AI. There isn’t a corner of the design world not talking about artificial intelligence–what it means for humans in the creative process, how it will change intellectual property protections/concerns, and whether it reflects–not corrects our oh-so-human biases. The conversations are happening in the philosophical realm, industry-wide, and at the production level at design studios such as Athens-based brand.new.
When designers Aspasia Metania and Kostas Mentzos set out to define a new stylistic mean between two iconic fonts, Helvetica and Comis Sans, they collaborated with AI to help them get there. Embracing AI in their initial design process—they call it “Collaborative Intelligence”—helped them see the possibilities when blending the principle-based functionality of modernism and the fluidity and individualism of postmodern typefaces. The resulting typeface, Meen, is the result of this collaboration.
Kosta explains the team’s process, “We didn’t use AI like usual with prompts; instead, we used images as inputs, even if that’s not typical in type design. The AI participation helped push forward our initial ideas for Meen, but the final result came down to human effort.”
As for the team’s use of AI as a design tool, brand.new embraces AI’s contribution in the brainstorming and idea phase, though Kostas says, “We still believe in taking our time because, in branding and design, ideas need time to mature. As designers, we should focus more on the idea phase and question everything.”
Meen is a flexible typeface that adapts to many applications—coming in 5 weights and 11 styles, with a total of 590 characters that support 52 Latin alphabet languages. Explore Meen at meentype.com. The studio is offering a 15% Early Bird discount until the end of September.
