On My Imagery: A Designer's Journey
From 2004 through 2025 and from "clipart" to AI-generated image sets
This is not any type of advertisement, and I do not make any money from mentioning any company or app… This is just an honest look at how my graphics design has evolved over the past 22 years.
I use the Firefly AI in Adobe Express to do something I have always DREAMED of being able to do: create a more-or-less coherent, visually recognizable series of images to illustrate or enhance one particular collection of my own text and related projects.
Since 2004 I have published my own educational games, puzzles, and worksheet sets - starting with a dozen math games on AtoZ Teacher Stuff and for many years now over 250 individual products on my own website and on Teachers Pay Teachers.
At the very beginning, I thought I would have to make ALL my own images in order to sell my materials - but just completing ONE SET of graphics took me MONTHS - notably for an alphabet cards series I created. Meanwhile, my brain was cranking out dozens more activities I could publish - IF ONLY I had the imagery to go with them!
I found a “clipart” website before completing that original mammoth set of 200+ images, and that one subscription site allowed my output to keep up with my design mode. Later, I switched to more photo-oriented projects and started using Pixabay and CC (both FREE)… and for icons and some “clipart” I eventually used FlatIcon and Vecteezy (both paid subscriptions with some FREE imagery).
Only during 2025 has my dream really materialized for me. I discovered that with the Adobe CC subscription I’ve had for 8+ years, I have access to an image generator.
Like many people my age (I’m 54), I was at first skeptical of all things AI. But after a few sessions spent exploring what I could create on Adobe Express, I began to see what a blessing it could truly be, to enhance my projects.
I can type in a description of what I want to see, select what styles I want, and get a selection of 4 to 20 square images to choose from. At first, these images can appear random and horribly flawed; they are notorious for their errant returns such as misshappen hands or extra/overlapping appendages. It is DEFINITELY a patience-building refinement process!
Typically, I save one image for every 4 to 40+ images the AI generates. Any given image I save may be used as-is in some of my cards, horizontally resized (widened) to appear here on Substack, or vertically resized to appear on social media or in full-color edge-to-edge cards. Most images either sit idle inside my digital folders, indefinitely waiting for a home... or one may become a “seed” for a future project.
Most of my image sets eventually use one of these “seed” images - what Adobe Firefly calls a style reference. I rename that “seed image” and use it as a style reference every time I want to continue making more images with the same basic “look”. For example, all of my Permission to Pause cards (FranLaff.com/pause) use one style reference image, and all of my Nature-Based Cognitive Reframes (FranLaff.com/reframes ) cards share one other style reference.
The latter of these - the “seed image” from my Reframes Collection - was used for the imagery on the cards in the first image inside this post, as well as for the foxes imagery just above—which I generated specifically to illustrate this post.
If you visit my “collection of collections” page at FranLaff.com/dailies, you will see a host of different SETS of images - each created using a different “seed image”:
I have been asked how my images come together, how they feel both grounded and dreamlike, both simple and deliberate. So this post is a pause between two of my Substack series or mini courses — a behind-the-scenes look at the process itself.
The way I work with images is not fast or flashy. It’s closer to wandering a trail and noticing which way the light falls.
This page isn’t a gallery of “best hits.” It’s a window into how I think. If my way of thinking and creating feels aligned with one of your own projects, I’m always open to conversations—text-based, quiet ones—without pressure on either side.
If you need graphics for a project and something on this page strikes you as the “it” you’re looking for - or if you think I might be the one to help you find your “it” - my About/Contact page is at FranLaff.com/help.
Pause here.
The two images above and the one below were all created using the same starting “seed image”.
Notice which image your body prefers—before your mind explains why.
The next post will begin a new series or mini course—like my Tiny Leaf Game I finished earlier this month—and this time I will be exploring safety versus rules—especially in care systems, education, and everyday power dynamics.
This post—this visual pause—is a threshold. It’s not just history, it’s a reminder that how we present ideas can either settle the body or set it on edge.
I wanted to share this process before the next series begins because images play a role in safety—often without us realizing it. The difference between feeling held and feeling managed can be subtle. Visual language is part of that difference.
Design, like care, works best when it listens first.
Thank you for walking this small stretch of the path with me.
— Fran Lafferty :O>