...but AI says you did.

About a quick and surprising exchange that’s got the AI-coloured sections of my brain whirring afresh.

A common scenario is this: a client asks me to do a project, referencing some work of mine that they love, except that one of the pieces they refer to wasn’t done by me. I always explain politely and get them to check their sources and double-check that they actually want *me*, not whoever did that work. And it’s fine — it happens.

This week, it was different. I let the client know the reference - which I’ll call Project X - was nice, but not mine. I said I could see why they thought I did it; but what made them think I did?

Here was their answer:

Client: Who created the intro for “Project X”?

ChatGPT: The intro artwork for “Project X” was created by the illustrator and designer Sarah J. Coleman, who is also known by her professional name, Inkymole. Coleman’s distinctive style often combines hand-drawn elements with digital techniques, creating visually striking and memorable illustrations.

Oh.

Now, I’d love it if I had actually done Project X. I didn’t. But what piqued my interest immediately was that we know about the reductive, destructive power of AI on artist’s reputations and folios, obliterating credits, ownership and attribution — but it has never occurred to me that it could do the opposite.

I don’t have any negative vibes toward the client, by the way. They’re a busy person and they were looking for answers — they laughed and admitted they ought to have fact-checked the answer before emailing me. Agreed. I know they’ll use this as a teachable moment.

(And at this point it looks like I am doing the job they wrote to me about — this exchange hasn’t any negative bearing on that).

It didn’t take long for me to realise that if ChatGPT can say I drew something I didn’t, what else can ChatGPT say people did, when they…didn’t? < brow furrows / chin-stroking commences and a whole load of new worrying unfurls >

In the same week, I saw a Thread accusing [non-AI] artists of gatekeeping (yawn — I will simply direct you to my colleague Kyle Webster’s article for that), bullying children and burning witches in an amusingly teen-rage trollstream that attempted to defend what appears to be the poster’s love of making AI art (which in itself does not need defending). They do this by name-calling and yelling, in a loud series of furious threads based on, at best, an ‘intentionally modified’ grasp of the fundamentals of copyright and public domain. So I know that the rage of the prompters that I wrote about is still there, and making its way into the historically peaceful space of Threads (they seemed to be just having a really good time generating engagement, which might be all it’s really about — attention):

(someone replied calling them an ‘Aren’tist’, which just made people CHUCKLE’.)

I wrote a three-part piece about AI early last year as a way of organising and processing my thoughts and knowledge about AI, and to sort of put a stake in the ground at that point in time. I never had the intention of continuing the series, as I already knew that things were happening too fast and too often to keep up. As people sent me article after article in response, and I went off to deliver a talk on the subject, I quickly realised that unless I ditched my full time work to become an AI reporter, I couldn’t hope to stay on top of developments, so vowed to keep reading and observing without commentary instead. In fact someone emailed me for my thoughts on AI for an article the other day, and OK, I was ill at the time, but it was just way too broad a question — I had to pass on it, directing them to the thousands of articles already out there.

But this little ChatGPT incident needed recording. I don’t have ChatGPT but know people who do, so I plan on a little experimentation. The time I want to dedicate to writing about AI might be very extremely limited, but my curiosity isn’t.

Let me know if something like this has happened to you — I’m all ears!

Sage Francis 3.0: an always-evolving logo

Artist, record label boss and rapper Sage Francis has just unveiled his new logo, over 20 years since I first fell in love with his records, 18 years since I did the biggest art project of my life on his work, 16 years since I did a piece of art that wasn’t meant to be a logo but became one, 17 years since I did his first proper ‘new logo’, and ten years since I designed him another ‘new logo’. Like the artist himself, this is a logo — and a relationship — that doesn't stay still!

We never sat down to do a logo, to brainstorm or sign an NDA or moodboard or A/B test or anything else. It’s been a fully organic journey. The first one was actually a piece specially created for the 2007 Manhattan outing of our big Sage-inspired show, If A Girl Writes Off The World (a pre-Adobe Dreamweaver-built site will open up. I built it myself and it’s so poignantly 2007). It was picked up and put onto some of the hoodies in Sage’s Strange Famous merch range — best-sellers at that. Detailed and writhing, it was made with a very fine Nikko-G nib and black ink. The original is actually very small, and framed in our hallway.

The second was kind of accidental as it was made for the cover of Sage’s 2007 album Human The Death Dance. It just kind of…started to get used on things, posters, ads, posts and merch. In the way that a logo does, I suppose. Made with an inkpen and nib, it featured sad faces and a minimal slope, just designed to peer over the shoulder of the man himself, next to a watermark-like Death. With hindsight, it was flimsy and odd, but then again…unlike a lot of my formal client commisssions, I hadn’t ‘sat down to design a logo’.

