Creative Currents

Design and marketing brilliance, curated for graphic designers who want to stay sharp and a step ahead.

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Nutrition brand ditches AI-generated product shots for oil paintings

The sports nutrition brand commissioned four hand-painted still lifes to double down on its ‘no-shortcuts’ mindset

With AI-generated imagery becoming an increasingly routine part of branded work, Puresport has decided to go against the grain with a distinctly traditional campaign. The London-based sports nutrition and running culture brand has launched its Pomegranate Ultra Electrolytes with Team GB Olympic silver medallist Amy Hunt via a series of original still-life paintings.

For Puresport, the campaign is less about making a statement about technology and more about emphasising the belief that there is no shortcut to greatness.

When Copywriters Make Brands Unignorable

The messaging around these ads is that the copy is what makes them so great.

I'd argue that the design is doing a lot of work here as well. The fonts chosen, colors, layout all come together with tremendous restraint to subtly reinforce the message and allow the text to shine.

Just goes to show - even with the best copywriting, the design still matters. You don't get GREAT work without the two of them BOTH being great (*ahem* I'm looking at you, generic AI-generated websites and flyers).

Source: Instagram @adversestories

New Rebrand: Go Fund Me

After acquiring Classy, the leading nonprofit fundraising platform, GoFundMe faced a pivotal moment: its product expanded deeper into nonprofit giving, yet its brand still reflected its early peer-to-peer roots. Drawing on existing equity, we were tasked with evolving the identity into a modern, product-informed brand that signals progress and GoFundMe’s leadership in this next chapter of fundraising.

By uniting individuals and nonprofits in one place, GoFundMe is helping move humankind forward with unprecedented impact and scale. Our brand idea, ‘Help Adds Up,’ captures the feeling of life-changing progress powered by community.

The identity transforms GoFundMe’s most recognizable asset—the goal bar—into a dynamic progress circle. This circle radiates into an arc, or ray, that sits at the heart of the logo and acts as a unifying device across the system, creating a sense of narrative momentum and shared progress.

By shifting from a purely sympathetic tone to a guiding one, the brand empowers action at every level and demonstrates that when individuals come together, every bit of help adds up to real, positive change.

You can check out the case study by the design studio, Koto.

This could have been a voicenote

Heineken discovered an interesting quirk in their audience in Brazil - those people sent 4x as many long voice notes to their family and friends. So they capitalized on this seemingly random factoid and created an entire campaign around it: scan a QR code on a billboard and it'll take you to a chat with Heineken. Send them an absurdly long voice note that someone sent you and they'll send you a voucher for a free beer.

Why it worked:

The campaign focused on a universal human experience we can all relate to (listening to long, unnecessary voice notes)

Everyone wants something free! This campaign brought new customers in the door and also brought back returning customers through a unique, personal experience bound to be remembered long-term.

It gave them a platform to position themselves on / an enemy to be against, giving them a stronger foothold in people's memories, a stickier brand.

authentic organic design is the new trend

Is messy design the new minimalism?

There's a new rise in organic, messy, authentic-feeling design. For a decade or two clean minimalism was the trend. Now the pendulum is swinging back to busy designs. Designs that feel human, that AI can't generate.

This is also the trend with social media: where the standard used to be carefully curated grids, it's now raw, authentic, daily living - the highs and the lows.

It seems like in general with the rise of technology in our lives, people are craving human connection more than ever.

Source: @samsoedesign

New Rebrand: Etsy

In the design agency's words, the rebrand goal was "to weave the art of discovery through every element of Etsy—from visual identity to marketing assets to digital product. In an e-commerce space increasingly devoid of any humanity at all, we set the foundation for a brand and product that celebrates being human."

Design-wise they softened the logotype, making the curves feel more natural, and enclosed the logo within an orange square meant to symbolize "starting points." The square then becomes a repeating element throughout their brand designs.

My favorite part is seeing how they apply the branding to new marketing materials such as billboards and digital/status ads - how they've updated both:

- The visuals (emphasizing shapes and variety), and also
- The messaging (emphasizing the human touch and homemade aspect)

to keep everything aligned to their specific business goal for the rebrand (overcoming the negative perception from the AI slop and cheap Chinese knock-offs flooding their marketplace).

(Only time will tell if a rebrand can actually fix this issue - as opposed to putting in place measures to improve the quality of their product/marketplace 🤔 - or if it will end up mostly being an external aesthetic improvement...)