Our creative AI journey: collaborator, not finisher

Our AI use for creative ideation, workflow and development has been growing.

It hasn’t reduced a single aspect of creative exploration.  If anything, it’s made the process more rigorous, more expansive and more useful to clients, giving us more ways to test, refine and strengthen ideas before they become finished work.

That’s not the story most people expect to hear. The usual narrative around AI is about speed and efficiency: fewer rounds, fewer iterations and faster sign-off. Ours went the other way, and it’s worth explaining why. Speed only helps if the work is still intentional, ownable and right for the brand.

This is the fourth piece in our series on where AI stands. The first three covered what clients want, our company-wide approach and how our content/copy team rebuilt their workflows. This one is about design and creative.

Where AI sits in the process

The design tools we use have always been improving, and the embedded AI updates already make day-to-day production more efficient. That part is real and it matters. But it’s also the smallest part of what’s changed.

The bigger shift happens earlier in the creative process. We use AI to expand exploration and sharpen ideation, while keeping creative judgment, brand integrity and final execution firmly with our team. It helps us generate more directions faster before committing to one — giving us more room to evaluate, pressure-test and strengthen ideas best suited to the client, audience and brand. AI does not decide which direction is right. That call, and the final proof on every piece of work before it goes out, still comes from a person on our team.

Ideation isn’t the only place this shows up. We’re also using AI to help visualize creative directions sooner, test how a concept might look across formats faster, and reduce how often we reach for stock imagery that only half fits. That’s given the team a new way to solve a familiar problem: needing an image that doesn’t quite exist yet.

Clients are already asking how AI fits into creative work. We want to give them a clear answer: use it where it adds value while keeping strategy, brand judgment and final decisions in human hands. That’s the conversation we want to be ready to lead.

What that looks like

AI compresses the early mockups process, giving clients something tangible to react to sooner. That doesn’t mean less craft. It means more of the day can go toward the exploration that matters: choosing the right direction, not simply proving what’s technically possible.

On a recent retail campaign, that meant creating custom, on-brand lifestyle imagery instead of settling for stock imagery that “almost” fit. For the client, that translated into stronger visual fit, faster alignment, fewer compromises and fewer late-stage production fixes.

What doesn’t change

Creative Minds + Strategic Design. That remains the standard. AI can create more room for strategic thinking. It does not replace the strategy — or the people accountable for it. Every deliverable still gets a human final review against the client’s brand before it reaches them.

What’s ahead for our creatives

For clients, this means stronger creative options, clearer decision points and a faster path to distinctive work, without losing the strategic thinking and human judgment behind it. Behind the scenes, we’re building toward that with structured brand review and proofing support, sharper interpretation of creative briefs and shared creative libraries the whole team can pull from. And there’s more in this space we’re not ready to share yet — stay tuned.

This is the fourth in our series on where AI stands. Next, we hand it over to our account team to tackle a harder problem: making AI genuinely useful when it doesn’t yet know a client’s history.

This article was originally published on LinkedIn on September 9, 2026.