I love visual thinking, but I can’t draw
"I can't draw."
"My designs look terrible."
"I don't want to spend time learning a design tool."
I hear stuff like this a lot. Heck, for the most part I can relate. Ask me to draw something without peeking at examples or tracing and the result will be U-G-L-Y.
Fortunately, my job is explaining ideas visually, not making fancy drawings.
While it's natural to think you must be a designer to do this stuff, you really don't.
Look at these simple illustrations and don't tell me you couldn't re-communicate them on a whiteboard with ease.
All that said, it's still something that holds many folks back, especially those who aspire to make comics or fancy metaphors. It is harder to create them when you don't know your way around a pencil or design tools.
So.
If you have great ideas, and you can picture them in your head, but when you draw them they come out like… sad spaghetti.
The good news is recent AI updates help bridge this skill gap.
AI is not great at coming up with concepts (yet). That's where my course & community can help (shameless plug). But once you have the concept, it's great at helping you make it look better in various ways.
You can take your wobbly sketch, or even just a description, and turn it into something clean, quirky, slick, comicky… choose what you like!
Here's an idea I intentionally drew super duper ugly and then used ChatGPT 4o to transfer style.
Here are some examples of prompts and what they did to my original (ugly) sketch.
Make this look like it was drawn in a student’s notebook with a ballpoint pen. Use ruled paper texture, wobbly lines, and simple stick-figure-like elements.
Convert this into a clean, high-contrast infographic. Use flat vector shapes, bold typography, icons, and clear labels. Minimal color palette, very modern.
Make it feel like a single comic book panel. Use halftone dots, comic-style text bubbles, thick outlines, and dramatic contrast.
Style this like a quick whiteboard drawing using thick dry-erase markers. Messy arrows, smudges, and uneven lines. Keep it spontaneous.
Use fast, expressive ink lines with loose watercolors. Focus on movement, energy, and imperfect detail like a travel sketchbook.
Pretty cool, right? But let’s be honest about the limits too.
It’s generic
AI-generated visuals often look… well, very AI-generated.
Your brain sees it and skips right over it, because it’s seen dozens like it before.
People are developing filters in their minds to ignore visuals that feel too synthetic.
Which, to me as an artist, is kind of encouraging. It reminds me that authenticity still matters. People enjoy seeing original work made by other people.
It lacks consistency
Even if you use the exact same prompt, AI might give you wildly different styles.
Which is great for exploration, but a nightmare for branding or series work.
Example: I took 3 sketches of mine and gave the same prompt.
As you can see it lacks consistency in all areas: the background, the font, the lines.
That means it’s nearly impossible to develop a consistent visual identity with using AI.
But if you’re just trying to get ideas out into the world?
It’s a great.
You can test styles, generate rough drafts, and visualize ideas in a way that gets attention, even if you don’t have design skills.
If you’re a thinker, teacher, or communicator, AI lets you focus on the idea and concept while helping you with the execution.
Or if you’re a visual artist just starting out, and want to understand in which direction to develop your style, AI can be a great helper.
Just remember:
The idea is still king and the concept its queen. The design and the AI - they’re just here to serve them.
Alright, for all the paid subscribers of the newsletter, let’s dive into this week’s visual template and prompt. For this issue, I decided to break down one of my most viral visuals of all time and templetize it.
I call this template: Act Despite
The prompt gives clever and fun concept ideas. Have a blast and share below what you create – I’d love to see it.
Let's dive in.