NICOLA GINZLER

Senior Graphic Designer

THREE of my designs were chosen by the Burning Man organization for printing as stickers to be given to all participants

The greeters at the gate of Black Rock City, the temporary city built by Burning Man workers and participants in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert, hand out welcome materials to everyone entering. Among these are always stickers emblematic of the event in general or that year’s theme. THREE of my designs were chosen by the Burning Man organization for printing as stickers.

I ended up requesting that one design NOT be printed though, and that I should have the opportunity to revise another. Both designs depended heavily on AI-generated images, and I’ve been having increasing concerns about the ethics of AI image generation on artist copyrights.

This is one of THREE of my designs selected by the Burning Man organization for printing as a sticker to be given to all arriving participants!

Bright pink square sticker design with pale pink writing in a funky 1960s typeface, detailing the taxonomy of a domestic cat with an attitude: Kingdom - Animalia, Phylum - Chordata, Subphylum - Vertebrata, Class - Mammalia Order - Carnivora, Family - Felidae, Genus - Felis, Species - Catus, Subspecies – METALLL. Over that is an illustration of a stylized black cat outline and white skeleton. One "bone" in the tail is a stylized version of the Burning Man "Man" symbol, in yellow. A speech bubble with a thick black outline and yellow background says "Burning / Man 2023 / Animalia" in the same funky type, in black.

The taxonomy of a domestic cat with an attitude:

  • Kingdom – Animalia
  • Phylum – Chordata
  • Subphylum – Vertebrata
  • Class – Mammalia
  • Order – Carnivora
  • Family – Felidae
  • Genus – Felis
  • Species – Catus
  • Subspecies – METALLL!

Note the yellow “Man”-shaped bone in the tail.

Cat image was purchased from stock content company Shutterstock. Typeface is Blackcurrant Squash from Adobe Fonts.

This is one of THREE of my designs selected by the Burning Man organization for printing as a sticker to be given to all participants! I’ve been having increasing concerns about the ethics of AI image generation on artist copyrights, however, so I revised this one with ethically/legally sourced art (see below next yellow box).

The design is divided into 2x2 rectangles, with a horizontal bar taken out in the middle. Each rectangle has a soft, blurred, clearly AI generated image of an animal. Text reads, L to R and top to bottom: "Chukar (Alectoris chukar)"; "Kit fox (Vulpes macrotis)"; "Black-tailed jackrabbit (Lepus californicus)" and "Mountain lion (Puma concolor)." White type in the black band across the middle says: "BURNING MAN 2023: "ANIMALIA" [line break] Animals of the Black Rock Desert

This year the theme is “Animalia” and I’m choosing to take that literally, by representing common animals in the Black Rock Desert in Nevada, where Burning Man takes place. I got the soft, blurred effect of the animals by capturing the images from the AI generating software before they were fully rendered, and then playing with the color in Photoshop. AI images from Midjourney. (Visit here to see a comparison of images by Midjourney and Adobe Firefly, when the latter was still in beta testing.) Typeface is Abigail from Adobe Fonts.

These are the revised versions of the above artwork, with ethically/legally sourced images from the public domain or purchased from stock house Shutterstock. The CEO of Burning Man requested an alternate version of the artwork (R), without the 2023-specific text, for year-round use as stickers to give to visitors to Burning Man’s headquarters in San Francisco.

The design is divided into 2x2 rectangles, with a horizontal bar taken out in the middle. Each rectangle has a soft, blurred image of an animal. Text reads, L to R and top to bottom: "Chukar (Alectoris chukar)"; "Kit fox (Vulpes macrotis)"; "Black-tailed jackrabbit (Lepus californicus)" and "Mountain lion (Puma concolor)." White type in the black band across the middle says: "BURNING MAN 2023: "ANIMALIA" [line break] Animals of the Black Rock Desert
The design is divided into 2x2 rectangles, with a horizontal bar taken out in the middle. Each rectangle has a soft, blurred image of an animal. Text reads, L to R and top to bottom: "Chukar (Alectoris chukar)"; "Kit fox (Vulpes macrotis)"; "Black-tailed jackrabbit (Lepus californicus)" and "Mountain lion (Puma concolor)." White type in the black band across the middle says: "Animals of the Black Rock Desert."

This is one of THREE of my designs selected by the Burning Man organization for printing as a sticker to be given to all participants. I’ve been having increasing concerns about the ethics of AI image generation and artist copyrights, however, so I ended up requesting that it NOT be printed, as it goes beyond using AI art into glamorizing it. I’m really sorry, though—I love my Foxbird!

The background is a photorealistic outdoor shot of the Black Rock Desert in Nevada, where Burning Man is held. The dry, cracked, light-colored playa stretches back to mountains on the horizon, with low clouds above them. The sky is bright blue and the sun is directly overhead. In the foreground is a kit fox sitting on its haunches. It is covered with almost fluorescent bright pink feathers and has a large pair of wings, outstretched, jutting from its shoulders. The insides of the ears and the lower legs are bright yellow-gold.
The background is a photorealistic outdoor shot of the Black Rock Desert in Nevada, where Burning Man is held. The dry, cracked, light-colored playa stretches back to mountains in the horizon, with low clouds above them. The sky is bright blue and the sun is directly overhead. In the foreground is a kit fox sitting on its haunches. It is covered with blue feathers and has a large pair of wings, outstretched, jutting from its shoulders. The insides of the ears are bright yellow-gold.

This year the theme is “Animalia” and I’m choosing to take that literally. I started with the title “(AI)nimalia”: first, I used AI image generation software Midjourney to create the initial image of the fox-bird, then completed the design using Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. (Visit here to see a comparison of images by Midjourney and Adobe Firefly, software still in beta testing.) The fox-bird was originally all blue; my Midjourney prompts included “kit fox vulpes macrotis looking at the viewer with bright blue outstretched wings,” with other prompts about background, lighting and composition.

I brought the original image into Adobe Photoshop and changed the blue feathers to vibrant pink and the insides of the ears and the lower legs to yellow-gold. I also made other adjustments to the playa surface, clouds and mountains.

I then brought the image into Adobe Illustrator and added the black bar and text, with the “(AI)” part of “(AI)nimalia – Black Rock City 2023” bright red-pink and the rest white. Typeface is Sneaker Pro from Adobe Fonts.

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