Artificial Objects: JOAN Design’s AI-powered research project is a trove of fantastical furniture — The Brand Identity – Home of the Greatest in Graphic & Brand Design

Within the sea of generative AI content, there are some gems out there, created by those with the AI know-how to bring out the most interesting, surreal and unexpected results from a prompt. Artificial Objects is one such outcome. A research and design project created and curated by New York City’s JOAN Design – a branch of JOAN Creative – it provides answers to the questions, ‘How could we use AI in industrial, fashion, and architectural design? And how can generative artificial intelligence supercharge the creative process?’

Characterised by playful, unusual pieces of furniture that blend seminal examples of design history with novelty, the objects JOAN Design devised stretch the imagination of how material and form can harmonise. The famous Wassily Chair meets Jolly Rancher. A Bellini Camaleonda-esque sofa made from prescription pills. A challah bread sofa fresh from the oven? Yes, please!

“Physical design is much easier to explore,” Creative Director Anjela Freyja tells us, explaining why they opted for industrial design over graphic design as a medium for exploration, “whether it be fashion design, architectural design, or in our case industrial design. It doesn’t depend on specific design systems and can actually benefit from that abstract generative thinking. And on a personal level, as a designer and a design historian, I have a great passion for furniture and object design and it felt like a great medium to play with.”

The process behind Artificial Objects involved training AI models on 20th-century industrial design principles. But, as Freyja reveals, getting the AI models up to scratch on its history and material knowledge took work, “We had to teach it about materiality – moulded plastic, bent plywood, tubular steel – but also about different art forms like cubism and brutalism. We even had to teach it about studio lighting.” This specialised training allowed the AI to generate unique design concepts based on text prompts.

Freyja gives us an example, “‘Translucent rainbow jello moulded into an L-shaped sectional sofa that is low to the ground and has no arms. Photographed in a studio environment with concrete floors and white walls.’ It wasn’t uncommon for us to land on something that was interesting but not quite right, so we’d end up in a back-and-forth with the AI to get it to look precisely how we wanted it to. I should caveat – the process is still far from perfect! But that’s what makes it fun.”

Once the team were pleased with the AI outcome, they collaborated with human engineers to bring these marvels to life. As these designs weren’t imagined with the ease of engineering in mind, this certainly took some work. “We wanted it to be experimental and to challenge our understanding of how furniture is made,” notes Freyja. “This comes through in the final result where a lot of the pieces are completely nonfunctional (a balloon lamp would definitely catch fire and an origami sofa would collapse the moment you sat on it). But that was the whole point of the experiment.”

To wrap this project up, in its logo and typographic treatments, JOAN Design leaned into the intriguing imperfections of AI – “There’s always some kind of glitch or inaccuracy. Sometimes glaring, or at other times very subtle.” The team wanted to imitate this in the logo for Artificial Objects, so they customised ABC Diatype to have this effect. “It essentially begins as a complex body of pixels that turns into letterforms that are still readable but lack accuracy.”

Upon reflection on the project, and their findings from working with the AI models, the team at JOAN Design views AI as a powerful tool for imagination and ideation. “The AI models were more like a brainstorming tool; a way to provoke new ways of seeing things that maybe we wouldn’t have thought of,” says Freyja. “Let’s say you’re an architect, for example, and you’re building a library and you want that building structure to reference the physical shape of a book. You could then train the AI on references of books in different positions, examples of the materials you’re working with like concrete or brick, some sculptural references, and even your own body of past work, and from there you can prompt the AI with the specifics you’re looking for.”

Regarding the future of AI in the creative process, JOAN Design sees it as a complementary tool – a catalyst for exploration – rather than a replacement for human creativity. “AI is great at helping us see things in new ways and it can supercharge our creative brainstorms. But the actual design phase of a project ethically and functionally needs to be in the hands of humans,” Freyja concludes.

Artificial Objects is a research and design project attributed under Creative Commons BY-NC 4.0.