Blog TSK

“What ad agencies get wrong about opening design studios”

Advertising agencies are suddenly discovering design. They’re putting it on a pedestal, and it’s making headlines.

No wonder – creating a brand that lasts, that captivates, and that people buy in to, is one built by design.

But to think that simply re-labelling an existing capability is enough, is a mistake.

Droga5 London recently announced the appointment of Dan Roberts and Matteo Alabiso as co-creative directors of design, while, last month, Lucky Generals became the latest creative agency to set out its intention to see design as a creative force in its own right.

It announced the appointment of its first executive design director to prove it.

It’s not alone. And nor is it the first – Mother, Uncommon, Not Wieden+Kennedy and our team at Wonderhood Design were among the earlier trailblazers. And as under-pressure agencies belatedly scramble to find new revenue streams in a tough financial landscape, it won’t be the last.

But if you’re only now treating design as a shiny new capability, you’re already behind the curve. Here are some reasons why…

Selling design

Behind many ad agencies’ decision to open a design studio is the growing realisation of the need for course-correction. This comes after years during which design departments, by and large, were rarely seen or heard in the creative process.

This created a profound problem – a diminished role for design, in turn, diminishes their ability to impact how a brand shows up. And if the designers go unseen, it’s unlikely their time can be sold to clients effectively, either. Lose, lose.

Dream teams

For a long time, the remit of a designer in an ad agency was to layer-in their graphic approach to advertising campaigns.

Whereas building a brand, or creating a visual identity. remained the exclusive responsibility of branding agencies. For good reason – the skill-sets are very different.

For a creative agency’s design studio to succeed, the department needs to be carefully curated, with a diverse range of designers from different technical backgrounds.

This allows for both design teams who are quick on the tools, and can work successfully on a fast-paced retail account, for example, or more conceptual designers, who can collaborate on a slower moving, holistic brand-building exercise.

It’s a mistake to think that one designer fits all.

Process

Building an ad agency’s design team is hard to get it right. And you probably won’t, the first time.

Because we have advertising in our bones, agencies have existing creative processes that we assume design will fall into line with.

But that’s simply not the case. And it takes time to bend, flex and test the process, to ensure it welcomes designers in, and allows them to flourish.

The consistent thread is the presence of design from beginning to end, on each project.

Design is woven into the fabric of Wonderhood Studios and always has been. So, when we launched our standalone design studio three years ago, we were ideally positioned to start testing our own process, and design’s role within it.

It remains a work-in-progress. But it’s important to recognise that we’re prepared to make mistakes, to challenge ourselves, and to improve every day, in order to have the best framework for crafting distinctive design.

We have done so with branding projects, working in partnership with design-literate clients who value our influence to make brands last.

And we have achieved this for our ad campaigns too, by ensuring design remains at the heart of our creative process, and designers are seen and heard – both internally, and by client partners, too.

Educate

It’s almost 10 years since Uncommon’s Nils Leonard, at the re-opening of London’s Design Museum, declared, “Design lasts, and it’s time the world paid attention.”

He wasn’t wrong. And a growing number of clients now seem to agree.

Even so, the fact a creative agency announcing a new Design Capability™️ still makes headlines suggests it takes a lot for design to be seen, and sold

For it to work, it requires an education of the entire agency, to ensure everyone understands design’s role and value. And then a commitment to putting it into practice every day.

This means account management working closely with their client partners to shape and build vision and ambition.

It means a receptive client paying a fair amount for the role design plays – not as an afterthought, but throughout the entire lifecycle of a campaign.

And it means a brilliant design team making banging work for brands, and proving their worth.

As agencies and clients recognise the power of design, those ambitious enough to embrace it will understand the truth – you can’t build a captivating brand without it.

Roy Barker is co-founder, and creative and design operations director at Wonderhood Design.

Source

How is View Source using AI?

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.

Source