We spoke to our creative team about how AI is affecting concept creation, design, illustration and the day-to-day…
Alex Tompkins, Creative Director, appreciates how AI helps with smaller tasks, giving him more time to focus on creating impactful work.
“So, what do I use AI for? It saves me from my stereotypical flaws — chiefly, a lack of organisation. I want to spend my time generating concepts and guiding my team to elevate our work. AI’s ability to summarise meetings is a godsend for a keen participant who’s not known for accurate note-taking.
“The luxury of testing ideas, those scrambled thoughts and theories without the glaring spotlight of the world (clients), is priceless. Creatively, we’re speeding up and shedding much of the technical legwork. The animation projects we’ve tackled and the upskilling we’ve achieved are phenomenal. Sure, AI has a long way to go —but it’s moving quickly.
“Turns out, I quite like AI. It gives me more time to explore ideas and create work that helps our clients’ growth (and that I can proudly share with my mum). We all know that we’re scratching the surface of its potential. I have no clue where it’s headed, which is part of the allure; I was beginning to think the older generations of the agency world had all the fun.”
Andrew Ward, Director, Brand and Creative Marketing, compares AI to Marmite – love it or hate it, its impact depends on how people choose to embrace it.
“Having been in the creative industry for over 40 years, I’ve seen plenty of change. But none feel as scary as AI. Take a look at thispersondoesnotexist.com when you have a minute, and you’ll start to get the idea.
“Personally, it makes me question reality, or what we think is reality. Every photo, every graphic is now leading me to look for any signs of AI. But, when used correctly, AI has the potential to be your trusty assistant. What once was the realm of creatives sketching out rough ideas, is quickly shifting to people who can think and prompt their amazing ideas. More realistic concepts can be created and tested quickly helping get to a viable solution much faster. Exciting times…”
Eliza Mackay, Designer, gets AI and its perks. But for her, there’s still something special about the human touch in art.
“I get the excitement around AI, but in my day-to-day design work, it hasn’t quite lived up to the hype yet. Sure, AI is a lifesaver for things like idea generation, writing copy, and I use it daily retouching images in Photoshop. But when it comes to truly grasping the intricacies of typography and visual design? It’s still got a way to go.
“Philosophically, I’m a little sad to see artistic value and human perspective get overshadowed by the world’s obsession with content creation and speed. Don’t get me wrong, AI is quickly becoming ingrained in the design workflow, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. I can’t deny the value of AI in eliminating draining, time-consuming tasks like retouching. It’s a trade-off, I suppose.”
Red Howell, Senior Creative, hopes AI will continue to help us (humans) be better, than pushing us off stage completely.
“AI is the child that learns a simple magic trick, wows their parents, and then proceeds to beat that dead horse until they stop paying attention. Occasionally though, AI learns a shiny new trick and we all have a moment of either amusement or fear. These moments are what get our creative team talking.
“As we all adjust and acclimatise to the introduction of more advanced LLMs and generative tools, I imagine the terror of losing our jobs will fade and the awe of the jaw-dropping cyber-miracles happening before us will fizzle. This is to say, that I believe we’ll settle into understanding AI, and its uses as it was originally intended – to augment us.
“We currently use AI to aid our use of photography, to enhance content and occasionally manage to save or buy ourselves some time on projects. We’ve even used LLMs in the creative team to stretch our skills in coding. Designers get to experiment with HTML formats that previously took a lot more training. We also have the tools now to animate more complex and reactive projects beyond our skill levels thanks to AI’s help in demystifying JavaScript. So, my hope is that these tools will continue to offer new ways of forwarding ourselves as creatives instead of threatening to chuck us out completely in favour of generative art and graphics.”
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