Generative AI has completely upended every facet of modern life; the technology has not only rapidly evolved but also supercharged the industrialization of creativity, particularly in the world of film and television.

AI has fully arrived; that’s not in dispute. But with its immense business potential, it is imperative that guardrails and standards be in place to prevent creative labor from being devalued. To usher in this new era, a collective of entertainment industry professionals, including Everything Everywhere All At Once director Daniel Kwan and actor Joseph Gordonb Levitt, formed The Creators Coalition on Artificial Intelligence (CCAI) to ensure ethical and artistic protections when AI is used in entertainment projects.

However, to bring this nonprofit organization to life, they needed a cohesive graphic identity to represent its core mission.

The heart of CCAI’s ethos is that “Technology should strengthen human creativity, not undermine it.” That guiding principle became the central idea that we built CCAI’s brand world around. Because we wanted the collective to have an approachable, trustworthy nature, it was critical that everything feel like part of a grassroots campaign; nothing could feel too corporate or clinical, and it had to be human-centric.

The core of the identity is a logomark featuring four converging circles that represent the unified coalition, while a central sparkle representing AI emerges only at their intersection. Obviously, the sparkle - or diamond - has become shorthand for AI, and we chose to put it in the center of the logo to reinforce the idea that technology should serve the collective and not the other way around. The act of creation, after all, is the result of human collaboration. Ultimately, we provided two distinct lockup variations to ensure the logo remains legible and impactful across varying spatial requirements, regardless of the platform it appears on.

Given CCAI’s goal, it was essential to ground the brand’s typographic character within an activist movement. The intention was to create something bold and energizing, something that would inspire others to action, similar to how the movement is backed by over 500 actors, artists, and executives from all corners of the industry. To convey a sense of "urgency and solidarity," Decimal landed on ABC Gravity as the primary display typeface to represent CCAI’s voice, and its bold strokes are designed for high-impact headlines. 

In contrast, the secondary typeface, Hagel, features calligraphic serifs that echo the human hand, providing a refined counterpoint for long-form content. From the beginning, the brief was to develop a visual identity system that not only felt modern and human, but could work across various contexts, whether it was something that was for consumer-focused marketing purposes, serious applications (like legal documents) or something that was creatively engaging. Essentially, the identity needed to fit many different situations, and utilizing a serif and sans allowed for this flexibility.

The color strategy uses a spectrum of eight core bright shades, supported by an extended range of lighter 20% opacity tints for backgrounds and deeper shades for text readability. We also introduced a Gradient Combination system that blends three adjacent hues from the spectrum to create dynamic, vibrant color expressions. Above all, the palette needed to feel optimistic and hopeful, something that could offer clarity to creatives whose livelihoods could be upended.

The most innovative aspect of the identity we created, however, is the web-based Brush-Drawing Tool that allows CCAI and users to create gestural art using the brand's color palette and gradients. Not only does it bring energy to the brand, but it serves as another much-needed reminder that creativity and expression will always begin with real people. This interactive element transforms the brand from a static set of rules into a platform for artistic freedom. Ultimately, we wanted to show the human hand at work, with brush strokes that felt textural. The brush is also customizable and will be open-sourced in the future so others can create their own brushes and works.