How a design studio built an AI brand without the hype
How&How rebranded Ideogram, an AI design platform, by embracing the discomfort of working with technology that threatens their own industry. The studio's approach: cautious adoption rather than blind enthusiasm.
The project forced the design team to confront genuine tensions. Roughly 73% of designers worry about losing their jobs to AI, and nearly half believe manual graphic production could be obsolete within five years. Those aren't abstract numbers in a design studio-they're conversations happening in the room.
Working through the moral questions
How&How could have declined the brief on principle. Instead, the team held multiple meetings to hash out whether taking it on was honest work. The turning point came when they acknowledged something harder to admit: they were already using generative AI tools themselves every week.
"You can't really hold a position you don't actually hold," Cat How said. The opposition softened into something more useful than a clean moral stance. They decided on cautious adoption-eyes open, not blind.
Scepticism and curiosity aren't opposites. The mistake is letting fear keep you at such a distance that you never form your own opinion, inheriting panic instead of understanding.
What made Ideogram's choice matter
Ideogram could have built its brand using its own technology. Instead, it hired human designers. That decision signals something about how the company values craft-more than any mission statement could.
Most AI brands try to look effortless and machine-made, as if they assembled themselves. Ideogram understood that an identity built on instinct, taste, and strategic thinking lands differently. There's warmth and a point of view you simply can't generate.
The brand's strongest element isn't a logo or colour. It's the argument running underneath: a model can enhance a process, but it can't replace craft, instinct, taste, or strategy. Every design decision became evidence for that idea.
What the team learned
Going in deliberately to learn-rather than guess from the sidelines-changed how How&How thinks about the technology. Once you know exactly where a tool's edges are, the fear has nowhere to live.
AI speeds up work. It opens directions you might not have reached as quickly. It removes grunt work. But it doesn't replace what humans bring: craft, instinct, taste, and strategic thinking. Those remain yours.
The instinct with new technology is to observe from a safe distance-keep your hands clean, comment without touching. The better move is getting close. Putting your hands on the thing. Finding its edges yourself rather than reading someone else's hot take.
Understanding something is more or less the opposite of being threatened by it.
Learn more: AI for Creatives and AI Design Courses can help you build hands-on experience with these tools.
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