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In February this year, Italy enjoyed the launch of ‘Nutella Unica’. 7 million Nutella jars were put on sale, each of them with a one-of-a-kind patterned label.
The interesting thing here is that each and every one of these unique patterns was designed by one algorithm.
The labels look just like pieces of very colourful and eye-catching art, featuring only the patterns and the Nutella logo, making these jars great collectable pieces (each jar is even marked with its own unique code for authentication purposes).
This clever advertising campaign was created by agency Ogilvy & Mather Italia and the campaign saw all 7 million jars being sold within a month.
Because of the campaign’s success, Nutella is apparently planning to release ‘Nutella Unica’ in some other Europen countries, so keep your eyes peeled!
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Only one thing worries me about this project… Is this the beginning of the end for surface pattern designers?!?
Would love to hear your thoughts!
I think it is a very interesting topic and I also speculating what if artificial intelligence will be able to create an amazing artwork in the future.
My husband works with AI (in medicinal industry) and we made a little experiment with graphics. It was not very successful. But we talk a lot about it. It is a lot of possibilities, but also worries. I think you can compare it with start of industrialization. People are worried if they will have jobs in the future.
We can also compare with that time when photography occure. Artist probably felt, that it can take their “bread”, but today we have art of photography. Art also took a turn from realism to other forms of expressions. What will be our times answer?
There are some things about computer programs: they have no will and they can not observe. So I believe, that it is still some things for us :)
Good blog post, Veronica :)
Hi Katja, thanks so much for stopping by and leaving your thoughts! It’s definitely a thorny topic for us creatives… Are we gonna be redundant in the future? Will machines and AI take over our jobs? Who knows! We’re seeing these automated creative projects more and more. But let’s console ourselves with the fact that, at least in this case, they still needed the designers and their creative juices to come up with the idea and create the ‘seed’ files that fed the whole project. For now I think we’re safe! 😉
There has been a lot of speculation about algorithm technology supplanting designers in many industries. Although I think some may thing this passes for good design, I think they would fall into the same category of people that do not value design in the first place. The same people that are happy to crowd source their logos rather than hire a professional and then wonder why they are not getting good results from the cheap work they are using to identify their brand. Discerning customers will not fall for this and will have continued appreciation for a skilled artist/designer’s work. While a computer can spit out variations on a theme, it cannot really replace the professional and cultural experience of the human hand.
Here is another interesting article along these lines: https://qz.com/1028624/stitch-fix-let-an-algorithm-design-a-new-blouse-and-they-flew-off-the-digital-racks/?lipi=urn%3Ali%3Apage%3Ad_flagship3_feed%3BpL1JCS2hTo24T%2BVEehaHxA%3D%3D
Thanks so much Thea for your feedback on the topic. I’m completely with you in thinking that skilled designers should always have a place in the industry, at least in the world as we know it today. But I also believe that in the not so far future AI will be capable of simulating human creativity… To what point? Who knows? Scary stuff…
Nutella’s was a very successful advertising campaign, bringing money and attention to the brand. If that’s all a company needs then some other brands probably will start replicating the experiment, eliminating the need for a designer for at least those kind of projects. As an exercise in creativity it has its place as well. Somebody had to develop that software and give it the building blocks to create those 7 million patterns. It was definitely not completely random after all. The bottom line for me is, designers will ‘always’ have a place but these kind of experiments are a great example of human creativity and if well crafted, I believe we should welcome them!