The album cover. Which was almost…

…this one instead.

The one that came after that was also for an album, 2014’s Copper Gone. It formed part of a single piece of ink-on-paper art but once again lived a life of its own, and served as Sage’s identity for the ten years prior the current one. I almost can’t believe myself the huge spans of time I’m casually throwing around here, by the way — but those are the dates, and this is the longevity of it all.

Again if I’d known at the time that this would be deployed in the way it was, there are things I’d have changed — but would it have improved anything? Not sure. Really not sure, but at some point someone filled it in and made it solid — which wasn’t a cool move, and around that time I began thinking, I really need to do that properly, or scrap it and do the whole thing again.

Eventually I did. I can’t remember whether I just did it and sent it to Sage with a note saying ‘this really needed doing’, or whether he asked — it doesn’t matter — but the outcome is this one. This time I *did* sit down to ‘make a logo’ from the roots put down by the Copper Gone iteration, but clean and clear. I faffed and tweaked and moved vector points and smoothed out bezier curves then undid it all, and repeat, eventually creating so many versions I think we actually really should have done some A/B testing. But there it is.

There are still things I’d change, even now, and it may or may not serve for another ten years. But I like the organic and slightly clumsy way all of these were done. They sort of ‘happened’, which is very different from the art-directed, purposeful, accountable way I do my other work.

The final. I think. Not sure. I like it. Sage likes it. But do I like one of the other versions more? We can always use one of those…can’t we…I think. We fly in the face of your Logo Rules, sir!

When Sage posted it to the fans, most people just loved it and started slapping money on the counter for the T shirt. Someone said ‘Francis’ reads as a completely different word. Someone else said having seen it they’re now expecting a country album (which I applauded).

I still look at it and see a curve I would change, bits I’d move, and I stare at it till I’m logo-blind. But honestly, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Thanks Sagey for the wholesomely organic way we do things, every time.

(If you want to read more, there’s a bunch of historic blogs here).

P.S.; this one was a wild card, and Did Not Make It. Nor shall it ever…I think…

Writing Their Story

I’ve just posted a new project in my folio, and although I’ve got over 20 years of pharmaceutical work hidden away in a password-protected archive for all manner of legal reasons, this one I was able to share. And I’m glad, because it was both a privilege and a responsibility to work on.

We watched 'Still' last week, the documentary about Michael J. Fox’s life as a person with Parkinson’s Disease. We were shown the myriad clever, agonisingly secret techniques he developed to hide the effects of the disease for as long as he could. We watched the trembling left hand always given the task of holding something or gesticulating, and the way he exaggerated his already restless manner of moving through the day, in order to fold any twitches or unexpected movement into his famously energetic modus operandi.

It was funny, educational and extremely moving, and the moment we were shown his hands beginning to move I thought of this project.

Commissioned in 2020 by Saatchi Wellness, it was designed to communicate the effect that Parkinson’s Disease has on motor control through the power of handwriting. My job was to develop a set of authentic handwriting styles for a set of fictitious patients, each with unique characteristics, that are shown both subjected to the effects of Parkinson’s, and after treatment by the drug Duopa.

Although it isn’t suggested that the treatment returns the patient to pre-Parkinsons handwriting, their motor control is shown to be sufficiently improved as to render their writing readable once more, communicating a sense of a return to empowerment and confidence. The stories of each individual are based around achieving modest, important tasks such as picking up a grandchild, or dancing with a partner.

From the Duopa project, working with Saatchi Wellness: the patient’s handwriting is challenged. It had to be hard to read, but not difficult, and accurately demonstrate the potential effects of the condition. You can see this image in use on the website.

The conclusion to the story is the patient’s handwriting showing the improvement in his condition; he’s able to hold and read a book.

The two shown here are from a larger set we created, with a complete font developed for use on behind-the-scenes assets. The research and development for this project was extensive and very moving at times, and I cried a few times as I channelled everything I’d learned through my fountain pen into the words of the imaginary, but also very real, patients.

Part of the developmental work for this project.

A small section of the font I created for the Duopa project, including the range of variations that are possible within the scope of the disease’s effect on the patient’s ability to write. This is manifested in the changing ‘T’s, ‘U’s and ‘V’s shown here.

Some of the many. many experimental pieces created for the Duopa project, showing notes and adjustments. Each of these handwriting styles must be thought of as ‘a voice’, rather than simply ‘this is how they write’.

I do a lot of what might be called forensic lettering work — maybe that’s too exacting, perhaps ‘reproduction lettering’? — whereby I’m called on to recreate the handwriting of a famous person, or someone deceased (sometimes both) for advertising or TV, film or books. Some of won’t be seen publicly. I’ve also done a lot of work that involves developing handwriting for fictitious characters — in fact, I’m doing one right now, three different ‘voices’, three different ages and situations, with a different choice of writing implement for each.

