Damian: Hi, Raitis. Thank you so much for joining me today on this podcast episode, getting to know the speakers of Hatch Conference. Uh, You've been there not as a, speaker, but as an attendee with Janis who was speaking last year and this year you'll be taking the stage. So thank you so much for joining me today.
Raitis: Yeah. It's such an amazing pleasure. Looking forward to this year's uh, conference and uh, from the agenda and the speakers that you have invited, it seems like it's going to be the event of the year.
Damian: Definitely, we've raised the bar a little bit. So it's exciting. Um, And talking about excitement, like I was really excited that you joined with with the topic that you are, mostly because last year. The Corebookº join Hatch of in a mission to kill the PDF brand guidelines.
Right. And Janice. Did a talk, which was super well received where he showcased how brands are behaving in a way that static doesn't work for them anymore. And that the PDF didn't work. And of course you have your own product which solved that problem.
But now it seems like in the last six months, there's been a giant leap in generative design in general. So what do you make of this giant opportunity as someone whose product is basically tailored for designers and incorporating this?
Raitis: Yeah. This generally feels like a natural progression in how we work and how we're going to approach the creative process in the future. Even now , you can see those little shifts on how people actually go with the creative process as maybe they would like to generate a couple of ideas with an AI and then fine tune those things, right?
So just giving more tools and options, how designers can get the initial idea started, and then fine tune it to perfection or just using AI to deal with those tedious tasks, right? Such as margins, padding ... really allow those band designers to focus on the big picture instead of burying themselves into this small stuff
Damian: yeah, I think it's something that everyone is looking forward to get rid of all these things that someone else could do for you, and sometimes even you have to hire someone to do for you. And, your talk at Hatch specifically addresses the question, whether AI is an ally or an enemy basically for designers, what can people expect from your talk?
Raitis: Definitely some in depth look at some actual real life use cases, right? AI will be mature enough that we can actually go ahead and see a couple of those, right?
AI can be an enemy and discourage some creators from doing creative work. But also, it can be a great opportunity um, to elevate work and bring a little bit more off well needed thinking time in the whole creative process, right? So, I like love this quote that says that creatives actually need time for thinking. So I feel like AI will in like indirect way, allow creatives to do that a little bit more. And of course there is a debate all around uh, interwebs... There is one camp that who really thinks that AI is the end of some professions, right? And then there is the other camp who is looking at it from other perspective. So both camps have compelling arguments, but I have my own ideas. I feel like it's It's a good mix of both and also it's not a tragic tale.
It's an optimistic one.
Damian: Yeah, for sure. And I'm looking forward to all those examples, of, of people who are, or are using Corebookº and you just know from around the spectrum to, to me also the interesting thing is like branding has always this big paradox, right?
Where like, when you start a branding process, it's completely like out on the open, completely unpredictable and experimental.
And nothing's really finished until someone decides to actually start boxing things and being like, all right, like the brand is this and how we do things is that and whatever. And there's a lot of it that is about standardization. So what do you think Corebookº actually is helping with this process of like gathering from the chaos and sharing to other teams to actually make that kind of a usable thing?.
Raitis: Yeah. Where do I even start? So many things.
Damian: We have time...
Raitis: So my teammate Janis last year gave pretty cool and compelling keynote presentations about this, and as we do believe that boxes and being consistent in is of the utmost importance.
But at the same time, it should not hold back brands from being playful and using different environments to their brand advantage, right? And AI is one of those.
if brand guidelines will live on Corebookº, then they'll always be up to date, and with the most recent assets and that is the coolest part. So while still keeping everyone on the same page, being collaborative, experimental and at the same time being on the same page.
In its finest form, right?
AI will provide us with so many different assets that we can actually go ahead and use. So is it just simple creative in a static format? Is that a audio branding that we have started to develop? Or is that maybe some beautiful AI generated video that we can actually go ahead and use for the brand.
And then again, we also have those environments, right? So we have physical spaces and we have digital environments. And then we have that mix in between , for example, in VR spaces. So these kind of things, has to be well documented.
And also leave a room for those boundary breakage points where you can just explore just a little bit more and do more. With this kind of a living document that you can quickly change and everybody still say it's on the same page and you don't have to send the bulk email for a thousand people,
I feel like that's where we really shine.
Damian: Yeah. We, already have sometimes a hard time narrowing down from all the experiments into what the final brand is going to be, what's going to happen once we have even more possibilities to create much faster, a lot more stuff, and then how do we go from there to an actual, like standardized version?
I think that's yet to be seen.
