Welcome to Creatives on AI, our series of conversations with people across the industry exploring the nuance behind AI’s role in our work. We’re shifting our focus past the polarizing one-liners and digging into how AI may help, hurt, and fundamentally reshape our creative worlds. While AI isn't systematically replacing creative roles, it sure is changing things (and fast!). If you want to understand how people are navigating this seismic shift, stay tuned in for new perspectives each week this month.

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This week, we chatted with Gray Hauser, Design Director at Matchstic, where he’s been shaping strategy-led brands for over six years.

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To start, give us a sense of your role/studio and what a typical day looks like for you?

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Hey hey! I’m currently a Design Director at Matchstic. Our studio has a sharp focus on brand identity. Simply put, I’m in the business of helping organizations and companies understand and express themselves.

In my specific role, I’m all over the place. Around 70% of my job is project-based—designing brand identity systems, art directing other designers, reviewing work and presenting to clients. The other 30% is more rooted in studio life—team leadership and management, traffic planning and coordination and assisting with sales and hiring.

Given the nature of our project work and the variety of our scopes, no two days are the same (which definitely keeps me on my toes). Typically, my day includes a lot of Slack messages, a few hours of client calls or presentations, maybe a couple of internal check-ins, and hopefully a few hours of uninterrupted design time.

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If you had to sum up your creative process, how would you describe it in one sentence?

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Hmm maybe something like this…

Taking genuine interest → Gathering appropriate inputs → Making things → Talking with others → Changing things → Making more things → Talking with others → Making decisions → Probably repeating many of the steps multiple times → Making final decisions

Does that count as a sentence? I’m more of a designer than a writer.

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Was there a specific moment or project that prompted you to experiment with AI? And alternatively, have you felt pressured to adopt AI in your creative practice–from clients, employers, peers?

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Before ever using AI in a professional context, I just started messing around with it to see what it was capable of. Being a designer and a photographer, I’ve always been most intrigued by the image generation. I remember when DALL-E first came out in 2021. I prompted some ridiculous stuff and it honestly felt like magic. At the time it seemed like an interesting playground, but I didn't see much use for it professionally. Fast forward a few years and now some clients (especially at the enterprise level) are basically demanding we have a point of view on AI and implement it in some capacity.

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Is there a specific moment or stage of your process where AI and new tools come into play–like research, ideation, or execution–or is it more fluid? 

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AI and adjacent tools are not built into my process at all, but I have used them in every stage of my process in some capacity. It certainly is fluid, and that’s the value of creative direction. Having the taste, foresight, awareness and understanding to know when the story you're building could benefit from AI is increasingly necessary.

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Can you tell us what platforms or tools you currently use? And if there's any particular use case or output you'd like to share?

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Of course! There’s so much out there and I feel like I learn about new tools every week. I’ve found out about some from our design team at Matchstic, some by just curiously poking around the internet, and some from peers in the industry. Before I list out the tools I’ve used, I think it's important to make the distinction between generative tools/software and generative AI. I feel like they often get lumped together. Non AI generative software uses exact coding to create controllable conditions for a user. Through a complex web of code and interface decisions, the engineer and the user are telling the computer exactly what to output. Generative AI on the other hand uses machine learning to create new data. So, while both are extremely powerful, they are different. With that out of the way, here are some of the tools I’ve used or been exposed to in the past year or so…
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Non AI generative software:

Endless Tools

Touch Designer

Sesame from our friends at Athletics

Sketch Machine

Space Type Generator

Halftone Maker
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Generative AI software:
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ChatGPT

Visual Electric

Midjourney

VEED

In-product Adobe features (Generative fill, etc)

Gigapixel AI

TextFx

‍In a recent project for a friend, I made this symbol and wanted to extend the brand system to have shapes from the symbol act as a bitmapping effect. I used Endless Tools to do it.

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Is there any part of your creative process you refuse to automate?

