When it comes to client delivery, there's no substitute for human creativity and critical thinking. We're a long way away from artificial intelligence replacing designers and creatives.
An AI tool won't listen to your clients' needs, assess their customer base, and develop a brand, website, or campaign that resonates with them. But, for an expert designer, it's a powerful extension of their skills and capabilities. And it can save you a heck of a lot of time.
As an agency owner, adding AI design tools to your stack will make your business more efficient and competitive. And it'll streamline your design process, allowing you to take on more clients and deliver high-quality work at a faster pace.
Let's take a look at some of the best AI-powered design tools the market has to offer.
An AI design tool is a type of software that uses artificial intelligence and machine learning technology to assist designers in a part of their creative process. They range from simple design assistants that suggest color palettes and fonts, to more complex tools that can generate entire designs based on user inputs and preferences.
Some AI design tools are standalone applications, while others are integrated into existing design software like Adobe Creative Cloud or Canva. They can also be web-based, making them accessible from any device with an internet connection.
AI design tools for digital agencies are similar to other types of AI design tools. The main difference is that they're built for collaboration and scale — a team of designers can use them to streamline their workflow and produce high-quality designs at a faster pace.
Broadly speaking, AI serves three purposes in the web design process:
AI has different use cases at various stages, from initial brainstorming and ideation to final execution and delivery. For instance, a design team could use AI to analyze a client's brand and audience, then use another AI tool to come up with multiple design concepts. They could then test each and work on the final product collaboratively.
93% of web designers use AI tools for at least one part of their workflow. That's because they significantly speed up the creation process and reduce creator's block by quickly handling tasks like generating unique product descriptions or marketing materials. This reduction in manual effort leads to faster turnaround times and higher productivity from your design team.
They also enable personalization at scale. AI can analyze large volumes of data, which you can use to tailor your clients' marketing content closely to individual user preferences. In addition to delivering them a better end product, you're helping them increase their engagement and customer satisfaction.
As a result, agencies using AI generally report better client retention. We can attribute this to their ability to meet client objectives more effectively and consistently showcase their impact through detailed reporting and data collection.
But these tools aren't without their challenges. As an agency owner, you'll have to invest time and resources into researching, selecting, and training your team on the right AI tools that fit your agency's workflows. You'll also have to ensure your chosen tools integrate seamlessly with your existing design software, improve your process without adding extra steps, and fit into your budget.
There are multiple factors to consider when evaluating AI design tools for your agency. Here are some key points you have to keep in mind:
You'll also have to look at feedback and reviews from other agencies using the tool. If possible, get a demo and test the tool with a few members of your organization before full-scale implementation. That way, you'll have valuable insights into real-world usage and make a more informed decision.
Midjourney is an innovative AI tool that transforms textual descriptions into visual images. It uses advanced machine learning techniques to interpret and visualize concepts provided by designers, making it a powerful tool for creative visualizations.
Notable features include:
Midjourney's ability to generate high-quality, detailed images from simple text prompts is particularly useful for agencies that need rapid concept visualization and creative campaign elements.
Its features support marketing, graphic design, and even e-commerce, by providing tools that can swiftly produce compelling visuals for social media posts, advertisements, and product showcases. And its flexibility in image customization and iterative refinement makes it ideal for agencies that require unique and eye-catching images that stand out in competitive markets.
Midjourney offers several subscription plans:
These plans vary in terms of the number of images you can generate and the level of access to premium features like higher resolution and image variations.
Runway is a versatile platform that integrates various AI-powered tools to facilitate the creation and manipulation of videos, images, and audio content. It's designed to streamline the content creation process, enabling both novices and professionals to produce high-quality digital media.
Its standout features include:
Its broad range of functionalities that cover nearly every aspect of digital content creation — from video and audio editing to complex 3D modeling and AI-driven automation — make it ideal for agencies developing campaigns with videos, animations, and other dynamic content.
It's particularly beneficial for teams looking to reduce the time and effort involved in content production, while also providing options for high customization and brand alignment. Plus, real-time collaboration supports agencies with distributed or remote teams, enhancing productivity and project management.
Runway operates on a freemium model, with basic access provided for free. Detailed pricing for more advanced features and higher usage limits involves a credit system, costing $0.05 per second of video generated by Runway Gen-2. More comprehensive pricing details are available directly from their website.
DALL-E 2, developed by OpenAI, is a sophisticated AI model that generates detailed images from textual descriptions. It builds upon its predecessor by offering higher-resolution images and more realistic and context-aware modifications.
