Remember when you learned to spot a stock photo?
You could see it from a mile away. The same thing is happening now. We are growing up developing an even sharper instinct for what feels generated, repeated, predictable, and empty.
We ignore ads, stock images, and generated content, which is just next on the list. And once something becomes recognizable, it becomes ignorable. There is even a name for it: a slop.
We’re already seeing the shift. People are looking for proof that someone actually made it. That someone cared.
We need the human.
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Made with AI Is the New Made in China
Made with AI design is the new "Made in China" — and we mean that as a warning, not a trend report. We've spent twenty years watching what happens when cost becomes the only design criteria. The results are always the same: disposable work, eroded brand identity, and a market that eventually has to pay twice.
There Is Only One Right Way to Publicly Commission Design
Public design commissioning is not a matter of preference — there is a right way and everything else. We've worked through enough flawed briefs, misaligned procurement structures, and well-meaning but broken processes to know exactly where the public commissioning of design goes wrong, and what it looks like when it doesn't.
You thought it would hold.
Brand consistency breakdown rarely announces itself. It arrives as a slightly wrong typeface, a colour that's close but not right, a logo scaled by someone who didn't know why the padding existed. We've spent two decades watching brands we built with precision quietly come apart — not through malice, but through the ordinary entropy of handoff.
Self-Doubt in the Design Process – It Means You’re Halfway There
Self-doubt in the design process is not the problem — ignoring it is. We've watched it surface in almost every serious project we've taken on over two decades, and we've stopped trying to push past it. Designer self-doubt, when you learn to sit with it, is usually the clearest signal that the work is getting close to something real.
A healthy brand
Healthy brand design starts with honesty — not aspiration dressed up as values. We've watched too many briefs arrive wrapped in sustainability language that dissolves the moment you press on the strategy underneath it. A healthy brand isn't greener or louder; it's structurally coherent, and that coherence is what we've been designing for since 2004.
When was the last time you went on a date?
Brand dating strategy is something most studios won't admit they've ruined. We've watched clients walk into pitches dressed like a corporate handbook and wonder why nobody called back. The problem isn't the product — it's that design forgot to be interesting before it tried to be impressive.
Dear Client
Dear client design isn't a letter we wrote lightly. We've been doing this since 2004 — 128 projects, 80+ awards, and more than a few relationships that taught us exactly where the work breaks down. Dear client design starts with a conversation most studios avoid having out loud.
You Can’t Win in It All
Design client taste mismatch isn't a failure of process — it's a structural tension baked into every brief. We've sat across the table from enough decision-makers to know that good work and approved work are not the same thing. Understanding where that gap lives, and why, is what separates studios that grow from ones that simply comply.