AI gave ideas. Human judgment built the brand.

For the Human by Design Challenge, I created Cronut Café; a conceptual bakery brand, to explore how AI can speed up ideation without replacing creative direction.

I used Envato's ImageGen to generate early logo concepts, then relied on my own judgment to refine the logo, typography, colour palette, and visual identity in Adobe Illustrator. Once the brand direction felt right, I returned to Envato to create mockups, also using VideoGen to bring the identity to life through motion.

The biggest decision was knowing what to keep, what to change, and what to throw away.

That's the part of design that will never change 🚀

Thanks @Envato and @Contra for the challenge! 💚

The Cronut Café name and that latte art shot sell the concept before you even read the caption. Good call using ImageGen just for early concepts and pulling it into Illustrator once you had a direction, that workflow keeps the judgment where it should be.

One day I want to open a bagel shop. For now, I got to prototype the whole brand instead, logo, packaging, poster, video using Envato's gen AI tools. It's a surprisingly solid all-in-one kit for image and video generation.

My Workflow

- Sketched the logo on paper first, pulling inspiration from Envato's geometric patterns, I go for a monochromatic, warm, geometric logo.

- Built the final logo in Illustrator, then handed it to AI with clear sketches and direction.

- Used AI to rapid-generate mockups across t-shirts, packaging, and posters.

- Iterated through a brand animation, testing multiple storyboard approaches before landing on the final version. - Generate music via Envato AI then edit in After Effects.

My Human by Design Moment My first animation storyboard for the logo was low-fidelity, so the AI output felt random. I assumed the fix was more detail, so I redid it with the final logo and tighter instructions. AI overcorrected. It added motion and elements I never asked for, and the result was more confusing, not less.

I made a different call. Instead of adding more, I stripped the storyboard down to just two frames: a start and an end. No extra instruction for AI to misread, no room for it to improvise. Designers has design in mind, our goal is to visualise that vision. AI helps along the way, but only when I gave it clarity. Simpler instruction with examples what finally got a clean, consistent animation out of it, one I could adapt across other bagel without starting over. Curious on how other make the AI works? Youtube: https://youtu.be/-HQX598KRK0

I love the color palette and grading of the photos too! They look so good!