Voice-journaling app Untold has unveiled a rebrand built around a custom AI illustration system - a choice that raises a familiar question for creatives: can generative AI produce work that feels genuinely human?
The New York-based branding agency The Working Assembly developed the new identity, which includes a bespoke logomark, wordmark, and an AI-powered illustration system trained specifically for the platform. The rebrand follows Untold's launch of Perspectives, an expansion that adds guided journal flows, visual emotional trend mapping, and a feature that answers questions about your life based on your past entries.
Untold's core product listens to spoken thoughts, identifies patterns over time, and offers personalised insights drawing on psychology, philosophy, spirituality, and art. It can also generate custom meditations. The original identity, the company said, no longer captured the platform's full ambition after this expansion.
Strategy behind the new identity
The strategic framework centres on three concepts: speaking freely, feeling understood, and growing intentionally. From that foundation, The Working Assembly built a complete visual and verbal system.
"We built Untold's AI image system the same way we built the logo itself, from strategy outward," said Jolene Delisle, founder and head of brand creative at The Working Assembly. "Every visual expression starts with the same idea at the heart of the platform: your voice matters, and what it reveals has the power to shape who you become."
The press release describes the illustration system as "designed specifically for Untold and trained to create imagery that feels emotionally resonant rather than algorithmically generated."
Whether that claim holds up is another matter. The images use visible brushwork, muted earth tones, and small, intimate compositions - a hand reaching toward a sofa, a coffee cup caught in afternoon light. They avoid the slick, generic look of most AI-generated visuals. But on closer inspection, the images still read as AI-made, even if they're made well.
Wordmark and app design
The lowercase "untold" wordmark uses a serif face with enough personality to feel handwritten rather than corporate. The symbol - an interlocking ribbon shape that could be a wave, a signature flourish, or two overlapping figures - translates well across app icons, posters, and social assets.
In-app screens combine functionality with elegance. Onboarding prompts and mood-tracking bars appear as brushstrokes of colour, and personalised reflections address the user by name. The mood-tracking screens render emotional data as loose, hand-painted strokes rather than clean digital bars, keeping the experience consistent with the app's tone.
Getting one illustration system to work convincingly across a 48-sheet poster and a small mobile screen is a notable achievement. The question is whether the AI-generated imagery will sit well with an audience that has grown wary of gen AI's aesthetic shortcuts.
For creatives watching this space, the rebrand offers a useful case study in how agencies are trying to use AI without falling into its visual clichés. It also shows the limits of that approach - at least for now. For those exploring similar territory, AI design courses and AI training for creatives can help clarify what the tools can and cannot do.
Why this matters for creatives
This rebrand is a test case for how agencies position AI-generated work to clients and audiences who are increasingly skeptical of it. The Working Assembly made a deliberate choice to train a custom system rather than rely on off-the-shelf generators, and the results are visibly better for it. But the underlying tension remains: if the audience can tell the images are AI-made, does the "emotionally resonant" framing hold up? For designers and art directors, the practical takeaway is that custom-trained systems are becoming a viable middle ground - but the conversation about transparency and creative authorship isn't going away.
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