Its core features are:
DALL-E 2 is especially beneficial for creative and web design agencies that need to produce high-quality and diverse visual content quickly. Its ability to generate images from text can significantly speed up the creative process, from initial concept to final product visualization.
The inpainting and outpainting features are excellent for creating unique marketing materials, product designs, web pages, and engaging digital content that helps your clients stand out.
Access to DALL-E 2 requires purchasing credits from OpenAI, though specific pricing details are complicated — you can find them directly on OpenAI's platform.
Magnific AI is an advanced AI-powered platform designed to upscale and enhance images. It uses generative AI technology to transform any image into a higher-resolution version, adding detailed enhancements that are controlled by the user through various customizable settings.
Special features include:
We recommend Magnific AI for agencies that spend a lot of time creating professional presentations and marketing materials, either internally or with clients.
Its ability to upscale images without losing detail makes it ideal for prepping high-quality visuals for print or digital ads and web pages. And its customization options allow creative teams to fine-tune images to meet specific aesthetic needs and client demands.
Magnific AI offers several pricing tiers:
Annual subscriptions offer two months free, enhancing cost-effectiveness for long-term use across your organization.
Krea AI is a creative platform that leverages artificial intelligence to generate high-quality visuals from user inputs. It allows users to upload images and videos, train the AI, and generate visuals directly on a digital canvas, catering particularly to fields like graphic design, product photography, concept art, and architecture.
Features include:
Krea AI's capabilities make it an excellent tool for web design, creative, and marketing agencies looking for rapid prototyping and creative image manipulation. Its real-time feedback system allows for quick iterations, making it perfect for dynamic project environments where speed and precision are crucial.
Krea AI offers a free version with basic features and daily usage limits. The unlimited version (with no limits on daily usage) is available for $30/month. Annual subscriptions save 20% on costs, making it a cost-effective solution for long-term use.
Khroma learns your clients' color preferences and generates personalized color palettes based on inputs from your design team. It's designed to streamline the color selection process by offering an infinite array of color combinations tailored to clients' tastes.
Special features include:
Design agencies of all types and sizes benefit from its ability to rapidly produce diverse and aesthetically pleasing color schemes based on learned preferences. It facilitates a scalable design process, provides inspiration, and ensures brand consistency across client projects. Its user-friendly interface and AI-driven suggestions make it an excellent tool for both seasoned designers and those less experienced with color theory.
Kroma is free to use, making it accessible for individuals and agencies alike.
Looka Logo Maker is an AI-driven platform that allows users to create custom logos and complete brand identities with ease. Utilizing generative AI, Looka streamlines the logo design process by generating a variety of logo options based on minimal user inputs such as company name, industry, and style preferences.
Our favorite features are:
If you produce professional logos and branding materials for your clients, Looka is an ideal tool for your services. Its AI-driven tools reduce design time significantly while still allowing for customizations to match specific brand requirements. Agencies can leverage its capabilities to service more clients efficiently or to offer rapid prototyping of brand concepts.
Pricing for your agency is as follows:
Stable Diffusion is an open-source deep learning model that generates high-quality images from textual descriptions. It operates on a latent diffusion model (LDM) architecture, which includes a variational autoencoder and a U-Net for generating and refining images.
Your design team can use this tool for tasks like inpainting, outpainting, and image-to-image translations guided by text.
Stable Diffusion's best features include:
Stable Diffusion efficiently produces diverse artistic and commercial imagery, significantly speeding up content creation for marketing, advertising, social media posts, and web design projects. The ability to customize and integrate this tool within various workflows also makes it highly adaptable, depending on your specific agency's needs.
The tool's team package costs $47 per month, but app design and development agencies should go for the high-end tier for $147 per month (to beta launch apps within the platform). Model training costs $1 each, but there are price breaks for large-scale agencies training thousands of models for clients.
Generated Photos is an advanced AI tool that provides high-quality, hyper-realistic images of human models. It allows users to generate faces and full-body images with a high degree of customization in terms of facial features, expressions, ethnicities, ages, and clothing. The platform is designed to produce diverse and copyright-free images suitable for various creative and commercial projects.
Standout features include:
Generated Photos is particularly valuable for agencies involved in advertising, gaming, media production, and personal branding. It allows for the rapid creation of diverse and realistic human images, reducing the need for traditional photoshoots and expediting content creation.
You can also use it in the web design process for SaaS clients, ecom brands, and other businesses that need avatars for chatbots, virtual assistants, and guided site tours.
The full version of the platform costs $199 per year, but there is also a free version available with limited features. For agencies, there are custom pricing options available depending on the number of users, images, APIs, and custom-trained datasets needed.
