View Source is a New York-based design and technology studio that works with clients like Pantone, Netflix and Bandit Running. Here, creative director and partner Andrew Rutledge explains how they’re using Ai, and how he 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?
Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, once said, “You can make the walled garden very, very sweet, but the jungle outside is always more appealing.”
It’s that sense of boundless possibility that excites us, the thrill of discovery, the late-night – or, for me as an early riser, pre-dawn – energy of mastering a new tool or workflow.
What’s troubling though, is how quickly our industry has embraced the idea that you can dismantle the fundamentals of the creative process and still produce remarkable work.
Shopify’s founder has said that anyone not learning to use AI tools is in a state of slow-motion failure. We agree with the sentiment, but experience and taste must remain part of the equation.
Great design distils complexity into simplicity, and that will always require trained minds and relentless talent. The tools will evolve, and so will we.
Do you have an agreed policy around AI as a business?
We set our AI policy during a company roundtable last October. Back then, we agreed to use AI primarily for conceptual thinking.
It’s a great tool for that – the process of building mood boards or exploring early ideas is just as loose and intuitive as sitting back, closing your eyes, and imagining possibilities.
In that same conversation, with a mix of our strategists, designers, and engineers, we also agreed that we’re not comfortable claiming AI-generated work as entirely our own.
A year later, we have several live projects that thoughtfully integrate generative AI.
When did you realise AI was going to have an impact on design?
Like everyone, our feeds became flooded with hyper-saturated visuals that felt more unsettling than inspiring. That’s now changed.
The output today is remarkable, and with the right balance of human direction and smart systems, quality is in our control.
What’s more striking, and a bit sobering, is that cutting humans out of the creative process is now a real consideration, not just a distant idea. As anthropologist Carlos Castaneda wrote, “We hardly ever realise that we can cut anything out of our lives, anytime, in the blink of an eye.”
For us, AI only comes in after people set the direction. We shape the vision, craft the imagery, write the strategy, and then use AI to create agentic efficiencies.
That’s how we keep control, maintain a high degree of taste, and stay differentiated. Because undifferentiated brands fail, AI or not.
Have you undergone any AI training, either as a studio or individuals?
I feel the urge to peek under rocks, crack open walls, and explore the unknown. I’ve spent this year rising early to participate in an AI training programme every weekday before starting our studio work. We began with Stable Diffusion, then moved onto ComfyUI.
I continue to train and attend monthly NYC meet-ups, now with a sharper focus after hundreds of hours learning and applying these tools.
The impact has been enlightening. It’s given us a clearer sense of what AI can do, when it’s appropriate to use it, and how to apply it ethically.
I’ve realised you can’t connect the dots looking forward, you can only do so looking backward. The more we learn, the more connections we uncover, helping us apply AI thoughtfully and responsibly in our work.
How do you use AI in the studio’s creative process?
I’ll give you an example – using generative AI as a concept tool, our 3D content team created an otherworldly rebrand for the blockchain platform Moonbeam.
With Stable Diffusion, we generated all kinds of moonlight-synthesised creatures and landscapes to help us visualise the creative idea. Once refined and animated, these elements became precise, controllable motion assets that work seamlessly across formats, from digital out-of-home campaigns to an interactive website experience.
We’ve also been using tools like ComfyUI to accelerate the rapid prototyping of site animations and content for brands like Garden. And we’ve trained our own custom AI models to bring specific visual ideas to life, which gives us much more creative control over the final output.
As an agency that creates original content for the brands, founders, and companies we work with, whether that’s through our photography studio BRICK or through digital design, the best starting point is to own your input data. This helps ensure creative integrity and prevents potential issues further down the line.
Do you think clients care if/how you use AI in your work?
Absolutely. We invite them in, explain the possibilities, and respect their comfort levels.
Do you use AI for any non-creative aspects of running of your business?
Research tops the list. Some tasks are handled by AI within set parameters, but everything is reviewed and approved by a human with tight oversight.
It’s generally helpful for understanding our organisation and what makes us unique, since it effectively studies how we operate. As a result, we gain clarity and confidence more quickly, allowing us to focus on our strengths.
Beyond the best-known tools, what is one AI tool that you would recommend to other design studios?
Topaz’s suite and Cursor.