If AI can make almost anything look polished, what happens when polish stops meaning anything? That’s the problem Charles Nix, Senior Executive Creative Director at Monotype, tackles here.
As generative tools make it possible to produce slick, on-brand creative work at extraordinary speed, the visual standards that once helped brands stand apart are rapidly becoming the baseline. Nix argues that the real battleground now lies somewhere much harder to automate: personality, intent and a genuinely human point of view. Because in a world where almost every brand can look the part, the ones we remember will be those that actually have something distinctive to say.
Charles Nix
There was a time when making something look good required a certain amount of effort.
Good design involved skill and craft. As a result, the ability to make something polished was, to a degree, a differentiator in itself.
Templated designs on platforms such as Canva and Squarespace changed that. Sophisticated-looking design became much more accessible. Suddenly, school fliers and small company websites began looking considerably more refined. You no longer needed to be a designer to make something look professionally produced.
And now AI is taking that idea noticeably further. Today, equipped with only a set of brand guidelines, an LLM can generate an endless supply of material that seemingly follows all the rules. It may not be perfectly crafted by designer and editorial standards, but if you live outside of those concerns, which, to be sure, I do not, it may be good enough.
In essence, creative production that once required multiple teams can now be produced automatically and in minutes. Between templates and AI, a new type of problem is arising for brands: when everyone can “look the part,” what makes a brand stand out?
Polished work produced at light speed looks good but fails to differentiate a brand in a marketplace rife with good-looking work. How does a brand remain authentic, human and intentional?
And without that differentiation, an expression of the brand’s unique qualities, the work often fails to connect with its intended audience.
The evolution of brand and corporate identity
Branding evolved from the creation of corporate identities: coherent and recognisable visual systems of unique typography, an ownable colour palette, a distinctive mark and a considered treatment of images. Codified and applied consistently, corporate identities let people know who they were looking at and allowed organisations to distinguish themselves from their competition.
Over time, identity evolved from a “this is us” approach to one of “we see you, our audience.” As brands, companies began orchestrating every aspect of communication, including visual language, to create meaningful customer connections. The best brands tapped into communities of fans and aficionados, those who deeply identified with their products and services, as well as the brand ethos.
Digital technology broadened the brand landscape, allowing brands to tell their story in both physical and virtual worlds. The emergence of social media brought brands into direct conversation with consumers.
Fixed identities have evolved into living brand worlds, conversations and experiences surrounding goods and services. The meaning of identity has expanded dramatically, and the importance, and challenges, of differentiation have grown too.
Brand differentiation in the age of AI
That is why the current moment feels significant. AI doesn’t simply give brands another production tool; it supercharges brand expression.
When an identity can be turned into hundreds of professional-looking executions, across multiple customer touchpoints and at tremendous speed, quality execution itself becomes less scarce. But it raises difficult questions: what does quality mean? Is the mechanical execution of a brand enough? And what makes any execution worth noticing in a glut of “good-looking” brands?
No one yet has answers to these questions. Branding in the age of AI is a collective work in progress. But some of the most distinctive recent identities are revealing a familiar tack: look backwards rather than forwards.
Instagram and Tinder, for example, have both drawn on more traditional typographic references. They demonstrate that a brand doesn’t need to invent a completely new visual language to feel distinctive. A familiar voice adapted from the past, even the recent past, can be a memorable one in a context of contemporary sameness and near-term uncertainty.
Authenticity and human intervention in brand expression
As AI-generated work becomes more sophisticated, the desire to introduce visible signs of human intervention and authorship is inevitable: a rough edge here, a bit of handwriting there, as ways of demonstrating that a person was involved. One could even imagine a more principled approach of avoiding AI completely in favour of “artisanal” design processes.
The most valuable human contribution will be to continue asking “why?” Why this idea? Why this tone? Why this image? Why this typeface?
Those questions, and the resulting answers, arrive from our unique, lived experiences of the world and, more germane, our lived experiences of the brand.
Companies are made up of people, and all of those people contribute to the truth of mission statements, brand values and brand ethos. The person developing the product, answering the customer, designing the service or communicating with an audience is participating in the brand. Together, they help give a brand a distinctive point of view.
AI will increasingly help businesses and their brands function across global markets. It will help create and translate editorial and visual voices at scale and speed. It will inform type choices, aid in crafting imagery and be used in writing. It will change the structure of teams and workflows.
Some of us will adapt. Some of us will move along to other pursuits. Some of us will fight the change.
All of us will pursue the goal of making something worth noticing and engaging with, of creating human connections.