VanceAI is a platform offering a suite of AI-driven photo enhancing and editing tools. It provides capabilities such as image upscaling, sharpening, denoising, background removal, and photo restoration. These tools utilize advanced deep learning algorithms to achieve professional-level results quickly and easily.
Its best capabilities include:
VanceAI is fantastic for agencies thanks to its broad range of tools that simplify and automate the photo editing process. It is particularly useful for enhancing image quality when designing ecommerce websites, creating marketing materials, repurposing content for web and social platforms, and restoring archival photographs.
VanceAI offers a flexible pricing model, including a free tier to test its capabilities and various paid plans based on image credit usage. The paid plans provide access to more advanced features and higher processing limits.
Uizard is a revolutionary platform that simplifies the process of creating user interfaces. It is designed to help both seasoned designers and novices alike, enabling rapid creation of wireframes, mockups, and prototypes. Uizard’s AI capabilities transform text prompts into detailed UI designs, convert sketches to digital format, and adapt screenshots into customizable mockups.
Its standout capabilities are:
Uizard is ideal for agencies because it accelerates the design process, from ideation to prototyping. Its intuitive interface and AI-enhanced features allow teams to quickly turn concepts into usable designs, making it an excellent tool for rapid prototyping and collaborative design efforts.
Uizard offers a freemium model. For agencies, it's priced at $12 or $49 per creator per month, depending on the level of usage and support needed. Larger agencies should opt for the higher tier to get priority support and unlimited everything.
Smart Upscaler, developed by Icons8, is a web-based tool that uses advanced artificial intelligence to upscale images while preserving their quality. It enhances low-resolution images by intelligently analyzing and filling in details that are typically lost in smaller files.
Features include:
Smart Upscaler is good for agencies that need high-quality image outputs for digital or print media. It is particularly useful for enhancing image assets for high-resolution displays or marketing materials. The ability to upscale images quickly and in batches makes it an efficient tool for dealing with large volumes of visual content for clients.
Pricing varies wildly depending on the number of images and the credit type needed for upscaling. Most products range between $9 and $15 per month, with an unlimited plan costing $99 per month.
Colormind is an innovative tool that uses deep learning to generate color palettes. It can extract color styles from a variety of sources like photographs, movies, and popular art, adjusting daily with new datasets for fresh inspiration.
Its notable features are:
Colormind is ideal for design agencies looking for dynamic color inspiration. Its ability to generate cohesive color schemes quickly makes it a valuable tool for speeding up the design process, ensuring brand consistency, and experimenting with color theory in projects.
The best part about Colormind is it's free to use with no hidden costs. No matter the size of your agency, it's a great resource to have in your design toolkit. Designers can install it themselves if they like.
Fontjoy leverages deep learning to create harmonious font pairings, simplifying the design process for both seasoned designers and novices. The tool uses a neural network to analyze and match fonts that complement each other in style, weight, and contrast, offering a pleasing aesthetic balance.
Fontjoy's core features are:
Fontjoy is a great tool for agencies that need to quickly identify effective font pairings for various design, website, and branding projects. Its AI-powered engine provides a fast, intuitive way to explore and visualize potential font combinations, decide between web-safe fonts, and streamline the creative process and aiding decision-making.
Like the previously mentioned tools on this list, Fontjoy is free to use, making it accessible for freelancers and agencies alike without additional investment.
Designs.AI stands out as a multi-functional platform that supports a broad spectrum of design needs, integrating seamlessly into the workflow of digital agencies that require quick turnaround times and consistent, high-quality results.
It leverages artificial intelligence to facilitate the creation of logos, videos, speeches, and more, making professional-quality design accessible to users of all skill levels, particularly beneficial for marketers, small business owners, and content creators.
Its best features include:
Designs.AI's comprehensive suite of tools cover most aspects of digital marketing and content creation. It accelerates workflows by automating the design process, from initial concepts to ready-to-publish content, enhancing productivity and allowing agencies to scale their creative output efficiently.
It's also useful for communication and client reporting — you can use it to generate visuals and content for client presentations.
While the basic functions are available for free, advanced features and capabilities are unlocked through paid subscriptions, offering greater flexibility and access to premium options.
Fotor is an all-in-one photo editing solution that simplifies the process of enhancing and designing images. It features an intuitive interface that makes user adoption quick and seamless. It utilizes advanced AI to offer tools like photo enhancement, background removal, and object removal, alongside traditional editing tools like cropping, resizing, and color adjustment.
