Generating Creative Ideas Across Multiple Formats

As industrial designers, we constantly strive to find better, faster ways to ideate and iterate. One of the most exciting developments in design workflows recently is leveraging AI tools like MidJourney’s Edit & Retexture functionality to transform basic CAD forms into high-quality visual concepts in minutes. It was a while since I used Midjourney. But thanks to seeing one of the LinkedIn posts by Hector Rodriguez , I was itching to try it. I recently experimented with this approach using a foundational CAD model. I had made this as one of the form explorations through CAD for a coffee machine.I prompted MidJourney to retexture and visualize it in various material and finish combinations. The results? A series of diverse, photorealistic outputs that allows me to explore design possibilities I may not have considered otherwise. This workflow highlights some key strengths: 1. Speeding Up Concept Ideation: AI tools can generate multiple aesthetic directions from a single CAD base almost instantaneously. This means you can explore and test design ideas quickly, without committing hours to detailed rendering or material adjustments in software like Blender or Keyshot. 2. Streamlining CMF Exploration: Traditionally, exploring different colors, materials, and finishes (CMF) can be a long-drawn-out process, requiring meticulous work in rendering software or Photoshop. With AI, you can bypass this step and instantly visualize multiple CMF options. This not only saves significant time but also allows for rapid iteration and refinement. 3. Accelerating Design Evolution: With rapid outputs, you can visualize the potential of your design’s form and materiality in real-world contexts. This allows for informed decision-making early in the process, saving time during later-stage refinements. 4. Enhancing Creative Exploration: By integrating AI tools, we can step beyond our usual design instincts and uncover unexpected design solutions. This not only enriches the process but also pushes boundaries in creativity and innovation. For industrial designers, this hybrid approach—merging CAD fundamentals with AI-enhanced retexturing—opens up new opportunities to iterate faster and more effectively. Once the most promising directions are identified, we can dive into refining the details, ensuring manufacturability, or rendering them perfectly in Blender, Keyshot, or similar tools. This newfound workflow feels like a game-changer to me, especially for balancing creativity with tight deadlines. What do you think about this tool? #industrialdesign #ConceptIdeation #CMF #CMFExploration #productdesign #MidJourney #ai

Many of my web tools are designed to help with creative thinking (because that's what I write books about). And this is one of those. It's a tool I built for a training workshop I ran a couple of weeks ago. Research shows that humans are best at generating ideas in short bursts. Our creative muscles are built for sprints, not marathons. It also shows that perfectionism reduces idea generation and blocks flow. So I built this little tool to encourage people to focus on quantity rather than quality of ideas to get things moving at speed. This opens your mind up to opportunities you wouldn't previously have considered. Link to the tool is in the comments 👇 For solo thinkers, I recommend the 90-second and 3-minute settings. If you're working with a small group, try the longer times. But don't waste precious seconds discussing your ideas or trying to flesh them out. And definitely don't critique any ideas as you go (throw the critics out of your group and tell them never to come back). You can do all the judging you want after you've crossed the finish line. The web tool works like this: ❶ You start by picking a time for your idea sprint. ❷ This takes you to a screen with a text input box. You rattle out your basic ideas one at a time, hitting the return key between each one. The tool keeps a tally of the number of ideas you've come up with so that you can spur yourself on to beat your previous record. ❸ When the time is up, you'll see a list of your ideas that you can copy and paste into a document to explore further. I recommend that you aim for 𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗮 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆 15 𝘀𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗱𝘀. You probably won't hit it, but that's the kind of speed we're looking at here. Don't focus on detail; focus on coming up with more ideas. I built this tool the night before the workshop. We used it during the session and I can tell you that it works. It works really well! Maybe bookmark it for the next time you need to generate a bunch of ideas. Again, this was built with Cursor and includes features that I would struggle to code myself. Do you think this tool might be useful to you? What other tools would you like me to build?

Imagine turning 4 hours of tedious graphic design work into just 10 minutes of effort. Welcome to RPA + GenAI. Overwhelmed by the pile up of tasks over Thanksgiving, I was daunted by my next task. I had to create dozens of illustrations for our upcoming website release for the Groups feature. The thought of manually designing SVG graphics in Adobe Illustrator had me dreading the work. Instead, I decided to combine Robotic Process Automation (RPA), ChatGPT, and Midjourney. Combining these three, I built a workflow that generates image concepts at scale. Here’s how it works: 1. ChatGPT ideates a list of 50 image prompts. (5 ideas x 10 sections of my website) 2. RPA inputs these prompts into MidJourney with a custom style vector. 3. The system outputs rough visuals automatically while I focus elsewhere. From there, I select my favorites, pass them to an illustrator for polish, and get scalable, professional-quality vectors in no time. What used to take hours of manual effort now happens in the background. It’s not perfect, but it’s efficient. It saved me 4 hours of work in just one day. This kind of automation doesn’t just save time. It also unlocks creativity. Midjourney showed me 200 image variations for my 10 website sections. It was like having a hyper personalized Pinterest for web design inspo. #Founders #HowDoYouAI #BuildInPublic