VISUAL CREATORS
For your artistic side.

🎨 Google Mixboard Reimagines AI Visual Brainstorming

The Story: Google Labs has unveiled Mixboard, an experimental AI-powered tool designed for the early stages of creative exploration. This digital canvas allows designers and visual thinkers to brainstorm concepts by blending their own images with AI-generated visuals from text prompts, aiming to accelerate the mood boarding and ideation process for creative projects.

The Details:

• Users can start a new project from a simple text prompt or choose from a variety of pre-populated boards for inspiration.

• The platform allows creatives to upload their own reference images and then use AI to generate complementary visuals that match the aesthetic.

• A new image editing model called “Nano Banana” enables users to make adjustments and combine concepts using natural language commands.

• One-click options like “regenerate” and “more like this” are built-in to allow for rapid iteration and exploration of different visual directions.

• As an early experiment from Google Labs, Mixboard is currently in public beta and only available in the United States.

Why It Matters: For visual creatives, Mixboard targets the often time-consuming initial phase of a project: concepting and mood boarding. It offers a way to rapidly explore visual directions and communicate ideas to clients more effectively, positioning AI as a brainstorming partner rather than a tool for final execution, potentially changing early-stage workflows.

PRODUCTION MASTERY
The commercial aspects of creativity.

⚙️ Canva launches its Creative OS

The Story: Canva has launched its "Creative Operating System," its biggest product update ever. The launch combines a supercharged Visual Suite, a new design-focused AI model, and end-to-end marketing tools. Most notably, Canva is making the entire professional Affinity suite (photo, vector, layout) completely free, aiming to become an all-in-one platform for creative businesses.

The Details:

• The new Affinity suite is now a single, unified app and is completely free for everyone, forever.

• A new Canva Design Model powers the platform's AI, generating fully editable, multi-layered designs instead of just flat images.

• Video 2.0 introduces a rebuilt editor with a simplified timeline and AI features like Magic Video for creating social-ready cuts from prompts.

• Canva Grow is a new marketing engine for creating, publishing, and tracking ad performance on platforms like Meta directly within Canva.

• The platform now includes tools for creating branded emails and interactive forms that integrate directly with Canva Sheets for data collection.

Why It Matters: Canva is moving beyond a simple design tool to become a central hub for running a creative business, consolidating workflows from pro-level design to marketing. The free Affinity suite directly challenges Adobe's subscription model, potentially lowering software costs for freelancers and small studios and forcing a re-evaluation of the standard creative toolkit.

CREATOR ECONOMY
Navigating the digital creative world.

🤖 An AI Artist Just Topped a Billboard Chart

The Story: An AI-generated country artist named Breaking Rust has topped Billboard’s Country Digital Song Sales chart with the song “Walk My Walk.” This commercial milestone arrives alongside a new study from Deezer, which found that 97% of listeners cannot distinguish between music created by humans and music generated by AI.

The Details:

• The song, "Walk My Walk," reached Number 1 on Billboard’s Country Digital Song Sales chart, gaining millions of streams on Spotify.

• A “first-of-its-kind" study by Deezer and Ipsos revealed that 97% of 9,000 participants failed to identify a fully AI-generated music track.

• Many fans on social media and YouTube appear unaware that Breaking Rust is not a human artist, praising the "artist's" songwriting and voice.

• Human artists have expressed concern, with singer Breland calling the trend a "bad sign for the future of music" that could lead to charts filled with "AI slop."

• This isn't an isolated incident; other AI artists like Xania Monet have also charted on Billboard and secured multimillion-dollar record deals.

Why It Matters: For creators, this proves AI-generated content is no longer a novelty but a direct competitor for audience attention and platform real estate. As AI music becomes commercially viable and difficult to distinguish, it creates new pressure on human artists to define their value beyond just the output, focusing on story, community, and live performance.

🔥 Press Worthy

📽️ VISUAL CREATORS

Figma has acquired Weavy, an AI media generation platform that will be integrated as Figma Weave. The move brings node-based tools for creating and editing images, video, and motion graphics directly into the design canvas, aiming to enhance professional production workflows.

Paper, a new design tool, has been rapidly shipping features in its public alpha. Recent updates include video export from frames, advanced procedural shaders like liquid metal and fluted glass, text gradients, and improved developer handoff tools for React.

📈 PRODUCTION MASTERY

Meta has launched 'Vibes,' a new feed in its AI app dedicated entirely to short-form, AI-generated videos. Users can create from prompts or remix existing clips, raising questions for creators about the platform's push for synthetic content over authentic storytelling.

Adobe has relaunched Firefly as an all-in-one creative AI studio, aiming to consolidate workflows. The platform now integrates top models from Adobe, Google, and OpenAI with new tools for video editing, audio generation, and collaborative brainstorming in a single subscription.

🎭 CREATOR ECONOMY

A recent analysis explores how Tekashi 6ix9ine’s controversial tactics created a playbook for today's creator economy. His strategy of using clip farming, rage-bait, and conflict to generate attention has since been refined and industrialized by streamers and influencers on major platforms.

Where do you get your inspiration and influence from? A guide to finding unique visual inspiration outside of social media.

📚 Learn & Grow

📽️ VISUAL CREATORS

• A five-part framework for turning your creative website into a client-booking machine.

• A case study on adapting film constraints into legendary multiplayer game design.

📈 PRODUCTION MASTERY

• An inside look at how African publishers navigate growth, stereotypes, and piracy.

  A guide to intentional music discovery for creatives tired of algorithmic recommendations.

🎭 CREATOR ECONOMY

• This breakdown shows how new audiences bring valuable, fresh analysis to established creative works.

• Spotify Isn’t “Made For You”, It’s Made For Labels.