Its defining features are:
We highly recommend Fotor for agencies that need to create high-quality visual content, from social media graphics to professional headshots. While these are tasks that take hours manually, Fotor can accomplish them in minutes with just a few clicks.
Pricing: Offers both free and paid plans, with the Pro plan starting at $4.99 per month (billed annually), providing advanced editing features and more extensive cloud storage options.
Dream (by Wombo) allows users to create unique artworks using AI. Designers can input a text prompt and choose from various art styles, and the tool generates artwork in seconds. It's designed to be user-friendly and accessible to everyone, regardless of their artistic skills.
Features that stand out to us are:
This platform is ideal if you're looking for a tool that facilitates fast conceptual visualizations or wish to produce cartoon-like animations without extensive time investments. Its ease of use and the ability to generate high-quality, diverse artworks make it suitable for enhancing digital content, marketing materials, and social media posts.
The tool offers a free version with basic features, while more advanced features, including additional styles and effects, are available through a subscription model starting at $4.99 monthly or $59.99 annually for premium access.
NightCafe is an accessible AI art generator that uses multiple AI models to create unique art from text prompts. It's designed to be easy to use for both beginners and professionals, providing a platform for users to create, share, and discuss AI-generated art.
Its top features include:
NightCafe is great for agencies because it's easy to set up and use. The ability to rapidly generate diverse artistic concepts, and the extensive customization it allows, make it good for producing visual content to go alongside written copy.
NightCafe offers several plans, ranging from $4.79/month for the AI Beginner plan to $39.99/month for the AI Artist plan when billed quarterly.
Playground AI is an innovative platform that enables users to create and edit images using AI technology. It's designed to make the process of generating and manipulating images easy and accessible for everyone. The tool allows for the mixing of real and synthetic images to create unique visuals and offers extensive customization capabilities.
Our favorite features of this AI design tool for agencies include:
We love Playground because it simplifies the creation of complex images and graphics, which can be particularly useful for social media posts, marketing materials, and client presentations. Its ability to generate photorealistic images and its easy-to-use interface make it perfect for agencies that need to create high-quality visuals quickly and collaboratively.
Playground AI is free to use, but its best agency features come with the $12/month Pro plan, which comes without limits and includes features for high-quality downloading.
Lunacy is a versatile graphic design software developed by Icons8, available for Windows, macOS, and Linux. We love it for its robust vector graphic capabilities, allowing designs to scale without quality loss, making it comparable to other professional tools like Adobe Illustrator or Sketch.
Key features include:
Lunacy's combination of powerful features makes it an excellent option for design agencies looking to enhance productivity without increasing overheads. Its ability to handle complex vector tasks, along with real-time collaboration and an extensive built-in asset library, ensures that agencies can deliver high-quality designs efficiently.
The platform's graphics subscription package only costs $9.99 per month, and it comes complete with unlimited access.
Let's Enhance is an AI-driven suite of tools designed to enhance image quality, making it highly suitable for professionals and businesses who need to upscale images for print or digital use. It's especially beneficial for enhancing low-quality photos (including user-generated content) and can upscale images up to 16 times their original size without losing detail.
Its best features include:
Let's Enhance is perfect if your agency deals with high volumes of low-resolution images. Whether it's enhancing images for ecommerce, marketing materials, or client presentations, this tool provides a fast, efficient solution to improve visual content quality.
Let's Enhance offers a flexible pricing structure. The free plan provides 10 free credits, while paid subscriptions (starting at $12 per month) offer more features and 100-300 credits, plus batch processing.
Canva is a comprehensive design tool that integrates AI technology to streamline and enhance the graphic design process. In addition to its world-class design features, it also offers a variety of AI-powered features that cater to client work.
Key AI features within Canva include:
What makes Canva so special is it enables rapid creation of on-brand content, which is crucial for maintaining consistency across marketing collateral and client presentations. With tools like Magic Resize and Brand Kit, agencies can quickly adapt designs for various platforms and campaigns without starting from scratch.
Canva Teams and Pro use per-user pricing, while Canva Enterprise offers a custom solution with advanced features for large-scale agencies and larger organizations. See Canva's pricing structure here.
Topaz Labs offers a suite of AI-powered tools designed to enhance photo and video quality, making it a strong candidate for agency use, especially for those involved in photography and videography. The tools available, including Sharpen AI, DeNoise AI, and Gigapixel AI, work together to improve image sharpness, reduce noise, and upscale images without losing detail.
Topaz Labs' standout features include:
Topaz Labs' products are particularly notable for their user-friendly interface which simplifies the photo editing process. This is complemented by the ability to function as standalone applications or as plugins within Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom, ensuring seamless integration into existing workflows.
