COLLINS is a US-based transformation consultancy which works with clients like Bose, Target, YouTube and Figma. Co-founder Brian Collins explains how they use AI, and how he feels about it.
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Broadly speaking, are you excited for how AI will change the design industry, or nervous?
Nervous? Excited? Those are emotions for people who haven’t been paying attention.
First, AI will make mediocre work even more mediocre. It has already unleash tidal waves of slop and irrelevance. But for those who truly understand design – who have judgment, imagination and the ability to ask the right questions – AI is just another tool to make extraordinary work.
So, I’m neither excited nor nervous. I’m relieved. It lets us focus on what matters: using every tool available to create work that’s unignorable.
The future never asks for permission to arrive.
I bought my first Apple Macintosh in 1985, after graduating from MassArt. I fell hard for digital design. Emigre fonts were in their infancy – loud, odd and new. The old guard hated them. Massimo Vignelli, high priest of Modernism, called Emigre a “typographic garbage factory” – a threat to the order of the universe.
But I loved Emigre for taking this new technology so seriously. So did thousands of other young designers. Back then, we all sent our typesetting out, like the laundry. I sent in a job built entirely from brand new Emigre typefaces. The typography salesman brought it back to me, laughing.
“How long?” he asked. “How long will this silly Mac trend go on? While you just ordered a hamburger, the best people, the best agencies, will always want the finest filet steak. There will always be a market for us, for typographic excellence and real expertise. Your machine will never replace that.” He jabbed a finger at my beige Mac, like it was a rat in the pantry.
“Yeah, I know, it’s limited,” I said. “But soon it won’t be. And I want to be ready.”
“AI’s impact on design has been a decade-long, overnight sensation.”
A few years passed. That beige Mac box grew up, got faster, smarter, sharper. I added a printer. New fonts multiplied like bunnies. The old, legendary typographic houses soon went dark, their unused, dusty Photo Typositors sold for scrap.
The “filet” he spoke of was soon being served up on an explosion of glowing Mac monitors all around the world. I just kept running with it. I felt the ground shifting under everyone’s feet.
But his laughter, his entitled certainty, taught me something. Design cannot only be about defending the purity of whatever came before. Our profession’s legacy, our knowledge of design and art history is crucial. But what’s equally crucial is that we work in the noisy, messy, explosive present – making things that pull the future closer.
Sure, tools change, interfaces change, mediums change. The creative task doesn’t.
Now I hear that same cynical laughter about AI. The same fingers pointing. The same warnings about “real” craft and “true” expertise. The same smug assurance that the new technology will never match the filet steak.
Got it. I’ve seen this movie before. And right now, this is the worst this movie will ever, ever be. AI technology is outgrowing its limits, daily. So the work for all of us – the real work – is to see where it’s all going and start building there.
That’s what we’re trying to do.
Do you have an agreed policy around AI as a business?
Our policy? Do smart, great work.
At COLLINS, our approach is simple: use AI when it serves your work, never when it replaces your thinking. “Never delegate your understanding,” Charles Eames warned us all. I agree.
So, we’re learning when to start with AI and when to stop. That’s judgement. And judgement, unlike AI, cannot be prompted.
When did you realise AI was going to have an impact on design?
Seven years ago, I did an interview with the intrepid Chris Do. We talked about AI and the generative design systems we were building at COLLINS then.
In fact, we actually saw it coming long before that – my co-founder Leland Maschmeyer and I began experimenting with algorithmic visuals and coded design systems for clients like Spotify over a decade ago. It wasn’t to be “on trend.” We knew it was the next frontier.
Take a look at the Type Directors Club 35th Annual we designed back in 2014. All generative imagery. The systems we coded made it; we then selected and edited.
AI’s impact on design has been a decade-long, overnight sensation.
Have you undergone any AI training, either as a studio or individuals?
Certainly. But our profession needs people who understand when AI matters – and more importantly, when it doesn’t. That’s where we train. Well, that and trying to make work that matters. Work that shapes things for the better. Work that, we hope, lasts.
How do you use AI in the studio’s creative process?
Let’s be clear: AI is a tool. It is not a creative director.
We use it where it makes sense – agentic systems, research, visual examination, content exploration, workflow acceleration.
For example, agentic systems will help us keep the best ideas and clarity of our design programmes stronger and more coherent as they expand across more complex systems, from communications to environments to product engineering.
That will encourage, we believe, far more creativity in both conceptualisation and execution. All good.
Here’s what AI can’t do: it can’t see what we see. It can’t feel what we feel. Its biggest shortcoming? No discernment. Zip. Zero.
It can’t understand history like we do (and yes, it helps to have a library with almost 6,000 books at COLLINS to inspire us). AI can’t tell us when to stop, when something’s wrong, or when we’re asking the wrong question entirely. That’s why we need humans – and more designers with curiosity and daring – to lead.
Do you think clients care if/how you use AI in your work?
Clients don’t hire COLLINS for gimmicks or tricks. They hire us for difference – for transformative ideas that matter. They care about results.
When we created adaptive identity systems for Mailchimp or, more recently, a new, sound-responsive design program for Muse, clients didn’t ask about our “tech stack.” They respond to work that moves them.
The moment you start selling your “tech” instead of its outcomes or benefits, you’ve already lost. In the end, our clients care about one thing: does it work?
Do you use AI for any non-creative aspects of running your business?
Any tool that helps us focus on the work and dodge a bureaucratic circus is worth exploring. But we’re not chasing every shiny AI bandwagon.
We use tools where they can make a real impact – project management, data analysis, operational efficiency. The goal isn’t to automate everything – it’s to automate what doesn’t need human intelligence so we can focus on what does.
Beyond the best-known tools (like ChatGPT), what is one AI tool you’d recommend to other design studios?
OpenAI apparently likes recruiting from COLLINS. Some of my colleagues have taken good roles there and are really enjoying their work, making an impact.
But no, as much as I like them – and others – I’m not going to recommend a specific tool. That’s missing the point. The tool isn’t what matters.
Actually, let me repeat that: the tool isn’t what matters.
What matters is your ability to think and to judge.
I don’t think there is a magic bullet. What I do think is that AI will quickly replace most low- to mid-tier design work. It’s already happening.
Yes, some of us will continue to thrive in analogue disciplines. But the sharpest creative minds among us will learn to use AI with muscular, fluent, critical artistry.
Facing all of this, it’s really easy to feel overwhelmed. But you are not, not, not alone. Everyone can feel that way, too.
Three years ago COLLINS began hosting gatherings in cities around the world, places where designers and technologists can drop the armour and actually…talk. For the last two years at Cannes, COLLINS House has hosted leaders from Microsoft, Google, Adobe, Frontify, The United Nations, Monotype, Disney, along with people like Scott Galloway, Cindy Gallop, Sir John Hegarty, will.i.am.
All people experimenting at the forefront of AI. Taika Waititi, Oscar-winning director of Jojo Rabbit and Thor: Ragnarock, spent a day with us sharing how he is using new AI tools in the pre-production of his movies.
Why do all this? Because we really want the future we’re all rushing toward to feel less like a tsunami and more like a wave we can all surf.
And the tide isn’t waiting. If we’re not ready, it’ll take us somewhere we didn’t mean to go.
So all the choices we make now – about our intentions, our ethics and the world we want – will decide whether we’re riding the wave or tumbling in its undertow.
So join us. Explore more. Experiment more. Spend more time talking with others trying to figure this all out. And keep your eyes open.
Surf’s up.