87% of brand guidelines are actually just a collection of compromises that the founders made when they were too tired to argue. This number is not in a textbook but you can see it in every boardroom in the city. The marketing team sits around a table and the table is long and made of dark wood. They look at a screen and on the screen is a new image. It is an image of a mountain lodge and the light is gold and the snow on the roof looks like cold sugar.

It is a beautiful image and it was made by a machine in two seconds. The machine took the words of a prompt and it turned them into this light and this snow. But the marketing manager shakes his head and he says the image is too good. He says it does not match the other images on the website.

The Prisoners of the Blue Shirt

The other images on the website were bought in 2018. That was a lean year and the budget was small. The team bought stock photos of people in blue shirts and the people had white teeth and they looked at nothing. Those photos were the leftovers of a dying aesthetic but they were cheap and they were available.

Now the company has money and the company has tools but the company is a prisoner to those old blue shirts. The manager defends the old images because they are the standard. He does not see that the standard was an accident born of a lack of money. He thinks he is defending the brand but he is only defending a ghost.

Path dependence is a heavy thing and it sits on the shoulders of every creative director. We make a choice because we have to and then we make the same choice because we did it before. I watched a video buffer at 99 percent this morning and the little circle spun and it would not finish. The last one percent is the hardest part of any change.

We get 99 percent of the way to a new idea and then we stop because the last bit of change feels like a betrayal of the past. We stay in the buffer zone and we call it “consistency.”

The mountain lodge on the screen is sharp and the wood grain is deep. It makes the 2018 stock photos look like mud. If the team uses the lodge they must admit the mud was mud. They do not want to do this. They want to believe that every choice they made was part of a grand design.

“The tongue remembers the mineral bitterness long after the thirst is gone.”

Elena C.-P., Water Sommelier

This is how it is with visuals. The eye remembers the cheap stock photo and it uses that bitterness to judge everything new. We settle for the bitter water because we are used to the taste.

The Economics of the Gold Light

A photographer costs $9,840 for a weekend shoot if you want the lodge and the snow and the gold light. You have to fly the photographer to the mountain and you have to hope the sun comes out. If the sun does not come out you have spent the money and you have nothing but gray clouds.

This is why teams settle for the old photos. The cost of being better is too high and the risk of being different is too scary. But the machine does not care about the sun. You type the words and the machine gives you the gold light. It gives you five images for free and it does not ask for a signup. It takes two seconds. The barrier to being better has fallen but the wall of the old standard is still standing.

We think that standards rise over time but they usually just calcify. They turn into stone around the first “good enough” thing we found. If you use a tool to gerar foto com ia you have to be brave enough to throw away the old mud. You have to look at the blue shirts from 2018 and you have to say they were a mistake.

This is hard for people in meetings. They like the safety of the mistake they already know. They fear the success of the thing they do not understand. The price of a new visual is now almost zero but the price of a new mindset is still very high. We are used to the struggle of the search.

We are used to scrolling through pages of stock photos and looking for the one that is the least bad. When we find an image that is actually good we do not know what to do with it. It feels like a lie because it was too easy to get. We think that beauty must be earned through a long afternoon of searching or a long day of shooting.

Cages of Strategic Alignment

I have seen teams reject a sunset because the clouds were the wrong shape for the “brand voice.” The brand voice was decided by a guy who left the company three years ago and he only chose those clouds because the stock site was down. Now the clouds are a rule. We build cages out of the things we settled for and we sit inside them and we call it “strategic alignment.” It is not strategy. It is just the habit of not wanting to be wrong.

If you ask for a futuristic city or a blooming flower garden it will give you the best version of that thing. It will give it to you fast and it will be unique. It is not pulling from a library of old compromises. It is building from the floor up every time. This is a threat to the person who has spent their career defending the library.

If you produce 31 images in an hour and each one is better than the last you begin to see the library for what it is. It is a graveyard of “good enough.” The marketing manager at the long table looks at the mountain lodge and he feels a small pain in his chest. The pain is his ego. If the lodge is the new standard then his old work is obsolete.

So he says the light is wrong. He says the snow is too white. He says we should go back to the blue shirts.

The old stock photo of the mountain lodge became the fence that kept the new light out.

The Debt-Free Founders

There is a secondary audience for this new world and they are the ones who do not have a library yet. They are the entrepreneurs and the startup founders and the freelance designers. They do not have the debt of 2018. They start with the machine and they set the standard at the top of the mountain.

They do not know about the blue shirts. They only know about the gold light. They iterate and they change and they do not worry about matching the mud because they have never touched the mud.

The cost of a photo shoot is a tax on people who are afraid of words. If you can describe what you want you can have it. You do not need to wait for the photographer to check his calendar. You do not need to pay the $1,240 licensing fee for a photo that 410 other companies are already using.

You can just type. You can see the sunset and if the sunset is not right you can change the prompt and see a different sunset. You can do this until the image is perfect.

The problem is that many people do not want perfect. They want “familiar.” We use the same five fonts and the same three colors and the same grainy photos because we are tired. We are tired of the meeting and we are tired of the buffer and we are tired of the 99 percent. But the machine is never tired. It will make a thousand mountain lodges and it will not complain. It will wait for you to be brave.

The next time you are in a meeting and someone says “this doesn’t match” you should ask them what they are matching. Ask them if they are matching a vision or a memory of a bad day. Ask them if the standard is a goal or a shackle.

Most people will not like these questions. They will look at the long wood table and they will look at their cold coffee. But the lodge is still there on the screen. The light is still gold. The snow is still sugar. You can have it if you are willing to let the blue shirts die.

The 100 Percent Revolution

Standards are not something you find in the past. They are something you create in the present every time you refuse to settle. The accident should not be the rule. The compromise should not be the law. You have the words and you have the tool and you have the two seconds. The only thing you do not have is an excuse to be mediocre.

Stop defending the images you settled for and start making the ones you imagined. The mountain is waiting and the sun is finally out and it only takes a moment to see it. It is a quiet revolution of the eye and it begins when you stop looking back at the lean years and start looking at the light on the screen.

It is right there at 100 percent and the buffer is finally over.