Okay, so the new PayPal logo is boring as shit, and I had a good laugh calling out that it was Pentagram before even knowing it actually was them. For those blissfully unaware, Pentagram is one of the largest and leading design firms in the world, and did the design for Windows, Library of Congress, Reddit, Prime Video, and everything in-between. They are the ones setting the trends, and probably a very good contributor to all of the logos turning into really boring sans serif logotypes.
The real takeaway from this is when I went to the designer's bio page (https://www.pentagram.com/about/andrea-trabucco-campos-2), and found this:
An active voice in emerging technologies like AI, his work investigates their role in the design process and culture.
In 2022, Andrea’s active curiosity led him to co-found and run Vernacular, a small independent publisher with a focus on the intersection of form, typography and visual culture that stretch beyond the commonly agreed registers of “good design.” His first book, Artificial Typography, has garnered international attention and recognition for pushing the evolving conversation of AI and design.
I also looked up the book Artificial Typography and holy shit it's the most facile baby shit ever.
What if Noguchi sculpted the letter N?
Or Hilma af Klint painted her own initial?
This limited edition book is an unexpected A to Z in typography and the history of art, imagined by an AI. A visual journey of a conversation with cutting-edge AI engine, MidJourney. Letterforms were generated as if the artist themselves had done it, and re-imagining what a letterform can be in the process. For example, the AI was prompted with: “Letter B by Louise Bourgeois, crochet”. Our role as designers shifted from creator to curator and provoker through language. The book contains 52 artists, and 26 letters, and it is a physical manifestation of a deeply digital process.
The fucked up thing is that, again, Pentagram is a leader in the world of design, and these fuckers are out here using AI, a process that is trained on stolen work and is an ecological disaster. They could have used their leverage to push back against AI, but are instead gleefully participating.