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All of it ;) I don’t see AI usage as automating part of the process but rather a tool in my toolkit as I go through the process. 

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Have you adopted any philosophies around AI and its adoption? If so, do you think your personal philosophy will change over time?

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Yeah, for sure. My wife describes herself as a person who “has strong opinions, held loosely”. I love that sentiment. The world of AI is shifting almost daily. I have to imagine that my opinions and philosophies will too. I think it’s a creative’s responsibility to care deeply and have convictions, but also be humble enough to change.

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If you were to prescribe a metaphor to AI, what would it be? There’s a lot out there already (a collaborator, a tool, a copilot, an agent, a threat), but curious what yours would be. 

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In brand identity, I think the creative process exists to uncover what’s most true and then to hopefully render that truth in a beautiful and effective way. I like the metaphor of sculpture for brand identity work. Constantly chipping away, uncovering truth as you work and making effective beauty in the process. In this metaphor, I think AI can be a powerful hammer or chisel. It will never be the sculpture itself.

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Do you think lines need to be drawn between creative authorship and computational output? What’s your stance on transparency around AI use and integration?

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I’ve never been huge on authorship. Sometimes I think it’s founded more in arrogance than anything else. I recently read this article in FastCo titled “Why taste matters now more than ever”. In it, Elliot Vredenberg states “when originality becomes obsolete, novelty comes from recombination, from juxtaposition: from having a point of view. If your value lies in how you see—and how you help others see—that’s not just algorithm-resistant. It’s literally irreplaceable.” I couldn't agree more. I’m generally of the belief that seeking pure originality and authorship in branding is an exercise in futility. Everyone is pulling from something—a sensibility, a context, a timeframe, a movement, or God forbid… a trend.

All of that to say, I still think lines need to be drawn (at least for now) between human made work and AI generated work. Not because I think people need credit or ownership, but rather to normalize AI tools and make them more accessible and understandable. If agencies are using AI to generate all their images on a project case study, then I think in this cultural moment, viewers have a right to know that. If it really is a tool (like we all say), then it shouldn't be mysterious and hidden behind closed doors. It should be as easy to say “We prompted all the imagery for this brand in Midjourney” as it is to say “We designed this logo in Illustrator”.

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Tapping into the fear around AI for a minute, what are your concerns around AI and its widespread adoption? Where do you think you fall on the spectrum – optimistic, skeptical or alarmed? 

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We all know that there’s plenty to be afraid of, like the crisis of mass layoffs, to ChatGPT replacing therapists, and whatever this is. All of the fear is real and very valid. I’m for sure skeptical and concerned, especially about misinformation. However, above all of that, I genuinely feel optimistic. As tools become more powerful, so can the dreams of creative people.

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Have any AI explorations or outputs genuinely surprised or inspired you? If so, can you share an example?

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Definitely. I’ve been really inspired by some uses of AI that could actually improve our lives in a meaningful way. There’s one specific project I came across that used AI to get us away from our screens and more in touch with ourselves and our surroundings. It’s called Terra, made by Amsterdam based agency Modem and Swiss firm Panter&Tourron. It’s a rock-shaped piece of hardware that allows you to “wander without your phone”, and “get lost with confidence”. I’m so into it.

I’m also inspired by the prompts that Visual Electric shares to their instagram. Prompt writing like that is not easy, and it’s cool to see examples of their tool being dialed in.

Lastly, I’m just curious to find out what Jony is up to.

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What do you hope creative work looks like in five years? What do you predict it will look like in 5 years?

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I think humanity has the opportunity to rise up in the same measure that we fall down. So, I think there will be a bunch of sloppy, thoughtless “creative” work out there. It will probably be the norm. However, I think the ideas that are produced with real conviction and use AI to unlock new levels of creativity will shine that much brighter.

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And for fun, if the robot apocalypse does in fact come to fruition, what's one skill you have that will help you survive or thrive in a robot-led world?

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I can wiggle my ears. I think the robots would find it amusing and keep me around.