Decimal brands CCAI, the coalition advocating for responsible AI use — The Brand Identity – Home of the Greatest in Graphic & Brand Design

The Creators Coalition on Artificial Intelligence (CCAI) was founded by entertainment industry figures, including director Daniel Kwan and actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt, to push for ethical and artistic protections wherever AI enters creative work. Backed by more than 500 actors, artists and executives, the coalition rallies around a single line: “Technology should strengthen human creativity, not undermine it.” New York-based design and technology studio Decimal was brought in to give the organisation its inaugural visual voice, with a brief that asked for an identity carrying institutional weight.

“It was important that it did not feel corporate,” explains Raphael Guenassia, Producer at Decimal. “If anything, it had to be grassroots, coming from the ground. It was clear from the beginning that the identity should be able to flex and work in different types of contexts, from legal documents to merch, be serious but also bold and colourful.” Decimal’s introduction to the project came through a film editor they had worked with on title sequences and graphics for various productions, which gave the studio a route into the entertainment world that the coalition is built on.

At the centre of the identity sits a logomark of four converging circles, each holding one of the letters ‘C,’ ‘C,’ ‘A’ and ‘I,’ with a sparkle emerging from their intersection. Using the sparkle at all is a counterintuitive move for an organisation arguing for restraint in how AI gets deployed, given how saturated the symbol has become across the visual language of AI tech. Decimal’s response was to claim it rather than avoid it. “We learned that the sparkle is not associated with a specific company,” explains Guillermo Brotons, Creative Director at Decimal. “For that reason, we could use it, but it had to be in a way that felt differentiated and, most importantly, not be confused with an AI tech company. After multiple iterations exploring ways to convey a sense of community through a symbol, including hands, faces, shields, stars, and bridges, we landed on each letter inside a circle, with these forms converging to create an icon from which the sparkle emerged. It was present, but not too obvious.”

A spectrum of eight bright shades fans out from the logomark, with any three adjacent hues combining to produce the gradient applications that animate the wider system. Decimal’s instinct on most projects is to restrict the palette, but here the open-endedness is the point. The bigger move lies in how the gradients have been constructed. Designer & Developer Wenqing Ma frames the strategy as a direct response to the polished house style of the industry. “A big part of the intention was to take a different approach to the gradients that have become shorthand for AI corporations,” she explains. “It’s typically used in a clean, polished way to signal digital magic, but we wanted to bring it back to something more organic and handmade. That led us to watercolour mixing, one of those first magical moments when you pick up a brush and discover what colour can do.” There is no fixed rule for which three hues appear together in any given application, a deliberate looseness that resists the over-systematised feel of corporate gradient libraries.

That watercolour approach found its fullest expression in a web-based drawing tool that Decimal built alongside the rest of the identity, allowing CCAI and its community to make their own artwork using the palette. The brushstrokes are textural and intentionally imperfect.

The tool began as a practical answer to a tight timeline before becoming something larger. “We started by exploring visual textures with a human touch that could still translate to digital screens. Since the timeline was tight, we needed a scalable solution, so building a shareable internal tool felt like the natural move,” Ma shares. “But the more we played with it, the more it took on a life of its own within the identity system. CCAI is a movement by people and for people, so having a tool that the community could actively use and define their own language just felt right. There’s also something we loved about how a brush gesture carries the presence of a human hand; it speaks to the relationship between human and AI, where AI is ultimately a tool, one that wouldn’t exist without the creative communities that came before it.” The tool extends what would otherwise be a static system into an open platform, sitting alongside a bold display face and a softer secondary type that carries the rest of the brand. Across posters and social applications, the type leans into directness – “It’s simple,” “Act now!” – giving the campaign-level voice a sense of urgency.

CCAI’s position is not a rejection of AI; it is a push for responsible, human-centred innovation and for shared standards on how the technology gets used. The identity is intended as an extension of that position, with the community organising principle at the centre of the logomark carrying through into the gradients and the brush tool that anyone in the coalition can pick up.