AI at Rouge: Smart tools. Human brains. Better websites. 

We create brands and websites. We’ve been doing it for a long time, and our approach has changed over the years. When I started, it was goodbye scalpels, bromides, rubdowns, and then suddenly – hello iMac.

We’ve always adapted, adopted, and marched on as designers and developers. So, AI and its implications for our world are just another such change, albeit the biggest since the Mac. Yes, it’s big – it is steam-engine-meets-farm-labourer big. But it’s not the end of creativity for us. It’s the start of a new kind of momentum. While others panic about the future of design, we’re already using AI to do what we’ve always done best: Solve business problems through better thinking, sharper design, and original work.

The way I see it is that humans are beautifully flawed. We make mistakes. And it’s this error ability crossed with our lateral leaps that will always separate us from AI. Large Language Models might appear creative on the surface, but are aggregators. They reap the web and average out everything that has gone before. They deliver a facsimile of originality because of the speed and ease. But suppose we all allow them to be creative for us. In that case, we will eventually loop, repeat and turn the world grey with mediocrity. Boring. And worse than that, what used to be called ‘creative design’ will rapidly become ineffective sales and marketing slop. If used poorly, AI will quickly average everything to the mean if we are not careful. All marketing will become a clone of everything that has gone before. Leading to a dry, sterile, creative soil. Washed clean of all the nutrients and good stuff that grow healthy and original creativity.

But it doesn’t have to be like that.

We use AI at Rouge for many things, but one thing it will never do is replace our creativity. Instead, we use it to clear the runway for our ideas to take flight. We welcome our beautiful errors and use them to create websites and brands that ensure we get you to market with unique and effective websites, brands, sales tools, and marketing campaigns. We don’t worship the AI machines. We put them to work.

One of the wonders of AI-powered tools is that anyone can use them to some level. The same can be said for Photoshop, for example. Although many people didn’t, or couldn’t, master that. AI in the hands of Rouge designers, developers, and account managers is the same as Photoshop, a tool we use to work with. Operated by an expert to achieve your objectives. You can stand back and let us use it to obsess over that little extra ‘human something’ that makes your brand sing an aria, and your website fuel the bottom line of your business.

AI looks so clever when first used, quickly followed by an existential crisis that it will replace all of us. But with the right approach, it is an amazing accelerator. A chance to do more, faster, and for less. We have written this manifesto to ensure we all use it well at Rouge and enhance what we do for our clients. These are our rules of the Rouge workshop.

Humans lead the mission. Robots help. AI is a tool, not the driver. Human thinking guides the project. AI helps us search wider and move quicker, allowing us to focus on the real work: direction, creativity, problem-solving, and decision-making.

Get the boring stuff out of the way.  AI handles repetitive tasks, freeing time for high-value work. AI is used in some audits, analysis, and admin, meaning we spend less time doing repetitive tasks and more time creating the code, content, and design that moves the needle.

We have a need for speed.  AI helps us work faster without compromising quality. Time is money – ours and yours, respectively. AI lets us move faster, but fast doesn’t mean rushed. It means room to think, time to breathe, and space for ideas to take flight.

Creativity needs friction. Breakthroughs come from human endeavour, not automation. Great concepts come from challenge, disagreement, and the odd “what if we tried…?”. AI can’t do that. AI smooths the way; we grind out and sharpen the point.

There’s magic in teamwork. Collaboration is where the best results come from. We are a group of experts working together on your project. The best work comes from brave thinking, shared ownership, and zero egos. AI is not magic. The Rouge team is.

The right tool for the right job.  AI is one tool among many, used deliberately. A screwdriver could knock in a nail. But a hammer makes a terrible screwdriver. Our goal is client success, and AI is just one of the tools in our box. The right tool at the right time.

No one gets left behind. Not even the robot. We learn, teach, test, and question new tools together. We help each other, we upskill each other, and we’re not afraid to say “this tool’s useful” or “this one’s nonsense.” We make healthy use of AI because that’s what keeps us sharp.

AI doesn’t sell stuff. We do. Together, we learn, teach, test, and question new tools. AI can speed us up, but sales performance comes from strategic thinking, storytelling, and human insight. That’s us, with our heads in the data and our feet on the ground.

We don’t outsource our brains. Strategic insight, storytelling, and persuasion are uniquely human strengths. We don’t let machines do our thinking for us. We stay sharp and question the answers because humans and AI beat both.

We take responsibility. Not shortcuts. We use AI to support our thinking, not replace it. AI helps us work faster. But we own every word, line, pixel, and decision. No excuses. No passing the buck to “the algorithm.” When we deliver something, it’s because we crafted it.

Kick-start strategy & discovery. AI-powered brand, competitor, and content audits. We rapidly assess a live website and benchmark it against competitors. Uncovering issues and opportunities.

We round up meetings and workshops faster. We focus on meeting with you to gather questions and dig deep. Afterwards, AI helps us summarise and pull it all together into salient reports and actions.

Market research and personas without the cost. We can quickly generate realistic personas based on your industry, product, and pain points. We then simulate customer objections to help map decision journeys.

Better content and messaging. Get that first terrible draft out of the way. AI writes the way everybody else does. So, by getting it to write early outline drafts of website content, we know exactly what subjects to cover and how not to write about them.

Refine, review and experiment by the bucket. AI creates options very fast. And it’ll do it again and again without getting tired. But 99% of what it writes is rubbish. We know how to rinse and sift the silt to find the gold.

Design & UX accelerator. UX writing and effective microcopy as we design. AI helps us refine website UI microcopy (form hints, CTAs, alerts, etc.) to improve clarity and conversion. We even use it to build A/B test variants.

Automated accessibility audits. AI helps us deliver accessible websites from generating alt text and ARIA labels to inclusive language suggestions and finding the most accessible colours without manual, visual searching.

Finding solutions across multiple technologies. Where we were previously wading through stacks of documentation and reams of source code, we are now utilising AI to help us review and assess cross-tech performance and compatibility.

Automated reporting and documentation. Generating raw reports and documentation used to be a slow and repetitive process. Today, we are turning raw analytics into client-friendly performance summaries, highlighting real ROI.

Inbox insight replaces inbox overload. Our client services team lives in their email and gets bombarded by it. AI within Outlook helps us group conversations and summarise the salient points with a click. Nothing replaces human interaction, but this speeds it up so they can get project traction for you instead of swimming in mail and chatter.

Meeting summaries with care and speed. We meet with our clients. A lot. Iterative development of your brand and website is vital to its success. But this generates a lot of material. So, we combine meeting transcripts, AI analysis, and good old human notetaking to report back.

Want to see what this all looks like in action? We’re always happy to show you how AI helps us deliver smarter results faster and how it could support your next website project. Let’s talk.

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