There has never been a moment quite like this one.
For most of history, words emerged slowly. Cultures coined terms to describe their tools, their rituals, their discoveries. New words carried the weight of necessity and were born when something demanded to be named.
But today, with technology doubling in power every few years and entire industries sprouting up overnight, we’re standing at the edge of a linguistic explosion. There’s simply too much happening, too much uncharted terrain, for our existing vocabulary to hold it all.
We need new words. New categories. New ways of expressing what’s possible. And the question lingers: who will name them?
The Last Say
It’s tempting to believe machines will handle this too. Algorithms can already generate names, slogans, even full campaigns.
But if humans are still the audience – and for the foreseeable future, we are – then humans ought to have the last say.
Because words aren’t just signposts; they’re anchors of meaning. They filter possibility through memory, experience, and emotion. A machine can churn out an endless list of names, but it cannot know what it feels like to be called Dad for the first time, or to see a community rally behind a phrase, or to recognize how one intentionally misspelled word can change everything.
That’s why, as the world accelerates, human-made names, logos, and brands will only rise in value. Human-made everything in fact. They’ll become premium artifacts of human judgment – tokens of choice and taste in a world drowning in synthetic noise.
Creating a Logo Marketplace
That belief is what’s driving me to build a logo marketplace. Just this week, I launched a space where designers can showcase their unused gems – logos crafted with care, sharpened for clarity, and infused with human instinct.
Not generated. Not shuffled into existence by a prompt. But shaped by real eyes, real hands, real decisions.
The logos themselves are only the starting point. What excites me most is what they represent: a marketplace of human creativity. A place where the rarest resource isn’t pixels, but perspective. Where clients don’t just acquire a mark – they acquire an artifact that says, someone thought this through.
Because once buying decisions are handed off to machines, marketing evaporates. A machine doesn’t care about the perfect logomark. It doesn’t swell with pride when it sees a logo stitched on a hat. Or chuckle at a clever name. It optimizes, compares, and chooses. That’s it.
Until that day, humans still hold the pen. Which means logos are still ours to build and branding is still ours to shape. But the window is narrowing. The time to stake our claim is now.
The Need for New Deliverables
Here’s the truth: as creative professionals, we don’t yet have the vocabulary for the work we’re doing with AI. We need to name the deliverables of this new frontier.
What do you call a set of prompts that define a brand’s tone of voice? They’re not just outputs – they’re linguistic blueprints, frameworks that help a brand project consistently across infinite contexts. Maybe we call them “tone models” or “voiceprints” – inputs precise enough to capture the unique signature of how a brand speaks.
What about the playful AI experiments we deliver month after month? Time reserved specifically to explore, to see what else is possible. Maybe those are “creative sandboxes” or “concept loops” – curated spaces where clients can watch their brand stretch and evolve in real time.
And what about the human instincts machines can’t replicate? The decision to push an idea further because it just feels right. The empathy to notice when a message might land too hard – or too soft. The humor that resonates because it was lived, not calculated. These aren’t traditional deliverables, but they are the very currency of the future. Perhaps we call them “soul marks” – reminders that the human fingerprint cannot be mistaken for anything else.
Naming these deliverables matters. If we don’t, someone (or something) else will – and the risk is they’ll flatten them into commodities. These are not commodities. They are the most human work we will ever do.
Lead the Movement
It all points to one truth: the time to act is now.
Not next year. Not when AI “settles down.” Not once we’ve had a chance to catch our breath. Because by then, the market of meaning will already be crowded.
Now is the time to claim space in the conversation. To name the unnamable. To codify the deliverables of a new era. To build marketplaces that elevate human creation. To insist on the value of instinct.
Now is the time to build not just for clients, but for history. Because the words we choose, the logos we design, the deliverables we define – they will become the record of what it meant to be human in the age of machines.
And history will not ask, what did we build?
It will ask, what did we name?
