Up until now, reps for an external team that collaborated with NASA on the campaign say they weren’t cleared to discuss it. But with the mission on the docket for 2025, you’ll soon be seeing a lot more of that work on TV, official websites, merch, social media, and, well, space. And they’re now letting some of the details rip. There are gradients galore. A brilliant custom typeface. A photography system that puts the human in humanity’s return to deep space.

Here’s how it all came to be.

Alan Kay was a pioneering computer scientist. In the 1970s, at Xerox PARC, he led the design and development of the first modern computer-desktop interface—ultimately creating the “windows” we spend so much of our time gazing into today. He also spent a lot of time thinking about the future. And it deserves mentioning that he wasn’t scared of AI. Not one bit.

Ross Clugston has surfed every continent except Antarctica, and he used to track hurricanes to plan his visits to East Coast beaches. 

“The dream was to go from Florida to Nova Scotia, but we never actually did it because it requires dropping everything,” he said, which is not easy now that he has a family and responsibilities as chief creative officer at WPP’s Design Bridge and Partners.

Nick Cave agrees. In a recent blog post, the Australian songwriter responded to an attempt by ChatGPT (and a super fan) to write a song in his style. Cave argued that AI technology could never produce anything more than “replication as travesty”—harsh words, we know. But rightfully harsh.

When Mars Food announced an overhaul of the Uncle Ben’s brand, the company glossed over some of the historical lore—and racial stereotypes—that were part of its marketing heritage. Instead, the 74-year-old brand opted for a new moniker that hints at the past: Ben’s Original.

While I could have chosen 10 album covers from Raymond Pettibon alone—he is all at once incredible, awe-inspiring and thought-provoking, both as a creative and an artist—I resisted the urge, instead hoping to take Muse by Clio readers on a visual tour through the creases of my mind. From Jeff Jank to H.R. Giger to Peter Corriston, you can glimpse the illustrations, sketches, collages and artwork which have brought me as much creative joy as they have inspiration, through the years.

The slow shift to blue is a bit of a pivot in the streaming entertainment world, whose apps and services have long featured a rainbow of colors like red, neon green, purple, and orange. But streaming services are under immense pressure to make their services as attractive as possible to the broadest consumer base they can—and they’re increasingly gravitating toward a safer, and perhaps less inspired, color scheme.

Ross Clugston, Executive Creative Director at Superunion North America, believes that the new working practices forced on agencies during the coronavirus crisis, while initially difficult, could end up being beneficial.

Consumers increasingly buy products that align with their values, and corporate brands, once regulated to the backdrop, are viewing their brand portfolios in a new light. From Mars to PepsiCo, we are finally seeing parent brands take action to become more socially responsible.

So are investors attracted to brand purpose? Or irreverence? Of course not. But they are attracted to a brand that stands out on the shelf and in consumers minds. If you walk down a dairy aisle you will see countless clone brands that look and feel the same. Oatly is using brand personality to cut through a half-century of sameness.

“[Sony's] sticking to a convention that builds on the customer's existing knowledge. If you're Xbox 360, you could potentially be Xbox 720 and then Xbox 1080, so there's a really clear, easy breadcrumb for the customer to follow, versus jumping around and going from numbers to letters to Roman numerals,”