Among Equals is a London-based creative studio which works on strategy, branding, campaigns for clients like Candy Kittens, Netflix and Vinterior. Here, founder Emily Jeffrey-Barrett explains how they use AI, and how she feels about it.
You can see all the articles in this series here.
Broadly speaking, are you excited for how AI will change the design industry, or nervous?
I’m neither – I’m curious. Cautiously curious. We’re already surrounded by AI – it’s been shaping what we see, buy, read and scroll for ages now. But we haven’t seen its teeth yet.
Right now, the conversation about AI is incessant and deafening. You know that scene in Interstellar when they finally land on what looks like a mountainous planet? It’s full of possibilities.
Until they realise those aren’t mountains. They’re waves. Huge, horrifying waves, about to smash right into them. That’s what the AI discourse feels like. You can’t go on LinkedIn these days without bumping into dramatic takes:
“WE NO LONGER NEED AGENCIES – OR EMPLOYEES!”
“I MADE A FEATURE FILM IN THREE MINUTES USING ONLY TWO FINGERS!”
“I ASKED AI TO WRITE AN AD AND IT WON CANNES, D&AD AND MY EX BACK.”
The internet loves extremes. But with every innovation, the truth will lie somewhere in the middle.
AI undoubtedly makes climbing bigger mountains possible. For small teams or limited budgets, you can now produce more, to a higher quality, than was ever previously possible.
It’s a valuable thinking partner, a powerful way to bring ideas to life. But relying on AI as you would a human is a dangerous game. Outsourcing your brain to an app is like plating up Deliveroo every night and pretending you cooked.
It might be easier, quicker, maybe even more delicious in the moment. But eventually you’ll end up sluggish, poorer, and your knife skills will have gone to shit.
We’re barely scratching the surface of what AI can do at the moment. The interesting question to me isn’t what AI can do, but what we’ll choose to do with it.
According to Harvard Business Review, the top use of ChatGPT is therapy/companionship, which is kind of poetic. “Find purpose” is number three on the list.
We could be using this massive technological leap to right historic wrongs, act on global issues. Instead, we’re using it to soothe our own existential crises. We’re changing our world, not the world.
Ultimately, AI is a tool – it’s neither good nor bad, it’s neutral. In the right hands, a stick can be a toy; in the wrong hands, it’s a weapon. The same is true of AI. It’s enormously powerful, but how will humanity use it?
Do you have an agreed policy around AI as a business?
Nothing formal. But there’s an unwritten rule – AI is a thinking partner, not a creative.
We use it to challenge our thinking, not to do the thinking. I’d never expect anyone to hand me a list of ChatGPT-written lines. We use AI, we work it, we direct it. It’s not a substitution for imagination, judgement or decision-making.
We got into this industry to create, not produce. And the more people treat AI like a creative, the more boring the work will get – to experience, but also to do.
Who wants to come to work to ask a computer to come up with ideas, so they have time to make a deck? No thanks.
When did you realise AI was going to have an impact on design?
I didn’t have one single lightbulb moment. I’d been waiting for it for years, it always felt inevitable.
But around 2022, one of our creatives presented concept work and I asked where she’d found the mock-ups and imagery, because they looked amazing and were perfectly curated for the concept. She said, “I made them.”
That was the shift. Suddenly, we could realise our visions faster and more accurately, without relying on external specialists. It unlocked creative freedom.
Have you undergone any AI training, either as a studio or individuals?
No formal training, no – right now, we’re 100 percent self-taught.
We experiment constantly, share what we learn, and run regular internal sessions – think “Lunch & Learns” but with fewer sandwiches, and more curiosity.
We’ve considered formal courses, but everything’s moving so fast that by the time a curriculum’s written, it’s outdated. We’d rather get stuck in, play around, and figure it out ourselves.
We do invest heavily in training – everyone in the organisation has their own budget. But that focuses on what AI can’t do – presenting, decision-making, persuading people to buy your vision. The human stuff.
