Are You Using AI but Have No Taste?
Or how to reverse engineer "taste".
When Steve Jobs asked Paul Rand to design the identity for NeXT, Paul Rand did it with effectively zero input from the team.
He “one-shotted” the identity.
Your favorite AI model is not Paul Rand!
Proceed without taste and you’ll fall below the bar of what people expect.
This is already happening, many websites already look pretty similar.
It shouldn't surprise you that some of the best AI power users are actually designers.
While you can't replicate their taste, you should learn from their process.
Think like an AGENCY
A couple of years ago I had the privilege of working with a top tier NY design studio. I was surprised how rigorous their process was. They would share outputs at every step, ask for input and iterate.
If you want branding work done, don't ask AI to produce an entire brand for you.
Instead, find agency processes that are proven and break down the work, like this Smith & Diction Brand Identity Process.
A significant part of branding is understanding your company. AI can help with that as well. The creativity comes later.
Why this works:
+ If you follow a process like the above, you’re guaranteed to end up with something unique.
+ You’ll be able to review and enhance the outputs at every step, not just at the end.
+ You’ll provide AI with more context and be able to trace specific decisions better. When it comes to upgrading or evolving your identity, you’ll have a great starting point.
You won't necessarily get agency-level output, but you will get something much better than what a single prompt would get you.
This approach doesn't just work for brand identity of course, you can replicate agency work for marketing, pricing analysis, consulting, etc.