The pricing model for Topaz Labs is straightforward, with Photo AI combining the features of several apps into one platform for $199, which includes a year of unlimited upgrades.
DreamStudio is an innovative AI-driven platform developed by Stability AI, designed to generate high-quality images from textual descriptions. Utilizing the Stable Diffusion technology, DreamStudio provides a versatile and intuitive environment for creating detailed artworks, offering features like inpainting, outpainting, and advanced image upscaling.
DreamStudio's key features include:
DreamStudio is especially beneficial for agencies that deal with visual content creation for marketing or advertising purposes. With DreamStudio, agencies can quickly produce high-quality images without the need for graphic design expertise, saving time and resources.
The company operates on a credit system, where each image generation consumes credits based on the complexity and the resolution of the output (approximately $1.18). This flexible pricing structure can fit various budgets and usage rates, making it accessible for both small projects and large-scale operations.
Adobe Firefly is the generative AI tool developed by Adobe, designed to enhance the creative process by generating images, videos, 3D models, and more from text prompts. Part of the Adobe Creative Cloud, Firefly integrates with other Adobe applications, including Photoshop and Illustrator, to provide a seamless user experience across various media types.
Its key features include:
If your agency already uses Creative Cloud, Firefly is a must-have addition. By speeding up some of the most time-consuming facets of the design process (like creating custom graphics and illustrations), Adobe Firefly can help maximize your team's productivity while still delivering unique, high-quality, human-made designs for your clients.
Firefly offers a free tier with limited capabilities, which can be expanded by purchasing additional credits. Full access is integrated into Adobe Creative Cloud subscriptions, providing a more comprehensive feature set for professional use.
Scribble Diffusion transforms basic sketches into detailed images. Developed by Replicate and based on the Stable Diffusion model, this open-source platform is accessible to any designer who wants to experiment with AI-enhanced image creation.
Key features include:
We love Scribble Diffusion because it provides a digital canvas for design teams to experiment with new styles and techniques. It also enables your content team to produce unique visuals for blogs, social media, and marketing collateral.
Scribble Diffusion is free to use, so trying it (or suggesting your designers give it a go) costs nothing but time. Its open-source nature also allows for customization and improvement based on user feedback, making it a versatile and continually evolving tool.
AutoDraw is a unique web-based tool developed by Google Creative Lab that combines machine learning with drawings from talented artists to help users create images quickly and easily. As you start to sketch, AutoDraw's AI suggests completed drawings to enhance your creations, effectively transforming rough doodles into polished art.
Key features include:
If creator's block is ever a problem, AutoDraw can help in the early stages of design, providing inspiration and variety to your sketches. And it's free to use, making it easily accessible for anyone looking to experiment with AI-powered design tools.
Microsoft Designer is an AI-powered graphic design tool that integrates seamlessly into the Microsoft 365 ecosystem. It's designed to help both professionals and creative enthusiasts quickly create high-quality images, social media posts, invitations, and more using generative AI technology like DALL-E.
Its best features include:
Microsoft Designer is currently available in a public preview, which is free to use. This accessibility allows users to experiment with its features and provide feedback to improve the tool further.
While Jasper is primarily a content creation platform, it streamlines the copywriting aspect of web design and development, making it an essential tool for designers as well. The tool has dozens of pre-built templates, making it easier to create engaging content for social media, email marketing, and even website landing pages.
Some of Jasper's top features include:
Jasper is the ultimate tool for aligning your copywriters with your design team and pumping out iterations of written content fast. Its Teams plan starts at $125/month, and larger businesses can use its Business plan, which is custom-priced. Therea re no limits on output capacity, making it a cost-effective choice for scaling content creation.
Bing Image Generator, also known as Bing Image Creator, is an AI-powered tool developed by Microsoft that allows users to create images from text prompts. It utilizes advanced AI models like DALL-E 3 to generate high-quality, photorealistic digital pictures, drawings, and more.
Features include:
Bing Image Generator is particularly useful for creating quick visual content directly from the web browser, enhancing productivity and creative workflows for both personal and professional projects. It is a free tool, providing an accessible way for anyone on your team to experiment with AI-generated imagery.
As with any new technology, there are a few best practices to keep in mind when incorporating AI-powered design tools into your agency's workflow.
Here are our most essential tips to consider:
AI tools mean a lot for agencies. They streamline processes, increase productivity, and allow for more creativity and innovation (at a faster pace).
With Duda's AI assistant, you can:
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