Your Logo Is Not a Suggestion
Apparently, somewhere along the way, the logo stopped being a piece of finished artwork and became more of a suggestion.
A jumping-off point.
A general direction.
Something kind of like this, only make it sparkle.
Welcome to branding in the age of AI.
And before anyone gets nervous, I use AI.
I like AI.
AI is enormously useful.
But AI has also introduced us to a fascinating new category of artwork:
The logo that looks exactly like your logo until you actually look at it.
The letters are almost right.
The spacing is almost right.
The proportions are almost right.
The color is somewhere in the general neighborhood.
And there it sits in the middle of an otherwise beautiful AI-generated ad looking perfectly confident.
Just like it belongs there.
It does not.
Pantone? How Quaint.
For decades, companies went to enormous trouble to establish specific brand colors.
Not “blue.”
Not “a nice blue.”
Not “something blue-ish that works with the background.”
This blue.
Pantone numbers were specified.
CMYK builds were established.
RGB and HEX equivalents were documented.
Designers created brand standards explaining exactly how those colors should be reproduced.
But apparently we don’t need any of that anymore.
Because now AI can make your logo sparkle.
It can make it metallic.
It can make it glow.
It can make it look like it was carved out of ice, dipped in rose gold and illuminated from behind by the northern lights.
Which is fabulous.
Unless your logo isn’t supposed to do any of those things.
Your corporate color did not suddenly become “whatever looks pretty in this particular ad.”
A Pantone color is a specification.
Not a mood.
And While We’re Here, Those Letters Aren’t Suggestions Either.
Many logos use customized typography.
A letter may have been redrawn.
Kerning may have been adjusted manually.
Shapes may have been altered.
The relationship between the symbol and the type may have been carefully calculated.
That little space between two letters that nobody notices?
Someone noticed.
Someone probably spent an afternoon on it.
There may also be an X-space or clear-space rule determining how close other elements can come to the logo.
There may be minimum reproduction sizes.
Approved horizontal and vertical configurations.
Rules governing when the symbol can appear without the name.
Those things aren’t there because a designer had an unusually slow Tuesday.
They’re there to protect the brand.
“But It Looks Right.”
This may become the new version of my favorite production sentence:
“But it looks right on my screen.”
AI is extraordinarily good at creating things that look right.
That’s one of its strengths.
And one of its dangers.
Give it a company’s logo and ask it to create an advertisement and it may produce something gorgeous.
It may also redraw the logo.
Slightly.
Change a letter.
Slightly.
Stretch it.
Slightly.
Alter the color.
Slightly.
Move things around.
Slightly.
And when all those slightlies get together, congratulations:
You have a brand-new logo nobody approved.
And the same thing is beginning to happen to the rest of the ad.
It looks finished.
The lighting is beautiful.
The typography is sitting there confidently.
The photograph looks expensive.
Everything has shadows and depth and perhaps a tasteful little glow.
You look at it and think:
Well, that’s done.
Except maybe it isn’t.
Maybe it’s square and the publication needs a full page.
Maybe the image that looks enormous on your phone is nowhere near large enough for print.
Maybe the copy is baked into the image.
Maybe the type isn’t editable.
Maybe there’s no bleed.
Maybe there’s no room to create bleed.
Maybe the logo is wrong.
Maybe the entire beautiful thing is essentially one flattened picture that now has to be pulled apart, rebuilt and recreated by somebody who knows what the final piece actually needs to do.
But boy, does it look pretty.
And therein lies the problem.
Looks Branded ≠ Is on Brand.
This distinction is going to become increasingly important as more people create their own advertising with AI.
An ad can look branded because it contains approximately the right colors, approximately the right typeface and something resembling the company logo.
That doesn’t make it brand compliant.
And an ad can look professionally designed without actually being professionally built.
Those are two entirely different things.
The real approved logo should be placed into the finished artwork from the original master file whenever possible.
Not recreated.
Not interpreted.
Not “enhanced.”
And definitely not extracted from the magical sparkly version AI decided would really make the brand pop.
AI can create the environment around the logo.
The logo itself should remain the logo.
Welcome to the TV Dinner School of Design.
This is where I keep thinking about TV dinners.
They look surprisingly good on the box.
Everything is right there.
Meat. Potatoes. Vegetable. Dessert.
There may even be a sprig of parsley in the photograph, although I have yet to open a frozen dinner and discover that someone at the factory thoughtfully tucked fresh parsley beside my mashed potatoes.
You heat it up.
You peel back the plastic.
And technically, dinner has been served.
That doesn’t mean anybody cooked.
And that, increasingly, is what worries me about the phrase:
“But I already designed it.”
Sometimes what I’m being handed is the graphic-design equivalent of a TV dinner.
Everything appears to be there.
Headline? Check.
Picture? Check.
Logo? Sort of.
Pretty background? Absolutely.
Sparkle? Naturally.
It has been assembled, heated up and presented in a container.
And from six feet away, it looks like dinner.
But design isn't just putting all the ingredients into the tray.
Someone still has to know whether the ingredients work together.
Someone has to know what size the tray is.
Someone has to know whether it can survive the oven.
Someone has to notice that the logo has quietly turned into something else while everybody was admiring the mashed potatoes.
Pretty is not the same as prepared.
And that distinction matters.
For years, graphic designers occasionally heard some version of:
“So basically, you make things look pretty.”
Well.
Now we actually have software that can make things look pretty.
Extremely pretty.
Instantly pretty.
Sometimes breathtakingly pretty.
And that may finally demonstrate that making something pretty was never the entire job.
Because after the pretty part comes the annoying stuff.
Is it the correct size?
Is it the correct resolution?
Are the colors correct?
Is the typography correct?
Is the logo correct?
Will it reproduce?
Will it scale?
Can it be edited?
Does it meet the publication specifications?
Can somebody actually print the damn thing?
That is the part nobody notices when it's done correctly.
They just notice when it isn't.
AI didn't eliminate graphic design.
In a strange way, it may be doing a spectacular job of demonstrating what graphic designers were doing all along.
Protect the Boring Stuff.
Brand standards aren’t particularly exciting.
Nobody gathers the family around after dinner to read the corporate identity manual.
Kids! Come quickly! They’ve increased the minimum clear space to 0.5X!
But that boring little document is what keeps a company looking like the same company everywhere it appears.
And your brand shouldn’t become a TV dinner either: assembled quickly, heated up in a few minutes and served in whatever shape the container happens to allow.
It may be convenient.
It may even look surprisingly good.
But it doesn’t have the same nutrients.
Convenient is not the same as considered.
And we’re entering a period when protecting those standards is going to matter more, not less.
Because creating advertising is becoming easier.
Creating something that looks professional is becoming easier.
Creating something that looks branded is becoming easier.
And creating something that is subtly, convincingly and beautifully wrong is becoming easier too.
So use AI.
Have fun with it.
Make the background spectacular.
Make the lighting dramatic.
Make the product float through space if that’s what the concept calls for.
Hell, make the entire ad sparkle.
Just leave the logo alone.
Because your logo is not an AI prompt.
It’s not an interpretation.
It’s not a starting point.
And it is definitely not a suggestion.
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