The Imagine AI Experiment

A BBT-TRIP Collaborative

As the machine learning wave captured the world of words – ergo – Chat GPT and its contemporaries. The world of generative art found its uprising too. Graphics, motion and design were now at the threshold of the AI turf. App based tools found their way into the lives of design and motion thinkers and thus it came knocking at my door too. 

Being in the design industry for more than 2 decades has made technology evolutions a given but when a paradigm shift like Machine learning finds its way to you – it makes you wonder. What kind of a change and future it holds? 

In one of my early morning musings, unable to contain my curiosity and having spent considerable hours on Midjourney like it’s a new toy and my compulsive need to be ahead of the learning curve and give the best to my clients made me call my able collaborator – Prateek Sethi of TRIP Creative Services. 

In a candid conversation I shared – For me AI in Design and Motion is like a schrodinger’s cat, a thought experiment, we wouldn’t know what it means until it’s out of the bag. And Prateek shared the intrigue. Thus we let our curiosity lead us into an experiment – we christened it as The Imagine AI Experiment.

2 Weeks, 2000+ Prompts, 200+ Renders

This experience led us to understanding this technology better and comprehending its implications, impact and commercial possibilities. Dive into our experience and join the Generative generation. 

Curiosity teaches the Cat: Why did we choose this experiment?

Technology is the point of inflection, the singular force that is shaping and changing our world and every business and industry will have to embrace this force and walk with it. Thus merging technology and design was an unchartered territory that we sought to explore and know. Our curiosity was about discovering the potential this technology holds both imaginatively and commercially. 

“At BigBrandTheory, our philosophy revolves around making strategic investments that enhance our in-house capabilities, ensuring our continuous evolution to stay ahead of the curve and provide future-ready solutions for our valued clients.”
Pravin Shah, Founder of BigBrandTheory

It is an imperative for us to understand the relevant tools of the age and thus everytime a new tool sets ushers in, it becomes important for us to understand as to how it works. With machine learning here we need to explore and know how it will make our processes efficient without killing the creative aspect. Generative tools have always been small parts of varied softwares in the form of features like – content aware films, auto-masking, that have made a massive difference in our lives in functions like roto-cutting, mat cutting and so on and so forth. Now these tools have evolved and it is upon us to test, try and integrate them. 

The goal was to know how we can push boundaries both on brand strategy and creativity through generative art. 

The road less traveled: Funding an experiment where we test waters with our own brand. 

We as a brand and design house believe in investments that help build our own capabilities and enable us to evolve, the idea is to be future ready for our clients. Thus we conceptualized and funded The Imagine AI Experiment and collaborated with TRIP Creative services. We took the road less traveled and gave a free hand to TRIP to explore every facet of the technology. 

The test-subject of this experiment was our brand itself – BigBrandTheory (BBT). We chose our brand as a test-subject because brand design houses, motion houses are complex terrain and difficult to express tangibly. Which means if we had to express who we are and what we do as a brand through generative art, it sure would be a challenging and fun task. 

So the path we took was – two curious creative houses, joined forces and set out on a voyage of generative art with an aim to learn and discover. It felt like we were back to school. 

Prompt. Surprise. Learn. Evolve. Repeat: How did we approach this?

When we reached out to Prateek for collaborating, he said that there is some amount of exploration already happening at their end at a very rudimentary level. Post our conversation Prateek made it an official experiment.

“We rigged two machines to support the experiment and thus make it the testing grounds.”
Prateek Sethi, Founder Trip Creative.

What made the process interesting was that every prompt would throw a surprise result and we would be astounded as to how our prompt can be interpreted in so many ways. At the same time it will open minds to think and prompt and imagine differently. The sheer beauty is that there are infinite possibilities. 

A learning curve that has a bumpy road: The challenges we faced

• Infrastructure : It is a technology that needs speed and bandwidth and thus the first thing you need to be ready for is investment on infrastructure over cloud servers or physical servers. 
• Being agile : It is Open AI, so scripts and codes are being created across the world, you will find that there is one script from France, one coming from Brazil. The sheer research and reading that goes in understanding the script and what it entails is an immersive task.
• New way of creating: We are spoiled by great UI in our softwares, while currently generative art technology like Stable Diffusion is more built from a coders perspective by coders and hence it lacks that visual design ease. Here there are just digits not a visual representation of the XY&Z axis thus making it a learning curve. 
• Becoming a prompt master: To prompt is an art and craft that you need to learn, it is a skill that is about clarity and imagination. 
• Keep a constant learning mentality.

A new way of imagination: Our Experience

It truly is fascinating words will be the tools to generate visuals. Generative art has been a fantastic experience. It was challenging, it made gray cells think differently, it was also frustrating at times because we cannot contain our excitement and at the same time infrastructure takes time to build. The imagination part of the story is addictively exciting while the technology part in terms of infrastructure is limiting. 

We truly are unleashing a big potential. 

Infinite possibilities: Impact and Implications

What change will it bring?

• It will make repetitive, manual processes automated, intelligent and efficient.
• It will push our ability to imagine, it will push us towards clarity and also new worlds.
• In collaboration with technology like metaverse and Apple Visual Pro the sheer possibilities and experience it will give way to are unimaginable.
• It will unlock new ideas that were never possible due to existing technologies. 
• It will also add to productivity and scalability.

What can it immediately be used for commercially and by brands?

• Pitch stage can become quick, efficient and resource light. 
• Podcast cover, music album covers.
• Digital imaging and visualisat

What does this mean in terms of future and impact wise?

• Embrace it, learn it, master it – because it is an imperative
• It will not take away jobs it will push towards new set of jobs and need for adaptability
• It will open new doors to brand experience ideas and consumer connect
• We may one day have our own generative worlds 

The cat is out of the bag and it’s alive! Generative Art and machine learning are a facet of our future that have one thing written all over it – Love it! Hate it! But you can’t Ignore it! We are thrilled to share this experiment with you and partner for ushering your brand into the AI era. And well the learning continues! 

The Imagine AI Experiment

Goal: Explore Generative Art by reimagining and expressing BBT Logo. 

Brief: Express the intangible persona of Brand BBT, of it being a design house that is imaginative, creative, plays with textures, materials, technology, thinks strategically, works precisely, is multifaceted and also is future oriented.