The Year in Review - AIxC: 34

Thank you!

For the last newsletter of 2023, I thought I’d recap what went down this year. But first, to those I’ve talked to and those I have yet to meet, a big thank you for tuning in. I’ve really enjoyed exploring these new tools and sharing what I’ve learned. The accountability to this growing community keeps me motivated and makes this something I look forward to doing every day.

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The Year in Review

2023 was a year unlike any I’ve had before. So many new things happened so quickly.

While the stats might be modest to some, to me this entire year was beyond anything I could have expected. At the beginning of the year, I couldn’t have predicted I’d be writing this email today. Here are some highlights:

✔️ 01/20 - My first Ai post on Instagram
✔️ 02/21 - First Linkedin post on topic of Ai
✔️ 03/29 - Started my first 30 day Ai challenge
✔️ 05/01 - Followed it up with 60 more days of Ai challenges
✔️ 05/11 - First newsletter sent out
✔️ 06/11 - First Ai course taught
✔️ 07/10 - First Ai course launched
✔️ 09/11 - First Webinar
✔️ 10/05 - AIxC Website Launch
✔️ 11/14 - First Collaboration: Wander Project
✔️ 11/16 - First On-Demand course launched
✔️ 11/27 - Kicked off YouTube channel
✔️ 12/14 - Second On-Demand course launched
✔️ 12/15 - Brought on some help to further the cause
✔️ 12/18 to 12/31 - First three interviews/podcast invites on topic of Design and Ai

LinkedIn

Most of my career I’ve enjoyed being behind the scenes. This was the year I stepped out from behind my computer and put my thoughts out there.

If I had to say why, it’s because I felt confident about my experience as a designer, business builder and what I was doing with Ai. I simply documented what I was doing. That made it really easy and natural for me.

This was the first year I posted on Linkedin. My daily posting started ~April 1st. Since then I have probably missed less than 5-10 days of posting. That’s about ~260 days of posts. Seems I have a lot to talk about. These ramblings resulted in 920k impressions and 2.8k new followers.

I think this illustrates how much interest there is in Ai for design workflows.

AIxC Newsletter

I sent out the first newsletter May 11th and have since sent one every week. That’s 34 weeks of newsletters.

In that time the newsletter grew steadily. While it may not be 500,000 strong like the big Ai newsletters, I see the types of subscribers that are joining and it’s made up of a lot of quality folks - professionals from all over the creative industries, from young designers to design leaders at global brands. Quality vs quantity!

I’m also proud of the very low unsubscribe rate!

Website

The organic nature of how this year went down meant that I didn’t have an AIxC website until October 5th. Eventually I turned my portfolio website into AIxC, hence the dayda.studio url.

Today was the first time I looked at the website stats. There are some interesting numbers. I recently added a second course, so there’s only been a month’s worth of opportunity to be a repeat customer, so that 11% feels good.

I need to up my analytics game so I can easily see how many sales were live vs on-demand courses. But since I launched On-Demand in November, about 90% of the signups have been for those.

We also crossed the 200 customer mark, so that was a great milestone.

YouTube

Started a YouTube channel recently. Have only posted one video but plan on adding a lot more content here this year.

Ai Courses

At the core, AIxC is about equipping designers for a professional environment where Ai becomes prevalent. We launched four courses this year with that effort in mind.

1. Midjourney for Design. This was the course that started it all. It’s a 3-part live course, designed for individuals or teams to quickly get up to speed with Ai. It’s now been refined via countless iterations, based on real-world feedback.

2. Midjourney for Design On-Demand. Many folks asked for classes they could take at their convenience. This 12-part On-Demand course is based on the original Midjourney for Design live course, with a few extra topics included. It’s available at your convenience in shorter, more digestible modules.

3. Gen Ai for UX/UI Design. Early in the year I reconnected with a former colleague, Greg Aper. While I was exploring Ai + design, he was exploring Ai + UX/UI. He developed an amazing 4-part live course that is now available at AIxC.

4. Rapid Viz & Sketching with Ai. The latest course is a 3-part On-Demand offering focused on utilizing Ai tools for rapid visualization and phase and/or task specific fidelity. I find this use case fascinating.
   

What’s Next in 2024?

2023 was the year generative Ai entered most of our vocabularies. 2024 is likely going to be a turning point year, where Ai becomes an integral part of our professions. Here is a good read on Bill Gate’s take on things from his annual year-end letter.

As for AIxC, here’s what’s on tap:

• Official launch of AIxC Consulting. AIxC Consulting is about helping organizations better understand Ai from a creative and business lens. We help organizations audit, inform and train the design teams of tomorrow. More details to come, but if you’re a design or business leader and want to learn more, fill out this form for more details.

• More Courses. We’re currently working on Ai for Branding, Ai for Brainstorming, Ai for Footwear courses to name a few. We’ll also be expanding to additional tool-specific courses for Vizcom, NewArc, Stable Diffusion and more.

• Designed by Professionals. Every tool we review, every course we design, it’s all filtered by professional, highly experienced designers in their respective fields. We’ll continue to partner and develop programs with design professionals that utilize Ai, not Ai professionals that play design.

• Podcast. This one has been a while in the making. If all goes according to plan, we’ll be launching the AIxC podcast in the coming 30-45 days, with a focus on the intersection between two worlds - creativity and Ai.

• New Projects / Case Studies. Project Wander was eye-opening for us. We’re doing more of these projects to better understand what’s possible.

• More Content. We’ll be building out the YouTube channel, our Community Discord Server and working to add more value here with the newsletter; testing new tools, exploring new use cases and navigating the Ai waters.

Thank you once again for being here. It’s truly been a pleasure meeting a lot of you this year. I look forward to getting to know you more in 2024 and continue the mission of ensuring designer’s have a seat at the table in the age of Ai.

Happy New Year,
Hector
ps. Here’s a daily footwear challenge I’m finishing the year off with:

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Hi, I'm Hector, a seasoned industrial designer, brand builder, and entrepreneur, with 22+ years of diverse experience. I have worked in hard goods, soft goods, bicycles & micro-mobility, structural packaging, proactive innovation and even running my own consumer goods business.

My superpower aside from AI? Leveraging my dual-edged expertise in design and business to supercharge organizations. If you have exciting projects on the horizon, don't hesitate to drop me a message or catch me on LinkedIn and Instagram.