Framed as a Pentagram conference giveaway, this data visualization system asks designers one question: how will you design?
Research
AI-generated advertising is becoming increasingly common, and I found myself curious about how audiences were actually responding to it. Did they care? Did it change how they felt about a brand? What I found was more nuanced than expected. People do not dislike AI ads, they dislike not knowing. And while audiences rate AI ads lower on authenticity and warmth, they perform nearly as well as human-made ones on persuasion and behavioral intent. That gap between how people feel and how they actually respond became the tension the project set out to visualize.
Strategy & Semiotics
Every formal decision was made to embody the human versus AI tension before a single data point is read. Terracotta represents the human: warm, organic, imperfect. Electric blue represents AI: precise, flat, digital. Yellow sits between them as neutral ground. Three typefaces encode voice: Mono45 Headline for machine language, Gelica in lowercase for human warmth, Inter as neutral infrastructure. Human data points are organic and textured. AI data points are clean geometric forms.
Form extends the concept. A lenticular cover shifts between two readings, then opens through an accordion gatefold to reveal three full data panels inside. That lenticular logic carries into the keychain, a clean flip between 'real' and 'FAKE'. The question the system leaves with the audience, "How will you design?", travels beyond the page onto the bag and the shirt, asking designers to locate themselves in the conversation.
