In this week’s Our Take: Astronomer makes a play, Mastercard has designs on design, MoMA gets down with the kids, and your jeans are racist now, Father.
Astronomer’s Consciously Corporate Coupling
Chris Martin is having a funny couple of weeks. First, he helped unconsciously decouple a CEO from his job, his wife and, presumably, his mistress. And now the Coldplay frontman’s ex, Gwyneth Paltrow, has shown up in partnership with said CEO’s former company to help them make the most of their, ahem, moment in the spotlight.
It’s undoubtedly a good move. Despite doing our best to enjoy the memes without learning a thing about the company, we ended up watching the Gwyneth Paltrow video. And yes, it was for journalistic purposes (hello, Our Take) – but millions of people who didn’t know or care what the company did also watched it – and found out.
Well done Astronomer – obviously a company run by someone who knows when to make a move.
DOES AI HOLD THE DESIGN CARDS?
Mastercard has launched an AI-powered Card Design Studio – an industry first from a major brand, now rolling out across North America, Europe, and Australia. While the platform promises speed and creative freedom, the actual design process is highly templated, and tightly controlled. Layouts are fixed. AI selects or generates appropriate imagery, checks contrast, and enforces brand rules. Is it useful? Very. Is it brilliant design? We’re betting there’s humans behind the templates.
For designers, it’s a glimpse of what’s to come: AI as both a brilliant tool and a serious competitor. Expect AI design to encroach further – especially on the grunt work, and the highly repetitive tasks. As for the more demanding and creative end? We like this quote from artist/designer Benjie Escobar: “My favorite part of AI is everyone realizing clear creative direction is difficult.”
MOMA GETS PLAYFUL, AND IT’S GORGEOUS
Brooklyn studio Athletics recently crafted a wonderfully playful graphics system for MoMA’s School & Teacher Program, designed to charm younger museum-goers. The results are gorgeous: vibrant doodles, quirky stickers, and conversational text invite students to feel right at home among the masterpieces.
Of course with MoMA, you don’t just get doodles. You get extensively researched doodles. Athletics designers tagged along on student tours, taking note of what the kids engaged with, what bored them, and what captivated them. The result: highly tailored visuals adaptable to Gen Alpha’s love for personal expression. Plus, learning specialists now have interactive Google Docs templates, making scavenger hunts or gallery prompts easy to whip up on the fly. MoMA knows a thing or two about art and design, so when they drop a schools programme – you know it’s worth studying.
Jean-etics Gone Wrong
Sydney Sweeney’s new American Eagle ad is denim-drenched chaos and not in a good way. The line “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans” (with genes dramatically crossed out) was meant to be clever wordplay. Instead, it’s unravelled into a thread of tone-deaf tropes.
With slow-mo struts, whispery monologues, and zooms on all the usual body parts, it’s giving more male gaze than mental health campaign. Sure, proceeds go to Crisis Text Line, and there’s a butterfly for domestic violence awareness but you’d need a microscope to spot either in the final cut.
People aren’t just clutching their pearls, they’re raising eyebrows at the not-so-subtle Aryan aesthetic. Blonde, blue-eyed, and banging on about “great genes”? It’s giving 1939-core, not 2025 brand campaign.
It’s not the first time jeans got flirty remember Brooke Shields’ scandalous Calvin Klein ad? But that was 1980. You’d think we’d evolved past innuendo as a sales strategy. (Turns out, the only thing evolving here is the backlash.) If your jeans campaign sparks a eugenics debate online, you might want to zip it up and try again.