Leveraging AI to build your brand

AI as a strategic tool

AI is, and should always be, a tool for creators - an instrument like much other software, leveraged by designers to bring a vision to life. If art and design were once conceptualised and created on paper, human evolution and, as a result, the evolution of design, has led us to adopt ways to make the creative process easier. AI is an example of this. There is, however, a now well-known risk with the increasing use of AI: its capacity to eliminate the design approach.

When artificial intelligence is implemented without strategic design thinking, key design principles, including utility, recognisability, consistency, and attraction potential, are easily overlooked. In this scenario, the person using the AI tool – whether it’s a non-professional or a designer falling into the trap of aesthetic, situational, and/or random creation – becomes a ‘client’ of the tool itself, as they’re not in control of what’s being created. They might end up with a visually beautiful result, but it will never stand out in the larger context and market.

The rise of “flat” design

A brand identity must be both unique and consistent over time; this is an essential aspect of branding that we at Comprend are committed to ensuring. Only by carefully managing AI tools, especially at the stages of initial ideation and finalisation, can we produce a cohesive product that’s aligned with the brand and competitive in the market.

If we’re not managing the tool with a clear design strategy in mind, our visuals and content will likely be flat - a trend that has already been evident over the last decade. Corporate brands in particular have developed in similar directions, causing different businesses to appear remarkably similar to one another.        

The discipline of commercial design, which developed from the early artistic approaches of the Arts and Crafts movement and then the Art Nouveau advert­ising posters in the last decade of the nineteenth century, has evolved in reaction to stylistic, cultural, and contextual requirements shaped by current events. As a result, each style of art has been representative of its time. With the advent of AI as a tool for producing visuals and other graphics, it’s worth asking the question: are we witnessing a new commercial design movement, where excessive resource reduction to save time and money transforms branding into a readymade product, doomed to fail rapidly?

Well, not if we leverage AI with strategic direction, informed by a deep knowledge of design. After all, if AI is incorporated into a design strategy, which has well-defined goals and follows the design principles we outlined earlier, it can actually be an outstanding tool to accelerate creativity and content production.

How Comprend is adopting AI

At Comprend, our objective is to continue developing a competitive, functional creative design method which leverages the power of AI to produce products that endure and stand out from others in the market. We have had many opportunities to test it and are confident that we have control over it. In fact, it’s a central principle in our company’s identity. So, how do we go about it?

In short, we use AI to generate the foundation of the image and experienced designers to enhance and finalise it. Leveraging our expertise in design, we always begin by identifying the communication goals for the client we’re working with. Once these are established, we translate them into visual guidelines that communicate the values of the brand. These rules will be meticulously followed during the AI image production procedure. As a result, we can interact with the AI tool to define every detail of what’s being produced, while also maintaining consistency. If we didn’t, we’d risk having disjointed visuals with no coherence.

Once the designer is happy with the imagery generated, we use software to improve pixel depth – this is needed as AIs are not designed to provide high-resolution images that can be printed (yet!). Finally, the designer goes through the final retouching procedure to precisely align each aspect of the generated image with our specified criteria and remove any visible AI production imperfections. The result? High-quality imagery that’s aligned with the brand and developed in a significantly shorter period of time.

1. Original, AI-generated image

2. Regenerated image following reprompting

3. Colour corrected image

4. Final image, manually modified and enhanced

Get started with AI

If used correctly, AI can be a great tool to accelerate both creativity and content creation. Of course, this is dependent on having the right people in place. At Comprend, we offer various AI services and have talented designers, strategists and content creators who can help you leverage AI to scale and improve your marketing and communication.

Explore our AI services