While AI has infiltrated almost every aspect of our lives, the design industry still grapples with ethical concerns surrounding the technology, with many creatives sceptical about its growing influence. But what happens when the tables are turned, and generative AI seeks the help of human creativity to stand out from the crowd? Enter How&How's rebrand for Ideogram, the AI platform intent on raising the standards of AI-generated design.
For Cat How and her team, it wasn't a project without moral complications, but with "cautious adoption, not blind enthusiasm", they crafted a brand identity bursting with human soul. To understand more about the creative process behind this challenging project, I caught up with Cat to discuss AI anxiety, the acceptance of irony and the value of taking on uncomfortable projects.
What moral dilemmas did you face when taking on the project?
Working on a generative AI design tool is never going to be a neutral brief for a branding studio, and we knew that walking in. There's an obvious tension in a room full of designers being asked to build the identity for the very category of technology that half the industry is nervous about.
So we did what we always do when something feels complicated: we took it to our moral compass. It's a channel we keep specifically for this, a place to thrash out the work we should or shouldn't take on as a team. And we really did thrash it out. There were meetings, then chats, then more meetings, and everyone got their say, because this wasn't the kind of decision I wanted to make from the top down.
Scepticism and curiosity aren't opposites
The thing we kept circling back to was the irony of it all. We were already playing around with these tools ourselves. To turn the brief down would have meant pretending we weren’t – taking a moral stand against something we were quietly using every week. You can't really hold a position you don't actually hold.
So the opposition softened into something more interesting: cautious adoption. Not blind enthusiasm, and that distinction matters to me. Cautious. We went in with our eyes open, which felt like the only honest way to do it.
Have you faced your own struggles with AI scepticism?
Honestly, yes – I’d be lying if I pretended I sailed into this completely at peace with it.
Designers are the most sceptical creative group out there, and the numbers back it up. Roughly 73% are worried about losing their jobs to it, and nearly half believe manual graphic production could be obsolete within five years. Those aren't abstract statistics to me. That anxiety lives in my studio, in conversations with my team, in my own head some days too.
But scepticism and curiosity aren't opposites – you can be genuinely wary of something and still want to understand how it works. The real mistake is letting the fear keep you at arm's length, so far from the thing that you never form a proper opinion of your own. You just inherit everyone else's panic.
I'd much rather know the thing than fear the rumour of it. So we decided to get closer, not further away.
What sets Ideogram apart from other AI brands?
The simplest answer is also the most telling one: they came to a branding studio in the first place.
Sit with that for a moment. Here's a generative AI company: the exact kind of business that, on paper at least, could be seen as a threat to what designers do for a living, and it chose to work with human designers to shape how it shows up in the world. That decision says more about how they value craft than any mission statement could.
A lot of AI brands are desperate to look effortless and machine-made, like the whole thing assembled itself. Ideogram understood something more grown-up than that. They knew an identity built on instinct, taste and real strategic thinking would land in a completely different way-that there's a warmth and a point of view you simply can't generate.
They didn't want a brand spat out by the technology they make. They wanted one made by people, for it. That's the distinction, and it's not a small one.
What's your favourite element of the brand identity?
I'm going to dodge the easy version of this question, where I point at a logo or pick a colour I'm fond of.
My favourite element is the thinking sitting underneath all of it. The whole identity quietly makes an argument, and the argument is this: a model can absolutely enhance a process, but it can't replace the craft, the instinct, the taste and the strategy that a human team brings. Every decision we made became a small piece of evidence for that idea.
So if you're asking what I'm proudest of, it isn't a shape or a typeface. It's a position. The best identities always have one underneath them, and this one knows exactly what it believes.
Has this project changed your opinion of AI? If so, how?
It sharpened my opinion far more than it changed it, which I think is the more honest way to put it.
We went into the project genuinely to learn — a deliberate exercise, handled by a small, curious team who wanted to find out for themselves what these tools can and can't do, rather than guess from the sidelines. And what we came out with was a confirmation of what we'd quietly suspected all along.
Once you know exactly where a tool's edges are, the fear has nowhere left to live.
AI can enhance the way we work. It's a brilliant tool; it speeds things up, it opens up directions we might not have reached as quickly, and it takes some of the grunt work off the table. But it is no replacement for craft, instinct, taste and strategic thinking. Those are still ours.
So no, I don't fear it the way I might have done a few years ago. I understand it now, and understanding something is more or less the opposite of being threatened by it. Once you know exactly where a tool's edges are, the fear has nowhere left to live.
Anything else to add?
Only this, really.
The instinct when new technology arrives is to observe it from a safe distance – take a clean position, keep your hands tidy, comment on it without ever touching it. And I understand the appeal of that, but I think it's a mistake.
Understanding new technology means getting close to it. Putting your hands on the thing, finding its edges yourself rather than reading about them in someone else's hot take. We took on a brief that made us genuinely uncomfortable; we worked through that discomfort as a team, and we're better for having done it.
The discomfort, in the end, was the whole lesson.
The Brand Impact Awards 2026 are now open for entries! If you have a standout branding project from the last year that you think deserves recognition, you need to enter the BIAs. You have until July 9 to enter can do so on the Brand Impact Awards website.
