The AI Flyer Trend: My Honest Thoughts as a Designer

An honest look at the AI flyer trend and why small businesses deserve branding that actually sounds and feels like them.

I do believe that AI is helpful for people, helpful for small businesses who maybe can't afford marketing, can't afford to hire a team, or simply don't have the time to build everything out. I get that. But I also believe that it is stifling creativity, and it's stealing authenticity.

These flyers are saying a lot about people's businesses that they might not even realize. To me, as a designer, they look cheap. They look overstimulated. I personally have ADHD and get overwhelmed easily, and seeing a constant influx of AI-generated flyers just makes me want to shut my laptop or keep scrolling. They don't make me stop and look, and if they do, it's for the wrong reasons. I think a lot of people feel very similarly, especially with everything happening in the AI space right now.

I think AI has personally stolen some of my creativity, and I think it's done the same to a lot of other artists. I recently went to an anime convention where there were groups of small businesses and independent artists, and so many of them had large signs that were anti-AI or had AI with a big slash through it. I think we are seeing a real shift, from "this is a great tool we should all be using" to recognizing what over-usage actually looks like. I've even experienced that in myself, both in my writing and in my design work.

Sometimes AI is the easy option. Sometimes it's the cheaper option. But that doesn't always make it the better option. You start getting designs that don't feel like you. You start getting brands that are either really flat or really over-complicated. Somebody's hand is warped. It just doesn't look good, and more importantly, it makes your business look cheap, especially when there are so many free and accessible resources out there. You can go on Canva and use a pre-made template. You can even hire someone: a graphic designer who's still in college, or a high school student who's interested in it, and just commission the work rather than bringing them on full-time. To me, that shows that you not only care about your business, but you care about supporting small artists and investing in what you've built. Because if you can't invest in your own business, what does that say about how you show up for your clients?

I think a lot of people are over the AI trend because it just looks tacky. And with all the resources available today, not everything has to be AI-generated. We are at an all-time high of craving human connection. We're tired of the AI ads, the AI logos, the AI banners, and the AI flyers. Everything feels so inhuman that we're hungry for something real. That matters especially here in Robertson County, where we are a tight-knit community that genuinely supports small businesses.

It also matters because AI is making a lot of people feel uncertain. Many people feel like AI is threatening their jobs or actively hurting their small businesses. Artists who produce original work are especially vocal about it; AI can essentially pull from their artwork and replicate their style without permission or credit. And on top of all that, using an AI flyer as-is just communicates that you didn't put a lot of thought into it. You didn't think about the graphic. You didn't invest time into your own business. You plugged something into ChatGPT and called it done, instead of saying, "Hey, I'm going to make something — it might not be perfect, but it's going to feel like me, feel like my brand, and look like a real person made it."

What These Flyers Get Wrong (From a Designer's Perspective)

Hierarchy and clutter.  You do not need all of your information on one post. Some of it belongs in the caption. Most graphics perform better when they are simple, easy to read, and easy to understand. One of my biggest takeaways from design school was this: if what you're designing cannot be easily read, you shouldn't be putting it out there. If people can't understand the information or quickly organize it visually, there's no point. And with the constant flood of AI flyers filling everyone's feeds, people are stuck in a scrolling loop: oh, another AI flyer, keep scrolling, because they are so visually cluttered. Simplicity is best.

Unclear communication. Who is your target audience? Who are you trying to reach? What are you promoting, and what is the main goal of this graphic? Always ask yourself: What is the purpose of this, and why am I putting it out there?

Loss of personality. AI can be a great tool, but it lacks personality; it doesn't sound like you. If you have a certain tone of voice or you naturally talk with a Southern accent, make sure that comes through in your copy. You are a small business. While you operate professionally, you still need to sound like a person, not a cookie-cutter output. Here's the reality: people can tell when AI wrote something and when you did. Especially in a small town, because they know what you sound like. If what you're posting sounds nothing like how you actually talk, people are going to notice. That's something we are really intentional about with our clients at Small Town Startup. When we write copy, we write as if we are that client. We don't want it to sound like a marketing agency wrote it. We want it to sound like the owner got on their phone and made a post.

Warped visuals and unreadable text. The warping, the confusing layouts, the fonts running all over the place, that all adds to the overwhelming feeling. And it layers on top of the clutter issue even more.

You can't really edit it. Yes, you can go back and adjust a prompt, but you can't actually go into the design and move things around the way you need to. This becomes especially difficult if you're working with a vendor or a graphic designer. (And please, stop sending us your AI artwork as a final product. I'm just kidding. I actually like it because it helps me visually understand what you're going for. But I don't want to use it as a finished product.) The best approach is to let AI generate an idea so you can visualize it, and then go in and actually build it yourself or bring it to a designer to recreate properly.

We actually had this experience with a client who wanted to replicate an AI flyer but wanted it to look better. I took the key elements and layout and rebuilt it in Canva, which is free, and it came out so much cleaner. The information was clear, it incorporated their actual photos and logo, and it pushed their branding forward in a way that felt unique and completely their own.

It can't produce print-ready files. If you're putting your design on t-shirts, hats, mugs, tablecloths, banners, anything that goes through a vendor, most of them require high-quality vector files. AI cannot create a true vector file. A vector file allows a design to be broken into individual layers so the printer can work with each element separately. If it wasn't built in software that uses layers, it's simply not going to work.

"But I Can't Afford a Designer"

I hear this a lot, and I understand it. But there are so many free resources available. Canva has hundreds of customizable social media templates built right in. Etsy has designers who sell affordable, editable graphic templates for small businesses. There really is no excuse to be using an AI flyer as a finished product.

Use AI as inspiration. Use it as a starting point. Use it to show your designer what you're visualizing. But don't expect them to replicate it exactly, and honestly, you don't want them to, because it probably doesn't look great to begin with.

One more thing to keep in mind: AI only knows what you put into it, and not everyone's ChatGPT is set up or trained the same way. If I generate a graphic prompt on my ChatGPT, it's going to come out completely differently than if someone else types in the same prompt on theirs, because how you train and use it over time shapes what you get back. That consistency only comes from repeated use and learning how to write the right prompts to get the results you need. Details matter; the more specific you are, the better your output will be.

My Biggest Takeaway

Hire a designer if you can, even if they're not a professional yet. And if you truly can't afford one, create it yourself. Creativity is so important. Even if you don't think of yourself as a creative person, it's a skill that can be learned. It gives you a break from the day-to-day and lets you express yourself and your brand in a real, meaningful way. And there is nothing more rewarding than seeing something you built, representing the business you created, rather than something a computer spit out.