Page 8 - Adnews Nov-Dec 2022

Behind the Cover
IDEA 04
www.adnews.com.au | November-December2022 8
inspirinIdea
A cover
made from
Dall-e
The creative contingent
All systems are go on the hoest new Creative in the agency - the AI.
of adlan
Insight
d
i
W
ating
hile
i
s
t
h
t mi
gh
t no
e
b
meaning of life, it does create one
heart of the industry. To
mean image from just a sentence.
t kn
ow
the
e
fully em
It’s divisive, it’s controversial, and no one really knows what it’s future will
h
d
b
old,
m
r
a
uch
lik
you think about it.
hen
c
with a mission to create
g
c
o
v
e
t
h
i
e the
r
est
of
20
s
,
a
n
2
2, w
picks an
a
g
e
We’ll create a mosaic of dierent AI
g
ene
rat
ed
ima
ges
to
cr
r
inspired by the top 52 AdNews stories
month AdNews hand- Or, we sum up the year with one
of the year. (Think Beeple mosaic)
e
n
c
standalone image. (eg: the image to
th
e rig
ht
wit
h th
eh
was made from AI; A fatigued, burnt out human, with hands covering his
s
,
e
y
t
ands
o
ea
te
our
co
o
w
.
we called on BMF to
Adnews Cover — The Brief
Inspiring the AI
Initial thoughts on the Brief?
How do you sum up 2022 in one image? This year has been a big one, transitioning back to the office and normal life, experienc- ing, and witnessing global events, and of course, inflation. it’s been a year of us running head-on into the future. And the advertising industry has felt this so acutely with the rise of AI and its place in creativity. So, when we pitched an AI generated cover, the air almost got sucked out of the Zoom. Do we dare use a tool that every creative feels at least a little bit threatened by? But this feeling made us real- ise that creativity and AI has been one of the biggest industry topics this year. The automation revolu- tion is coming, and how do us creatives survive?
How did you know you had landed on the best concept? We had a few concepts that we threw out into the mix. We explored global events, inflation, the WFH wars, the talent drought and our collective crash and burn(out). We fiddled with the prompts (a designer and a retoucher try to write instructions for an AI... sounds like the start of a bad joke) and rewrote and umm’d and ahh’d and scratched
T
look into the future.
its magic
e.
his month,
a
c
h
ver
ork
fac
)
n the
face
our heads. Each image that came up wasn’t quite right...until one was. The image AI created is equal parts horrifying and captivating. It was intriguing too. Why is there ash on her face? What would her name be? Why did AI generate a woman? Is it a cave woman or just a picture of us at midnight during a pitch? So many questions...and ones that are indicative of the philosophy and ethics of machine creativity.
Biggest challenges with the whole process?
By far, the biggest challenge was how we had to flip our brains during the concepting process. When the AI conjures an image out of the ether, it references the deep and murky depths of the internet - so there's no knowing what the result will be. It meant that scamping, designing with lockups and all things art director became a lot more open. Rather than "this is what the image will look like", the focus was on "this is what the image will be". Usually changing the former affects the latter. However, when working with AI, it’s the reverse. We had to master the art of AI prompt writing and finding the best AI generator platform (there’s a lot of duds out there.
What were the biggest hurdles to making this a reality?
The trickiest thing was getting the prompts right for the AI to interpret. The slightest tweak can create vastly different results. It took us a lot of tweaking and refining to be able to bring together the biggest topics affecting the industry into one image.
Who from the team was largely involved?
Fiona McLeod and Angus Whalan.
Tell us about the shoot/production. Who shot this and how did it come together?
No one shot it, or was it the AI? This again, is one of the next great creative philosophical questions. We didn’t shoot it, but we gave the AI a very specific description of what to generate. From there, we picked our favourite, and ran it through an AI to complete all the retouching (such as extensions and increasing resolution). All we did was click “Go”
Credits
Chief Creative Officer: Alex Derwin
Creative and Design Team: Fiona McLeod and Angus Whalan
Head of Art & Design: Lincoln Grice Finish Artist: Jayde Chan
Production Director: Karen Liddle
PR: Abigail Dawson and Elliott Holohan
A limited edition bespoke AdNews ‘A’ trophy is also up for grabs for the winner.