery, and AI could be a great tool for visualising these obscure concepts.
Essential tool for the future: It's worth noting that when I first tried these AI image generators, (Dall-E, Midjourney, Adobe Firefly to name a few) they were quite new, and I was testing the early access versions. I have since revisited some of these programs and found that the results were even better.
It is still very early to say what AI will be capable of. AI has enormous potential in the creative sphere. Future developments will foster exciting and flourishing creativity.
Tools used: ChatGPT, Midjourney
About the Noxivision project
At Iguazu, we've explored AI assistance in pharmaceutical marketing and created a series of articles on the topic using our fictional product “Noxivision”. Check out our previous articles to learn more:
We have more articles planned in the series, which will explore the intersection of AI and pharmaceutical marketing in more detail. Make sure to follow us on LinkedIn or sign up for our newsletter for future articles.
At Iguazu, we have been exploring how artificial intelligence (AI) can be used to assist in marketing pharmaceutical products. We have created a series of articles that explore this topic - in the first part of our series, we looked at how AI can be used to create a brand identity for a new product. We used ChatGPT to generate names, taglines, and content for a new ophthalmics product that allows you to have night vision. After some experimentation, we settled on the name "Noxivision" and the tagline "Illuminate your path with Noxivision." Find out how this project started by reading our previous article Part 1: Noxivision — An AI-Assisted Pharmaceutical Product Launch & Marketing Campaign
About Iguazu: We are a digital agency specialising in delivering tactical marketing solutions to the healthcare and pharmaceutical industry. Find out more about what we do
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