Don Giannatti: AI for Creatives — August 2026

What this newsletter is

Don Giannatti publishes a weekly Substack newsletter for creative professionals documenting which AI tools and workflows are producing results at the moment. The August 7, 2026 edition covers four areas in enough practical detail to act on: infographic production with Claude, four new video generation platforms, AI for space and exhibition design, and content automation.

Infographic workflow

The lead section describes a two-step method for producing infographics with Claude that avoids the most common failure mode: generating something that looks wrong from the start. The approach involves two sequential stages. First, have Claude analyze a reference image and extract its design system — palette, typography, spacing rules, and recurring visual elements. Review and approve that specification before any content generation begins. Only then does the second stage start: generating the actual infographic content against the agreed visual spec.

This “approve the look first” method sidesteps a problem that comes up repeatedly when generating visual content with AI: the tool has a clear picture of what information to show but no shared understanding of what the result should look like. Without the visual spec stage, it defaults to whatever generic form the model has absorbed from its training data.

Video generation platforms

The August 7 edition tracks four video generation releases that arrived within the same week: Palette, which offers a unified generation and editing canvas; Seedance 2.5, which outputs native 4K with synchronized audio; Dreamina, which introduced timestamp pacing controls for precise timing; and MiniMax H3, an open-weight model available for local deployment. For content creators who produce video alongside written work, the range of options in mid-2026 is expanding quickly enough that this weekly tracking is useful context.

Context

The newsletter notes that the EU’s AI Act labeling requirements took effect during the same week. This is a practical point for content creators distributing work in European markets: published content that uses AI generation now requires disclosure under the regulation.

Who it is useful for

Content creators and creative professionals who produce a mix of written, visual, and video content and want a practical weekly summary of which AI tools and workflows are worth attention. The newsletter assumes familiarity with AI tools; it does not explain fundamentals or teach workflows from scratch.