——-AI VISUAL MODELS

We constantly update our design process with new AI visual models. We are learning to look at brands through the lens of AI. Whereas photography indexed the real, AI synthesis signifies the imaginary. Its technical images no longer mirror but model possible worlds. How can we orient ourselves in AI’s endless hall of mirrors?

Mathematica Animals : Wolfram Mathematica software used in science and engineering is a surprisingly visual and graphical software. It instantly visualizes functions, data, networks, geometries, and animations, beautifully and in great detail. This collection of pre-historic animals originates from Mathematica graph of multi-directional aggregation and tiling.

Digital Negative : Unlike cameras directly imprinting reality, AI creates images by learning elements and patterns from data. This computational mimetic holds new potential – algorithms can create reflections of both the real and unreal. We start by preparing a “digital negative,” a blueprint showing precise design outlines. Then, we iteratively run it through several AI models, testing, adding new blend parameters, and selecting outputs.

AI Visual Models : Photography freed artists from realistic representation. It took over the documentary role of art and gave rise to expressive, conceptual, abstract, and imaginary. AI could free designers from solid middle-ground work, requiring technical skill and intricate detailing. While AI pulls towards the middle of the curve, it also frees designers to focus on conceptually clear and analytical work. AI Visual Codes could be seen as the essential outlines for technically polished work created with AI VisualModels.

Variations & Design Intent : Vilém Flusser in his book Gestures writes that drawing by hand (the gesture of drawing) helps us answer the question “What I am trying to express?” While using tools can answer “how” questions at best, and add noise, i.e. take me further away from what I am trying to express. Do AI images take us even further away or there is a possibility of creative intention? After Saul Steinberg Dancing Couple.

Typography & Visual AI : Most visual AI systems include natural language processing, they detect and recognize text in images, then generate new text, creating strange word collages in the best tradition of absurdist poetry. After Andy Warhol’s famous Brillo Boxes. Brillo Boxes after Andy Warhol.

Visual Codes & Brand Geometry : design elements, patterns, and combinations can be tested through AI in the context of architecture, digital, packaging & retail.

Digital Negative : a blueprint showing precise design outlines reinterpreted through several AI models, testing, adding new blend parameters, and selecting outputs. AI Visual Codes could be seen as a new kind of digital negative 
from which new designs and expressions would appear.

Unlimited AI & Human Limitations : Instead of a vast surface of endless possibilities, concentrate on a single area and go as deeply as possible. (Lev Manovich)

The photograph imprinted light onto film to mimetically reproduce the world. While AI does not directly reproduce reality like a camera, AI models are still grounded in real visual data. Their neural network foundations could be seen as a new kind of infinite digital negative from which variations can be produced. So while AI imagery involves more abstraction and interpretation than photography, it remains tethered to visual references from the real world.

Curating the AI’s outputs : instead of over-correcting toward expectations, image generation using multiple Visual Models allows surprising new visual languages to develop. Relinquishing top-down control enables a dialogue between intentional creativity and generative surprise.

Design by Analogy : an exploration of the relations between images.

Raster, Dots & Polke : The way human beings inhabit culture is similar to the way animals inhabit nature (Vilém Flusser) All new visual tools, like the photo camera in the past, become part of our environment. It is essential to understand and use contemporary tools, Midjournry, Dall-E, Dream Studio, PromeAI, Playform, LookX, even if their use poses problems of noise.

Vilém Flusser wrote that "the way human beings inhabit culture is similar to the way animals inhabit nature." All new visual tools, like the photo camera in the past, become part of our environment. It is essential to understand and use contemporary tools, Midjournry, Dall-E, Dream Studio, PromeAI, Playform, LookX, even if their use poses problems of noise.

Photography freed artists from realistic representation. It took over the documentary role of art and gave rise to expressive, conceptual, abstract, and imaginary. AI could free designers from solid middle-ground work, requiring technical skill and intricate detailing. While AI pulls towards the middle of the curve, it also frees designers to focus on conceptually clear and analytical work. AI Visual Codes could be seen as the essential outlines for detailed renderings to be created with AI Visual Models.