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My favorite design story this month involves the rise of Nikolay Ironov, the graphic design phenom who has wowed clients of Art.Lebedev, Russia’s largest design studio, with a string of edgy, eye-catching logo designs that stand out from the work of his peers.
Until a year ago, no one had ever heard of Nikolay. But since signing with Art.Lebedev, he has worked on more than 20 commercial projects creating, according to this report in The Next Web, “everything from beer bottle labels to startup logos.”
His designs were offered via the studio’s “express design” program. Clients—among them restaurants, cafes, craft beer pubs, public relations agencies, and YouTube bloggers—registered online, answered a series of text-based queries about their business and brand aspirations and agreed to fork over a fixed fee of 100,000 rubles (about $1,500) for logo designs. Design decisions were final; there were no redesigns or further discussions.
Nikolay’s designs were different, daring—and often downright daft. A few clients complained. But for the most part, the buzz was good.
And then this month the buzz got even better. Art.Lebedev revealed that Nikolay wasn’t a person, but a machine—created in secret by the studio, powered by artificial intelligence and trained on hand-drawn vector images. Even Nikolay’s profile photo on the studio website was a computer-generated amalgam of photos of all the studio’s designers. There were glowing reviews on Medium and Fast Company.
By all accounts, clients aren’t complaining about being duped by the studio. Instead, most are basking in the glory of what appears to be a brilliant publicity stunt.
But two questions linger: Are ‘Nikolay’s’ designs any good? And does A.I. pose a real threat to the job security of human designers?
You can answer that first question for yourself by having a look at Nikolay’s portfolio here. (Personally, I love the orange craft beer logos but find the rest of his work pretty meh.)
As for the second question, Art.Lebedev head developer Roman Kosovichev declares Nikolay a resounding success. Clients were happy. The studio got paid.
“Ironov can effectively undertake real, commercial tasks,” Kosovichev exults on the studio website. “He’s available 24/7, doesn’t get sick, or get ‘writer’s block,’ while continually evolving and solving creative problems in a matter of seconds. And, most importantly, he offers absolutely unique takes on design solutions.”
I remain deeply suspicious of that last assertion. Yes, Nikolay’s work is quirky. But is it truly unique? Is it genuinely creative? Did the machine approximate empathy?
As I’ve argued often in this space, the problem with most A.I. is that it reinforces human biases rather than resists them. That’s the reason, for example, that I hate Spotify, whose fancy algorithms can’t figure me out at all. Ages ago, I used to count on classmates, snobby record store clerks, or crazy college DJs to badger me into listening to new music. But now I have Spotify, which serves up the same old bland comfort food, time after time, occasionally slipping in a few minor variations. Facebook, Google, Amazon are much the same.
A.I. may be able to generate interesting logos. It is getting better at composing music and has significantly improved in its ability to generate facsimiles of human faces, fake videos, and special effects. And yet algorithms remain hopeless at painting, writing fiction, and many corporate tasks like recruiting.
For future designers, the challenge will be to learn to work with A.I. without being imprisoned by it.
More design news below.
Clay Chandler
-clay.chandler@fortune.com
NEWS BY DESIGN
Facebook has created task groups teams to study the effect of racial bias in its Instagram and Facebook algorithms. Last year, the company blocked employees from investigating such bias without approval from senior managers so the new "equity and inclusion" teams are something of a reversal.
On Wednesday, the CEOs of America’s biggest tech players—Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple—will face questioning by the House Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee. The hearings are billed as “part six” in the subcommittee’s investigation into “online platforms and market power,” which began last year. The hearing, held over webcam, will be streamed on Google-owned YouTube.
Last week, Toyota redesigned its print logo as a 2D icon, making it the latest auto-manufacturer to ditch skeuomorphic designs adopted in the 80s and 90s. Dezeen has a round-up of seven auto firms that have done so. Ironically, the push to ensure “longevity in a digital world” comes weeks after Apple unveiled a return to more realistic rendering in its OS design.
Office furniture designer Herman Miller teamed up with Logitech to design a chair for gamers that costs $1,500. The padded Embody Gaming Chair has a cooling system and was designed with the input of 30 physicians, to help users maintain posture while sitting in one place for extended periods. With a lot of the world now working at home, the chair could easily find dual use.
Days after announcing production delays to its latest chip design, Intel fired its Chief Engineering Officer Venkata “Murthy” Renduchintala and split up its technology group into several divisions, all now reporting to CEO Bob Swan. The shake-up is supposed to “accelerate product leadership and improve focus and accountability in process technology execution.”
EVENTS BY DESIGN
August
Web design conference Beyond Tellerrand has rescheduled its August event in Berlin to September next year. However, organizers hope their event in Düsseldorf will continue as re-scheduled in November
Copenhagen’s NordDesign festival, with its focus on industrial and product design, will be online this year, August 12-24
The 6th International Conference on Design Creativity will continue as scheduled August 26-28, but will be online rather than in Finland, as initially planned.
September
London Design Festival has decided to go ahead September 12-20, with a stripped-down offline program that will target Londoners much more than international visitors. Other events will be online. The organizers are still figuring out how exactly to proceed.
Design Matters in Copenhagen appears to be carrying on, too, September 23-24, although it is now selling tickets to view a livestream of the event.
QUOTED BY DESIGN
“If that kind of participatory mechanism design eventually becomes the norm then you will see a sea change, and people will start to think about how to collaborate with different people, rather than to cast them as others.”
In a fascinating profile from Wired, Taiwan’s digital minister Audrey Tang discusses how she encouraged the government to open up National Health Insurance (NHI) data to the public so that citizens could easily find surgical masks during the pandemic. The NHI keeps stock of products available in pharmacies, through which masks were being distributed. Making the official data available not only kept citizens informed, but allowed local programmers to create new tools with the data—such as adding audio assistance for the visually impaired.
This week’s edition of BxD was curated by Eamon Barrett. Email him tips and ideas at eamon.barrett@fortune.com