Our bet is that, if AI’s levelling the technical playing field, people skills are what will set us apart.
How do you use AI in the studio’s creative process?
Mainly as a way to go faster, clearer and sharper. We use it for quick research, to generate visuals for pitches, to sense-check tone and messaging.
I also use it to interrogate my own thinking – I’m constantly asking it to poke holes in my logic or play statements/points of view/decisions back to me. A bit like a coach.
But the gap between the hype and the reality is still big.
It’s brilliant at asking questions, good at generating quantity, but it can’t judge quality. For us, AI is an eager, positive, always-on thinking buddy.
By the time something ends up on a billboard, brand, box, tiny button at the bottom of a website, it’s gone through so many layers of human thinking – strategy, creativity, experience, confidence, persuasion – that even when AI plays a part, it’s only ever in a supporting role.
Do you think clients care if/how you use AI in your work?
Not really, and I think that’s healthy. It’s just expected that we use it now.
What still matters most is clarity of thought. The brief still rules. “Shit in, shit out” has never been truer.
What is exciting is that it levels the playing field. As a small agency, we can now bring million-pound ideas to life visually, by ourselves. That’s liberating. The creative barriers – time, budget, manpower – have shrunk.
Beyond that, clients don’t come to us for “stuff” – they come for ideas that make people care.
And I still passionately believe that, while AI can supercharge your capacity and speed up your progress, it can’t do your work for you. Work, ultimately, is imagination plus decision-making. And AI can’t do either well. It can imitate feeling, but it can’t mean it. It can’t dream.
And crucially, it can’t make decisions. It has no guts, no instinct. It doesn’t have to stand up in front of a board and justify itself.
What we do takes courage. I don’t mean “brave ideas” – I’m talking about having the conviction to believe in one idea, sell it in, fight for it. Clients care more about having someone on their side. And AI isn’t that. At least, not yet.
Do you use AI for any non-creative aspects of running your business?
Yes. everywhere. HR is the biggest one – writing policies, checking employment law, and understanding best practice for things like feedback and progression planning.
We use it in finance too. It knows our targets and ambitions, flags opportunities and challenges in cash flow, and helps us model different operational scenarios. Legal language, contracts, it tightens those up as well.
It’s definitely saved us time, but more importantly, it’s saved us money. We can have quick five-minute chats with lawyers or accountants just to sanity-check something, rather than paying for full consultations. It’s never let us down. Just don’t ask it to do complex financial analysis – or, if you do, check the maths.
We also use it to analyse patterns in client briefs, which is equal parts useful and horrifying. This year, lots of people still want to be “the Oatly of category X” but most REALLY want to be “the Liquid Death of category X.”
The most requested phrases of the year? “Ownable colour,” “Create a cult,” and “Hyper-disruptive.” Client Briefs 2025 wrapped – coming soon.
Beyond the best-known tools, what’s one AI tool you’d recommend to other design studios?
We’re pretty experimental by nature and we’ll try anything once. So we mix it up. For deeper research, we use Claude – it’s more thoughtful and better at handling long, complex inputs.
For creative research, like campaign or brand reference hunting, we use Prvctice. For image generation, we use anything and everything going – from Nano Banana to Endless Tools to Visual Electric. Anything that can help us visualise rapidly and test out our ideas.
For generating interactive tools, apps, forms etc, Figma Make. For rapid insights and playback, Notebook is great. And in our pitches, AI is everywhere – visualising video flows, building moodboards, tightening story arcs.
There are so many that we use every day. But I can’t recommend one – it depends entirely on what you need it for. It’s like asking which website I’d recommend – for what?
AI is a means to an end. If you want to test an app idea quickly and don’t know how to code, Figma Make. If you want to get decent imagery without the pain of refining through 100 different prompts, Visual Electric. If you want lawyer-level insight, Claude.
If you want to feel really, really good about yourself and be told you have “excellent ideas!” 15 times a minute, stick with good old ChatGPT.