What AI will never do for us
AI is changing the game. It’s up to us to raise ours
In just a few months, generative AI has made its way into every creative profession. It produces images, copy and videos in seconds. It is available to everyone, fast, and never gets tired.
For a design agency, it is both an opportunity and a question. An opportunity, because it opens up new ways to explore, test and show an idea. A question, because creating a brand or a pack isn’t about producing more images, but about making the right choices.
Our conviction: AI is an excellent tool, as long as you know what it is for, and what it shouldn’t be used for.
Even AI needs an art director.
We use it, and we believe in its value. But the way we use it rests on four principles.
1. Standing up for distinctiveness
AI tools draw on what already exists. The result: images start to look alike, codes get smoothed out, and the average wins. Yet a brand needs the opposite: to be recognisable and different from the rest. Our job is to find what makes each brand unique, and that can’t be generated in a click.
2. Setting limits for the tools
A tool without a framework produces a lot, and not always the right thing. We set the rules before we use it: brand strategy, art direction and category constraints define what we ask of it, and what we keep. AI carries out a brief. It doesn’t make the choices for us.
3. Giving ourselves time to get it wrong
An instant result is tempting, but it cuts the journey short. And it is often in the detours that the best ideas are born: we try, we get it wrong, we step back, we come back to it. That time isn’t wasted; it is when a real point of view takes shape. We make a point of protecting it, even when the tool lets us move fast.
4. Keeping people at the heart of understanding
Who better than people to understand what a client or a consumer needs? Listening to a team in a workshop, observing a shelf, sensing the hesitation in front of a pack, picking up on what a shopper leaves unsaid. AI isn’t in the store, or in the workshop room. The field remains our starting point.
That is what lets us use AI without setting it against our craft: it speeds things up, makes ideas visible and helps us decide.
A real-life example: Lotus turns 60
For Lotus’s 60th anniversary, we came up with the whole concept: “60 years of softness”, a child in Lotus’s heritage Breton stripes, a ginger cat looking distinctly jealous, and a birthday cake made of toilet rolls. The idea is ours, from A to Z.
Once the concept was in place, AI helped us make it visible. We produced a full mock-up, presented to the brand for approval.
With the creative intent approved, we could launch production: organising and running the shoot, casting the model and scouting the location, building the toilet-roll cake.
When it came to creating the key visual, we turned to AI again to design the cat and the candles (safety first: you don’t put real flames on a toilet-paper cake).
In short, AI let us see the idea sooner and get it approved more easily. The concept, the creative choices and the direction of the shoot stayed in the team’s hands.
Our conviction
AI speeds up the start of the journey: it helps us explore, show and validate. But the meaning, the choices and what makes a brand unique remain a matter for people, the field and time.
That is the balance we stand for at Trapèze: powerful tools, serving a clear creative concept.
