Extract’s Chris Vickers on how design studios can harness the power of ai

Chris Vickers is the creative director and co-founder of Extract Studio – an London-based design studio working across editorial, branding and digital projects. He told us about his hopes for the positive role he believes AI can play for smaller agencies, and his initial experiments with exactly.ai.

My interest in the creative arts peaked around college. I studied art at GCSE but I was really into maths, in all honesty. Combining the two, problem solving and art, naturally led me to graphic design, which I then studied at A Level. I went on to study a traditional graphic design course at the University of Creative Arts in Epsom. That's where I met my then two co-founders, one of whom is still with business now – my colleague Craig. We had a lot of affinity in how we saw design, and the things that we liked.

Post-graduation, I was actually living with Craig. We were freelancing for a few places, and getting our first jobs in design. We worked at agencies where we realised, actually, everyone's kind of winging it. At least that was the vibe we got. So we thought: why don't we pull together our collective portfolio and see if we can wing it too? Fast forward eleven years, we're still going.

We're a deliberately small agency. It's myself, Craig, and we've got a full time designer, Jess. I don't have any ambitions to run a massive agency. I feel like that will bring more stress than joy, and I enjoy what I do. While I'm on the tools slightly less than I was, because I'm having to put many hats on – new business, project management, art directing – I feel like it's still a nice balance. We can be nimble, and work very directly with our clients. We have a studio in the design district in North Greenwich, right beside the O2 arena. It's an area that's been assigned for the creative industries. It’s a place to meet clients, but also for us to get more collaborative and conversational.

We’ve always referred to our design approach as editorially-led. That's partly because, in our infancy, we did a lot of editorial work – we worked with indie publishers quite a lot, for example. But we still feel like that approach is something that runs through all of our work; bringing order and clarity to narratives. It's an overused term, “less is more”, but our work is reductive. We do believe in the power of simplicity. The name Extract was born out of both of these things. It’s a nod to our editorial roots – as in, an “extract” of a magazine or newspaper article – but also our reductive approach, to “extract”. Our work now is very varied, but it's all about connecting brands with their audiences; creating a narrative and bringing that to the fore with clarity. It's really diverse, and that's what I love about it.

I’ve noticed a lot of the tools that we use have started to integrate AI. Initially there was a bit of hesitancy on my side. But then the more these tools come up, the more I'm thinking they can actually aid in creativity rather than replace it. Rather than stick my head in the sand, I want to make sure we're embracing it in the right way.

This is why my interest was piqued in exactly.ai, because it seemed more user friendly than something like Midjourney, but also offering some parameters and controls. There's obviously something really exciting about how you can generate any kind of idea using AI, and it can look and react in loads of different ways. But what I liked about exactly.ai is actually putting some parameters around that, so it's a more usable tool for more client-facing work.

So for example, the model I was looking to build came from one of our brand projects. And as part of the new visual identity we created, there was a suite of illustrations that we created. At the time, the agency was quite small. Convincing the client to invest in commissioning an illustrator was something that took a bit of persuasion. They've since gone on to love the illustrations that were created, but we had to cap the amount we did for budgetary reasons. I was keen to see whether or not we could build a model that could create illustrations in that style, but be more reactive to different themes or ideas. Something that either the availability of said illustrator or budget limitations might normally restrict us from doing.

We also do brand and website for a content and PR agency, and they always want to create a lot of blog-posts. Historically they would go onto a stock image site and pick a very generic image to illustrate the post. In an ideal world, we would love to create illustrations in a style that's unique to that client, so that every post could have a commonality to it. Again, that's something that there's no time or budget to create. But I can see a world where they could have an exactly.ai model that's been finely tuned with stuff we’ve created for them in the past. To try and build something that they can then continue to make recognisable assets with, to embellish their blog-posts or white papers, or whatever it might be.

I really enjoy working with illustrators we work with, and their craft is something that I really respect. I guess there’s a fear this could potentially replace a commission. But I see them as two different things. In the past where we haven’t had the time or budget, we were never going to commission anyway because we couldn't. This now feels like a really nice alternative we can start to explore. So it's not doing a disservice to an illustrator that would otherwise get a commission from us. This is for cases where it wasn't really possible anyway. Graphic design often is about working within parameters. I think with this kind of tool, I can set some parameters, I can train something. It puts the infinite creative outlet that is generative AI, and brings it into something that I think is harnessable.