The Guardian's response to AI: cut-and-paste collage
The Guardian editorial design team: The Guardian election coverage 2024 artworks (Copyright © The Guardian, 2024)
In direct response to the rise of AI generative imagery and fake news, the newspaper’s election coverage in 2024 was made with purposely imperfect paper cuttings - according to It's Nice That.
We are sharing a few quotes from the interview with the editorial staff, but it's worth reading the full article.
"The Guardian’s editorial look and feel often pairs clean, graphic typography with hand-rendered illustrations, grit and paper textures. We have spent years digitally recreating analogue results so we thought, why not do it for real?" - Harry Fischer (lead digital designer)
"There was also the inspiring and unorthodox challenge of seeing if we could respond to live and dynamic news using a tactile and hand-made approach. I have been working in news design for almost 15 years, and never seen anyone attempt something similar. With the team of designers and the pool of talent we currently have, we’ve never been in a stronger, more agile position to attempt this. So we thought, fuck it" - Chris Clarke (creative director)
“The rise in disinformation and fakery cemented the idea to do the opposite and lean into the craft of doing things for real.” (...) “There is an added chaos with live news... an urgency that adds a real tension and immediacy to the artwork. It truly feels like it captures the disorderly process of this election." - Chris Clarke
"We’ve consciously left mistakes we’ve made in the image, like when the knife rips an edge slightly or the rough cuts we’ve had to do quickly around a tricky outline – there’s no magic wand tool in real life!" - Rich Cousins (digital design director)
Read the full interview here.
We are sharing a few quotes from the interview with the editorial staff, but it's worth reading the full article.
"The Guardian’s editorial look and feel often pairs clean, graphic typography with hand-rendered illustrations, grit and paper textures. We have spent years digitally recreating analogue results so we thought, why not do it for real?" - Harry Fischer (lead digital designer)
"There was also the inspiring and unorthodox challenge of seeing if we could respond to live and dynamic news using a tactile and hand-made approach. I have been working in news design for almost 15 years, and never seen anyone attempt something similar. With the team of designers and the pool of talent we currently have, we’ve never been in a stronger, more agile position to attempt this. So we thought, fuck it" - Chris Clarke (creative director)
“The rise in disinformation and fakery cemented the idea to do the opposite and lean into the craft of doing things for real.” (...) “There is an added chaos with live news... an urgency that adds a real tension and immediacy to the artwork. It truly feels like it captures the disorderly process of this election." - Chris Clarke
"We’ve consciously left mistakes we’ve made in the image, like when the knife rips an edge slightly or the rough cuts we’ve had to do quickly around a tricky outline – there’s no magic wand tool in real life!" - Rich Cousins (digital design director)
Read the full interview here.
