Been thinking about how our industry keeps repositioning where creative value lives.
Art and animation by @joiceesketch
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Six months ago the word was craft.
Or at least that’s what it felt like.
Craft as a reminder. Craft as reassurance.
Human hands. Messy edges. Imperfection as virtue.
A soft reboot of the Arts & Crafts movement in the mid-19th century?
High quality. Handmade. A reaction to the machine.
But the machines got better at counting fingers.
And feeding Will Smith spaghetti.
Then the word became taste.
Taste as the moat.
Taste as the thing that separates us from the newly minted prompt lord.
Taste has always been a useful framing.
A way to talk about discernment.
About bending context and filtering the multi-geist through your own lens.
More recently I saw someone suggest we set taste aside entirely and prioritize intuition.
Craft → Taste → Intuition
If the arc continues, I assume Impulse is next. Followed shortly by aura farming as a service.
If nothing else, the speed of the jargon cycle is telling.
It feels like our value keeps getting pushed upstream. Less about the artifact, more about the decisions around it.
But I’m not sure craft, taste, or intuition are quite the right words to hang everything on.
Craft makes. Deliberately, with earned expertise.
Taste filters. What comes in, what goes out.
Intuition reacts. Almost involuntarily.
All useful. But, none are the whole story.
Maybe what we’re circling isn’t a new answer to AI at all. Maybe it’s our need to keep naming the part of creativity that still feels human.
The decisions behind the work.
Curious what word comes next.
Our virtual doors are (still) open to creatives everywhere.
And we’ve added a few new folks to our Virtual Open Studio calendar, which means more perspectives and more chances to get time with our team.
Virtual Open Studio happens on the last Thursday of the month. Bring your portfolio. Bring a career question. Bring a messy problem. You set the agenda. We’re here to help.
How booking works:
• Calendars open 31 days before the last Thursday of each month
• We’re available in multiple timezones across the US and Europe
• Please book one meeting so more people get a shot
• Duplicate or repeat bookings will be canceled
💔
Book now, while supplies last 👇
Link in Bio!
Caroline Choi - Senior Designer
Chris Kelly - Founder
Chris Markland - Senior Designer
Colin Trenter - Founder
Corey Stafford-Drew - Associate Producer
Jay Quercia - Design Director
Joyce Liu & Eli Ayres - Senior Designer, Senior Animator
Kaitlyn Mahoney & Mélina Poiré Poire - Head of Production & Senior Animator
Manon Sailly - Art Director
Not every project makes it out of the sandbox, but this one was too fun not to share.
Here’s a glimpse into something we dreamed up for our favorite webbed friend. 🕸️
Meet Manon Sailly (@saillymanon ), working with us as Art Director, 3D.
Manon brings a strong eye for world-building, visual development, and storytelling within a single frame.
She approaches the work with care for material, light, and finish. The details that make work feel lived-in and fo-real. The kind of detail-driven thinking we value across our visual strategy work.
Outside the studio, she’s always happy to talk travel, good coffee, fashion, interior/design objects, and board games (we hear she’s making one of her own).
We’re excited to collaborate with her as she pushes our 3D work into fresh corners.
Welcome, Manon. 👋
How do you guide choice and reduce decision fatigue for @netflix ’s 300+ million users using just 18 pixels?
That question sat at the heart of this collaboration.
We explored five stylistic directions, each navigating a different tension between form and function, clarity and charm. The final system draws from cinematic design cues like soft lighting, layered transparency, and brand-forward color.
The result: a set of 20+ illustrations that improve scannability, support faster decisions, and add just the right amount of visual delight to the viewing experience.
Peep the case study and credits on our site. Link in bio. ✌️
A quick throwback to a piece we created for @nike Battle Force, where analog effects meet digital technique.
Built frame by frame, we took a step out of our computer-comforts and spent the summer in scanner beds with spray paint and razor blades.
This was a special one.
We partnered with Airbnb.org to create their first animated Brand Manifesto, a clear and hopeful story about mission, impact, and the power of hosts and guests to make a difference. Our visual approach leaned into emotional realism and visual impressionism, a style that carries the blurry feeling of a memory — warm, honest, and grounded in light.
A huge shoutout to all our incredible collaborators on this one. Check out the full case study and credits on our site. Link in bio. 🔗
Farms, friends, and fall color palettes. 🟨🟧🟫
Last Friday we swapped pixels for pumpkins, conquered a corn maze, and balanced our way to victory in Jenga XL. Happy Autumn. 👋🍁
