Designing a poster with AI

Taking responsibility in creative tasks

Mackay, Jem ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0007-1979-118X (2025) Designing a poster with AI. In: Digital Leaders AI Week, 13th - 24th October, Online presentation.

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Abstract / Summary

Jem Mackay, Course Leader for the MA Film & Television (Online) at Falmouth University, presented a reflective session exploring creativity, authorship, and responsibility in the age of artificial intelligence. The talk began with a simple design task—to create a poster for a university debate titled “Will AI shape or shatter creativity?”—which evolved into a research investigation about the creative process between humans and machines.

Mackay introduced a structured prompting method called CRAFT EQ, standing for Context, Role, Ask, Format, Tone, Example, Questions. This framework encourages critical and transparent use of AI tools, ensuring the human retains agency and reflective control. Through iterative experimentation in ChatGPT and design tools, he produced several poster concepts—the “split face,” “hooked brain,” “tug of war,” and “Trojan horse”—each acting as cultural metaphors for our ambivalence toward AI.

Mackay emphasized the importance of human judgement and iteration, referencing scholars such as Donald Schön, Neil Cross, Arthur Miller, Ethan Mollick, and Shannon Vallor. He argued that AI can assist but not replace human creativity; responsibility and authorship remain human. The finished poster became both an artwork and a research artifact, illustrating collaboration between human insight and machine capability.

The session concluded by discussing implications for education, industry, and society—urging educators to prepare students for creative work alongside AI and to foster ethical reflection on authorship and originality. Mackay highlighted future plans to develop teaching resources from this research and recommended readings by scholars such as Lev Manovich, Selwyn, Chan, and Lee.

Item Type:	Conference or Workshop Item (Lecture)
Subjects:	Creative Art & Design Communication Communication > Advertising & Marketing Education
Department:	School of Film & Television
Depositing User:	Jem Mackay
Date Deposited:	06 Nov 2025 14:12
Last Modified:	06 Nov 2025 14:12
URI:	https://repository.falmouth.ac.uk/id/eprint/6236

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