Ever had a brilliant idea in your head but struggled to find the time to create the perfect stunning visual representation for it? Maybe you’re preparing for a presentation, brainstorming session, or report and need a quick, effective way to showcase your ideas. Normally, you’d either delegate this task to someone skilled at designing visuals or spend hours building it yourself from scratch, let’s face it, that’s time-consuming and not always practical.

Well, here’s where AI steps in to save the day. Let me introduce you to Napkin.ai, an amazing AI flowchart tool that can create stunning visuals in seconds and save you precious time which theoretically you can use for thinking and strategizing instead of designing.
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Why Use Napkin.ai for Visuals?
Napkin.ai is designed to make it easier to showcase ideas and thought processes using colorful charts and visuals. You don’t even need to prompt it extensively (those long instructions we usually give AI tools). Just paste your raw text—whether it’s from an article you’ve written or something generated by another AI—and Napkin.ai will instantly generate the visual you need.
What if you don’t have text ready? No issues! Napkin.ai can generate content for you using its own AI capabilities. You can provide a simple prompt, let it create the text, and then turn that into visuals. Of course, there are options to customize and tweak things along the way so that the final output matches your expectations.
The best part? Napkin.ai is free for personal use. You can create up to three napkins (think of them as visual boards) for free. Since they’re still in beta, their professional plan is free right now—and they’ve promised discounts for long-time users once they officially launch. Sounds like a win-win.
How to Use it?
Napkin.ai is free to use but it requires sign-in.
We will use Napkin’s default prompt tool though you can use ChatGPT or Gemini too. This is our base prompt – Portfolio Diversification Management Tactics:

It will take a few seconds for the AI to create the content, and once it’s done, you will see the text with a blue handle (lightning symbol) on the left. You can use this handle to create visuals, either from specific parts of the text or the entire document.

Once you click the handle, a pop-up will appear on the left where you can select from different styles of visuals. You can choose the appropriate style based on the content and its theme to make the most out of it.

After finalizing the style, you can select a specific design and pattern within that style, allowing for further customization to enhance the appeal of your visual. Here are a couple of styles for demonstration purposes.

That’s it! It’s as simple as that and takes just minutes to transform your idea into visuals. These are just the basics of how you can use the tool, and, of course, you can dive deeper and tweak your visuals to your heart’s content.
Tweak Your Visuals
Here are some more Napki.ai features inside that can make your life easier apart from basic visual building:
- Supports Multiple Languages: It can auto-detect different languages and create visuals accordingly.
- Customizable Visuals: You can generate separate visuals for specific blocks of text from an entire document.
- Easy Sharing Options: Share your creations via email with permissions like view-only, comment, edit, or even edit-and-share. Alternatively, share a direct link or export the document as a PDF (in A4 or US sizes) for later use.
- Quick Downloads: Select specific visuals and download them in formats like PDF, PNG, or SVG with just a right-click.
- Access Previous Work: Use its library feature to revisit past napkins and download them as PDFs instantly.
- Built-in Connectors and Sketching Tools: Modify visuals directly within Napkin using connectors or sketching tools. You can even add your images or text for deeper customization.
Why It’s Worth Trying
Napkin.ai’s versatility makes it a go-to tool for creating visuals and flowcharts out of data sets to drive home the point.
You can use it to craft eye-catching visuals for social media that drive engagement. During brainstorming sessions, it can quickly transform raw ideas into structured visuals, aiding clarity and focus. For presentations and reports, it saves time by generating polished, professional-looking graphics that convey complex information effectively. Content creators can use it for blog posts or newsletters to add visual appeal, while YouTubers can design thumbnails or infographics to enhance video content.
These use cases make it ideal for anyone looking to save time, improve productivity, and create impactful visuals without needing advanced design skills. What do you think? Let me know in the comment section.