An example of the specialist lettering work I do. Here I’m recreating the handwriting of the physicist Paul Dirac, one of the founders of Quantum Theory, for use inside and outside the book, using just handful of the extant references available. The age and style of fountain pen used were of great importance too.

It’s harder than you think to override your own muscle memory and install new clicks and flicks of the wrist, different angles and pressure and descenders, a way to dot ‘i’s and cross Ts that’s someone else’s, and to keep it consistent — while tying in any historical factors too. In fact, it feels more like acting than design or lettering work, and it’s a million notebooks away from calligraphy. Once I’ve got the writing locked down, I can get into that costume and ‘be’ that person for as long as I need, even switching between them day to day. (There is, incidentally, always a voice that isn’t mine that accompanies the words I’m writing.)

But I love the immersion and focus that comes with the task, and the attention to detail. It’s very different from the kind of lettering I might make for an editorial or a logo, where I throw my brush, nib or Apple Pencil across the page with energy and only the loosest idea of outcome.

If you would like to know more about this type of work, please get in touch. In fact — write me a letter; I’m far more likely to respond…and who knows, maybe I’ll do it in your own handwriting.

Images shared with the permission of Saatchi Wellness.

https://www.duopahcp.com

A Logo for Maine.

My new logo for the US state of Maine has begun to roll out in the last few weeks, and it's a thrill to see it.

It began in early January 2023 with an email from creative Jordan and VP Neal at Miles Partnership, asking if I'd like to have a stab at updating the logo for the state of Maine. 

Now all I know about Maine can be summed up in three points: 1. Our friend, the poet Andrea Gibson was born there. 2. It's huge and beautiful, and 3. Stephen King!!! 

I said yes and within a couple of weeks was hashing out some proposals. The Miles team had made my job easier by carrying out acres of research with the inhabitants of the state itself. They'd got a stack of feedback on what they liked about the original logo, what they didn't; what living in Maine meant to them, what they thought of when they pictured their home state, and hundreds more answers to in-depth and nuanced, thoughtful questions.

The existing Maine logo looked like this:

The core feedback was that the logo felt "outdated, bland and uninspiring, particularly among Maine visitors". When asked what the new logo should be, the answer that came back most often was "bold" - but with the near-unanimous caveat that it should nod to the traditional nature of Maine.

The findings came to me in an extremely thorough 45-page document which formed the backbone of my thinking. 'Organic, craft, charm, outdoors, nature, wood, trees, breathtaking, rustic, authenticity and sustainability' were other pivotal words which came out of the research.

And that was plenty for me to go on! I had the final logo in mind almost immediately, but presented lots of different looks to the team. After all, sometimes it's just as useful for the client to see what they DON'T want as it is for them to see what they do. All but a couple were analogue, made with ink, crayons, pens and pencil on paper, I was keen to communicate movement with solidness and history; contemporary energy with tradition. 

A still from one of the WIP videos I made while working on the logo.

While wax crayon, used to make a resist version.

Here are a few of those initial suggestions - there were a LOT. I do this because, at this stage, the client could spot ANYTHING in an idea which triggers the final outcome - so I tend to leave very little out; I guess you could call this a brainstorming of sorts:

Preferred options were 'put to research', and after a few weeks a trio was isolated for further tinkering. And by tinkering, I mean the start of the fine-tuning process - without knowing which the final choice might be. This is things like examining the weight of letters, kerning, trying different options on 'e's and capitals, whether on a single line or a little bumpier, like this exploration:

Often at this point the client's curious to see how my very analogue work will look when transformed into vector art (presuming we're working with art that wasn't created digitally to begin with).

This isn't a 'click the button' or 'apply that filter' step - rather, I do this via a series of processes which sensitively and carefully change the format of the piece (from pixel to vector) without changing its nature, preserving its human warmth, detail and idiosyncrasy. Without blowing any of my hand-sketched  trumpets, it's often why people come to me for logos; in a sea of Canva-generated/off-the-shelf/plastic-looking logos they want something very obviously crafted by human hands, but which functions in every format, at every size, and performs in any technical, screen or print environment. I've been doing that a long time, and it's surprising how that need has remained consistent.

Here you can see a close-up of a very carefully vectorised version of this inky option:

This option from the second round of ideas was chosen to get through the third round. Made with simple, freely-drawn capitals in ink on paper, it worked as well in colour as it did greyscale and vector:

And as a partner suggestion to this I made a version created separately with ink and pencil to hint at cut wood, wood and trees being things that emerged as strongly connected to Maine and eliciting affectionate responses in their research group. Here's the raw art before any refinements:

Watch some of the process here:

At this point, I got The Tingles - when you know underneath you've cracked it, and you desperately want the client to agree with you...but you daren't hope too hard, because your experience tells you it can go completely in another direction! But those Tingles came when I played with these layered and coloured versions. Suddenly, I could see this on all the signs, the site, the products, the T shirts...

