Is design a human practice?
Sagi Haviv is a partner and designer at Chermayeff & Geismar & Haviv. He has built his reputation by designing for the Library of Congress, CFA Institute, Harvard University Press, Conservation International, Women’s World Banking, and the US Open. He presided over the Graphic Design Jury at D&AD Awards 2019.
I recently came across a headline in Creative Review from a couple of years ago that read: “Can AI design a better logo than you?” It’s a shocking thought. Is our creative work as designers replaceable? Can our work be summarised as a series of programs and patterns?
Programs are already being developed that can generate all kinds of images in response to defined parameters. Templates are getting better, image recognition is more accurate, and processing speeds are faster—if our discipline is merely to receive parameters and a design problem to solve, then a computer can naturally come up with a solution. However, I don’t think that’s all that our profession is.
The main reason that I’m not worried about machine intelligence replacing the designer has to do with what it takes to get a great design adopted and embraced by the client, especially in the case of identity design. Clients don’t always know what they want or what they need.
A design project always reflects the relationship between the client and the designer. When we get a new assignment, we always ask to meet in person with the person in charge. That’s because we know that there is a very good chance we will need to leverage a relationship of trust later on in the process. Designing a great logo is only one step in an often long and complicated process of convincing decision-makers of its merit. The personal human connection we make with an art director, a CMO or a CEO is the only guarantee that the project will end with a significant mark in use.
Take for example the new identity we just created for Animal Planet. Under incredible leadership — Global President Susanna Dinnage and marketing VP Pablo Pulido — the channel set out to reinvent its programming and extend the brand into digital applications worldwide. When we spoke to Susanna and Pablo, we received pretty final marching orders. Susanna said: “No elephants. Elephants represent the natural history aspect of the brand that we’re moving away from.” And Pablo said: “we should be a green brand—that’s how people know us.”
History of Animal Planet identity
During the exploratory phase, one of our young designers, Scott Ahn, came and handed us a pencil sketch of a wild idea he was playing with: a leaping elephant. Although this direction defied the parameters we received from our client, we were drawn to the impossibility of the image for its exuberance and the sheer fantasy of it. We assigned a bright blue colour to this silhouette to convey optimism and to emphasise a fresh direction for the brand and decided to include it in the presentation alongside other options.
Early sketches
Once faced with this design of a leaping blue elephant, Susanna and Pablo immediately gravitated to it, as it captures the exact personality and attitude they were looking for.
New Animal Planet identity launched in October 2018.
A computer would not have had the capability to break the rules, to conjure up an image that doesn’t exist while understanding the emotion that’s captured in it. Most importantly, a computer, then, couldn’t have had the audacity to pitch it to a client that had told it to do precisely the opposite. If a client had received this design proposal from a computer, they would have thought something had gone wrong with its programming. However, when a human designer is there, one with a relationship to the client, one with experience to talk through the logic and strategy, then the client may be open to the potential of an image, even if it is not at all what they requested or expected.
Identity design, in particular, speaks to very human impulses of self-definition. The images must arise from concepts distilled from everything a client thinks about themselves—spoken and unspoken. And the presentation of those images must help the client through an often expensive and challenging process of conscious change. It is a profoundly human endeavour, one that cannot be replaced by the touch of a button.