I’ve recently been experimenting with Midjourney, an online app designed to create images from text descriptions provided by the user. According to their home page “Midjourney is an independent research lab exploring new mediums of thought and expanding the imaginative powers of the human species. We are a small self-funded team focused on design, human infrastructure, and AI.” (Midjourney.com homepage). As a creative designer it’s interesting to experiment with this kind of technology from both an inspiration and production process perspective. Whilst I create various pieces of digital art from my text input I am considering the following:
- Can AI computers really compete with an artistic human mind?
- Whay are the limitations in style, construction and level of detail?
- Could AI be used effectively to streamline film production or graphic design?
- How might this technology evolve in terms of quality and usage?
My initial thoughts are that AI art creation is fun and I often find myself on the Discord server “wondering what happens if I type…”. It certainly invokes a deep sense of curiousity as you add a series of phrases, words and commands to the system. I’ve only really scratched the surface in these early days of experimentation but it’s helped me to understand the process and the potential.
It is important to read Tips for Text Prompts from the Midjourney documentation library to understand how to interact with the bot tasked with creating your art and there are a series of technical parameters you can add (see Parameters to /imagine page) . Below are a series of experiments I created using simple phrases without additional /imagine parameters – just to see what would happen.
/imagine cityscape, future, futurism, blade runner, cinematic, detailed
/imagine various song names “Drop It Like It’s Hot”, “Riders On The Storm”, “Stairway To Heaven”
/imagine electronic music, synthesizer, album artwork, album cover design, detailed
/imagine electric guitar, steampunk, neon, detailed, amplifier, guitar, strings, pickups
Accessing Midjourney
A few of my design industry contacts have expressed some interest in experimenting with Midjourney. However, accessing is not as user friendly as you might imagine and the interface is farely crude – so there is a great opportunity for designer and UX/UI experts to take the lead here.
1. Discord Account
First of all you need a Discord account. Discord is a community building app both online and for download. Midjourney has a server on this app. Sign up and login to Discord to complete your first step to all things AI artwork! Where possible you should stay signed in to make the next steps easier. It would be useful to familiarise yourself with how Discord functions at this stage but it is not essential to progress. Note that both Discord and Midjourney provide community guidelines.
2. Join The Beta
You now need to go to the Midjourney homepage and use the + Join The Beta button. Accept the invite…this will automatically direct you to the Midjourney server if you have saved your login details for Discord in your browser. You will be confronted by many different options and the next step highlights a couple of very basic steps to get you processing your first AI artwork from text. Midjourney’s Discord server provides you with 25 free uses of their /imagine prompt. After this, you can subscribe to different levels of access from $10 upwards depending upon your need.
3. Basic Navigation
The image to the right provides a very basic step by step guide to getting started. Also see the Quick Start Guide. As previously mentioned, it is important to read the Tips for Text Prompts and Parameters to /imagine pages to fully understand how the bot functions and the various commands you can use to refine your artwork.
- Ensure you’re on the Midjourney server
- Click on one of the #newcomer rooms
- In the input box type /imagine, hit return, enter text
- Hit return then bot will gradually build your artwork
AI Art Discussion
In a recent discussion a former colleague from the Limerick Institute of Technology said: “”
This was my response:
“My take is this – this whole experience with Midjourney is interesting as a “thought-provoker” and a milestone for designers and other creative practitioners, for example, if you’re in the film industry and looking to generate artwork during pre-production. It could also be a starting point for someone creating artwork for a musician or band…it just feels like it will always be a tool to assist, a companion to the production of series of concepts. I must emphasise that this type of app does have considerable value but using it in the design process will not replace the need for creative human input and design education.
