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Tools not rules
Intelligent Creativity is transforming how we create and use brand systems
Intelligent Creativity is a recent term to categorize a new wave of creative innovation that uses AI and machine learning, data, and automation coupled with human creativity, to reinvigorate creative solutions for marketing and advertising.
For designers and creators of brands, the deeper integration and adoption of data, automation, and AI to inform marketing decisions will also fundamentally change how brand systems are developed, implemented and extended. Ultimately these innovations will evolve the way brand systems are traditionally delivered, in the form of static brand guidelines, to a new suite of bespoke creative tools that empower designers and non-creatives alike to translate brand rules into real-time communication artifacts and multi-channel creative.
Traditional brand guidelines do not operate at the speed of now
The creation of brand guidelines in the form of a PDF is still the most common way to efficiently capture all of the applications of a contemporary brand system. For designers, there is a certain romance to the creation of a brand standards manual. Brand guidelines allow creatives to develop a design object that is also a comprehensive encapsulation of a team’s hard work to document all of the behaviors of a brand’s usage. Efforts like Standards Manual have taken on the mission of preserving and archiving guidelines from the 1970s for the likes of NASA and the EPA. While curling up with a beautifully designed brand manual from a bygone era may be inspirational for designers, traditional brand guidelines can be cumbersome and difficult to parse for non-creatives and often leave room for a great deal of individual interpretation.
As a big step forward, online platforms like Standards, Brandpad and Corebook have brought brand guidelines into a digitally distributed context. These platforms allow for guidelines to continually be updated as brands become more living and evolutionary to respond to changes in technology and the market. Like all SaaS…