And, a few months ago, you actually teased something super interesting, which probably by the time the conference is, on or a few days later will be out in the public, hopefully that I'm very excited about as well, which is a tool that would generate brand guidelines and brand, assets to help with natural language and generative design, which makes a lot of sense since you know, us designers just repeat those processes over and over I always think about like this do and don'ts of like a logo or something like that.
It's like, why do we have to put time in this is always the same stuff and probably not not as important. So how did it come to be to actually get into this this from that side? Because I guess every product is sort of thinking okay, what's the AI feature of us, but like, how did it come to be specifically for Corebookº and at which state is it right now?
Raitis: Yeah. This is something actually we have thought for quite some time now. And fun fact, according to founders, it was actually part of the original idea and the product plan for Corebookº. But unfortunately, the tech was not there yet, right?
And let me get something straight from the very, very beginning. We're not aiming to replace designers. We are not looking to replace creatives who actually build the integrity of the brand itself. Our vision is that essentially it is a co pilot, that will enable you to actually ditch those small things that we usually spend so much time on, right? And just allow AI to help you out with that,
Instead of going in, you can just say a prompt saying, hey, please add a padding, that and that,
Damian: Mm-hmm.
Raitis: But... I can't really tell much at the moment, right? Since Corebookº AI at the moment is in waitlist stage but we are expecting, to send out a global early access very soon.
And if it's not already done by the time this comes out ,then I really, do prefer that the product speaks actually for itself.
Damian: yeah,
Raitis: wouldn't want to say much but I'm really looking forward to your comments, actually,
Damian: yeah.
Raitis: after it's released.
Damian: Yeah. To me that's the most interesting part about the implementation of AI. I'm a little skeptical about the full generative AI, like "Start with AI" kind of features, because as a designer, I don't think that way. And I, and if I just, something comes out in front of me it's, a little harder to reverse the process, but when it's about more I know that I'm doing a brand guidelines site and I need to establish certain things. And like, why do I have to generate assets with extra padding or whatever? Yes, please. Someone do it for me. Um, That's, to me very key in this kind of product, this is the kind of products that I'm most excited about rather than the fully generative from scratch thing that maybe for people who are not designers are of course, much more interesting, right?. But in our case, it's more about taking some of the tedious tasks away.
And the last thing I wanted to ask you is obviously Corebookº focuses on collaboration, when creating brand guidelines which is, basically what sets it apart from actually just having a document somewhere.
And with all these technologies, do you imagine that brand designers collaborating will change in a way that perhaps was not you know, easy to envision last year or easy to predict how it was going to go?
Raitis: We have this unexpected privilege uh, to be on the front row of brand design and how brands collaborate in internal and external partners. But What I don't like to do is actually speculate. This year, last year and for upcoming years the collaboration as we know, will definitely fundamentally change.
If I had to make prediction, then I would say that AI and a artificial and virtual reality technologies will rapidly take an even bigger role in how we collaborate and how we approach brand communication in general
Okay, virtual reality is nothing new, but artificial reality in combination with virtual reality is a totally new environment, right? And I do have this feeling that we are almost like approaching a new age of technology. Like it does feel like that time when modern internet actually came and smart devices were introduced, where we, at that point, we couldn't comprehend how fundamentally it will actually change how we communicate, how we reach out to the partners, friends, family.
Right. And I feel like, this is really, exciting time to be alive. Um, And the collaboration will become a lot more personal, a lot more interactive, a lot more fun. I think it's just a question about those brave first early adopters, who actually do the hard work and tell the rest of the people the story of, hey, this is really cool ,This is how it should be done.
If we have to summarize everything in just one sentence, then I feel like in upcoming years collaboration will become a lot more as an extension of us, not a tool that we use.
Damian: Yeah, It's always exciting to see actual use cases of things like that. You're actually putting something out that's, going to be like, as you said, speaking for itself and I do agree. I also feel like this moment where, especially when the internet went from like, we're just doing like browser websites into like something that has to be mobile friendly or responsive by, default and.
How, that actually took a long time as well. Right. Like up until like eight years ago, they were still not phone ready websites. So hopefully it's a little faster.
Raitis: Oh Yeah,
if you take into consideration how fast we are moving in the last five years, in comparison to last 20 years, it's day and night, right? I don't feel like it's going to be ready on gen one. But if I had to guess gen four we're going to see tremendous changes in how we actually work.
Damian: Yeah it's, definitely exciting. And it's definitely great to, dig into the minds of people who are building stuff in the landscape and, also find out .
um, well, Thank you so much for, joining today. I'm really looking forward to your talk and we'll be seeing each other in October.
Raitis: yeah, definitely.