The team liked it. But there was one more thing. I was aware from the start that when I said the word 'Maine' in my mind, it was actually 'Maine.' - with the full stop. I couldn't stop seeing it this way. I felt it communicated a confidence and pride in this single-syllable name, and suggested that the state was everything you could need - the full stop made it both a name and a statement. 

"Where you from?" 

"Maine."

And so it was added to the next round. Would they go for this punctuatively unusual choice?

The answer was YES. And so, over the course of six months, our logo was born, and final artwork was prepared in myriad formats and al the colours of the new Maine branding guidelines. In its final iteration, the logo is currently working its way over the next few months onto hundreds of products, signs, printed materials and online platforms, but you can see it right away on the visitMaine website, and on these satisfying examples.

To my delight, as well as embracing my 'thing' for the full stop, they're using both the flat-colour version and the textured version together, deploying them in different environments, and that in itself is unusual. I applaud their boldness!

If you live in Maine and you see it about, please take a snapshot and send it to me! "Out in the wild" has become a cliché, but only because the thrill of seeing one's work out doing the job it was created for never gets boring. 

Not for me, anyway.

Thank you to the brilliant team at Miles Partnership in Denver for bringing me on to do this prestigious project, especially VP Neal and Jordan, and thanks to my agency BAreps for their patient, professional cheerleading!

Fran.

I learned yesterday that my New York agent, Francine Rosenfeld, died at the weekend.

I'm really sad about this. I came across Fran’s last ever email to me only last week, by accident while I was looking up some info about an old job. I was thinking about her the rest of that day, wondering what she was up to, worrying that I hadn't done my Christmas promo yet and thinking about the time I told her I hoped she'd get some decent time off at Christmas: " ...not my holiday", she said, and shimmied off presumably to book in another seven meetings.  

When I joined Bernstein & Andriulli in 2007, now BA Reps, I went to their office in Manhattan and was introduced by agency director Louisa (who'd recruited me to the agency) to the tall, slim Fran on arrival. She had dark eyes, dark, thick hair with a reddish tinge, boots, and a forbidding vibe; sort of Goth Lite, and I knew she meant business.

And she was ALL Business, with an upper-case B. She set about shoving me under as many art directors’ noses as she could, within a couple of weeks bringing me a fat pharmaceutical project with a price tag I’d never seen the likes of before. And from that moment, she was my boss. VIVIDLY I can still feel the anxiety of being chased around the town on a Saturday afternoon as I was getting coffee, having just climbed down from a scaffold where I was trying to finish a wall piece, while in the throes of releasing a record the following day, finishing a pharma job AND getting on a 6am flight to Lisbon the next morning. She didn’t care — she just wanted to know that I was working on her client’s job. “Saraaaaahhhh….where ARE you? The client NEEDS you.” We got it all done somehow. With decades in the industry, she knew everyone and everything, quoted fees like a demon (a fee-mon??) and managed projects with what can only be described oxymoronically as a kind ferocity, keeping clients calm and artists on their tippy-toes till the work was signed off.

Later on she got a tattoo I designed of her little dog’s name, Kody. I'm always surprised and honoured that someone would want anything I've made on their skin forever, but with Fran's I felt especially trusted with what would have been an important little creative statement for her.

My Mum will be saddened too; as Anne The Accounts Lady, she frequently emailed her to chase TAs and client details. Equally brief with comms, they were around the same age, I think, though Fran was notoriously coy about her age, partly because she looked so fantastic and full of confidence. Not coy enough, however, to hold back on advising me which cosmetic surgeries she thought I would benefit from the most, during a walk to a downtown meeting one sunny spring afternoon. Her background was mysterious and I liked it that way - she was all about the now, and her enthusiasm for creativity and commerce was infectious.

She was my agent, my friend, a tyrant and a pain in the arse, and she was responsible for bringing me some of the biggest projects of my career (so far!) We spoke almost every day while she was with B&A. Over a period of almost 13 years, she was a core part of my work family; the day genuinely did not feel normal if I hadn't had a call with Fran.

I missed her when she left the agency. Her mantle was taken up by a set of handsomely able successors, and the BA family continues. But Fran will always have a special place in my memory. Her terrier-like ambition helped put me where I am now, I'll forever be grateful to her. 

She was really quite amazing.

Fran, Stan and Bec, taken by me, on a Manhattan rooftop in 2009.

Fran just being very Fran.

KODY.

I mean...look at her! (from her brother Gary's post on Facebook).

F R A N with Tristan Eaton.