Grafik’s Nick de Jardine on why websites “matter more than ever” — The Brand Identity – Home of the Greatest in Graphic & Brand Design
Since we last caught up in 2021, Nick de Jardine, the New Zealand-based designer and developer behind Grafik, has come to realise that, for a lot of businesses, a website is “the first place people actually experience the brand.” He has relaunched Grafik with a site built around that idea. Visitors can draw over it with 10 tools, including a piece of bread, and can submit their drawings to a public gallery where others can remix them. An experimental layer on the site lets AI agents find and use the same drawing tools. The relaunch also presents Grafik as his individual practice rather than making it look like a small studio. In this interview, he talks to us about why websites matter more than ever, how AI expands what he can realise without supplying the creative voice, and how he chooses when to switch off.
TBI Hi Nick, it’s been a while! How’s life?
NDJ Kia ora, I’m doing great thanks! I’m still independent, busy as ever, working between design and development. Maybe I’m working at this intersection I keep reading about on LinkedIn?
TBI We last spoke in 2021. What’s changed?
NDJ I'm still fundamentally doing the same thing, but my thinking behind it has solidified.
Over the last few years, I've become more and more aware of the web becoming homogenised. I see the same layouts, interactions and animations being churned out – content fading in bit by bit as you scroll, the same hover effects. It's like designers have converged on the same creative voice.
The biggest change for me is how I think about a website’s role. Rather than being a place the brand gets parked, for a lot of businesses, it’s the first place people actually experience the brand. I think that what it does and how it behaves should say as much about that business as its logo or typography.
TBI Why present Grafik as your individual practice rather than a small studio?
NDJ I have always struggled with how to sell my business. I am competing against agencies who have a whole team dedicated to what I can do on my own. I constantly receive emails directed to me and my ‘team.’ This gave me the false impression that appearing larger is something that would work to my advantage. I missed the fact that people were actually hiring me.
I can take a project from the first design decision through to the final build with a single vision throughout, no whispers between designer, account manager and developer. I think those skills are what set me apart, and I was hiding behind how I thought I should appear.
I was hiding behind how I thought I should appear.
TBI What made you rebuild your website?
NDJ If I was going to present Grafik as me, the website needed to feel like me too. So I’ve created a flavour that reflects my personality, and hopefully gets attention, or at least a smile.
Any kind of takeaway reflects your brand, whether that’s the way something animated or an interaction – I like to frame it as a guest arriving empty-handed and leaving carrying your name. I wanted people to visit even when they’re not looking for a designer/developer; it could be for the music, the tools, or just the experience.
TBI “People say websites don’t matter anymore. I think they matter more than ever.” Why do you believe that?
NDJ Over the last six years, we’ve all seen the shift. More and more of our online existence has become contained within social media – platforms gradually sucking the life force from the wider online world.
They now determine the format, constraints and behaviour of your brand, and increasingly your relationship with your audience.
A website, on the other hand, is still public, accessible and relatively inexpensive. Most importantly, you decide how it looks, how it behaves and what people can do there. Your logo and brand guidelines represent the brand. But the website is one of the places the brand actually happens.
TBI Why let visitors draw over the site? Is there a reason, or does there even need to be?!
NDJ On my website, you don’t need to be good at drawing to make something interesting, and what people create becomes part of how they remember Grafik. Last month someone spent a solid eight minutes drawing a sea serpent swimming near a coastline with a bread tongue.
But ultimately I included it because it’s funny. The modern web has become obsessed with every element having a measurable purpose. I don’t think every interaction needs to be pushing someone towards something. Sometimes they should just be able to mess around.
So yes, there’s a reason. But I don’t want everything to need one.
AI hasn’t really changed how I design.
TBI Why open the drawing tools to AI agents?
NDJ AI agents are increasingly being designed to do useful things – retrieve information, complete tasks, buy things, navigate interfaces.
The drawing space is almost the opposite. There's nothing useful to accomplish.
I’m interested in what happens when an agent encounters a website as a creative environment rather than an information source. We spent years teaching robots to understand the internet, and one of the first things I give them is a piece of bread to draw with.
Currently, my phone gets an alert whenever a bot appears to be trying to draw. It'll be terrifying when one finishes and submits their masterpiece unprompted.
TBI What has AI changed about the way you create?
NDJ AI hasn't really changed how I design. I'm not using it to lay out pages, choose a typeface, colours or interactions. Those ideas still come from my skills, experience and design eye.
What it has done is open up more possibilities with prototyping and content. I can turn an interaction in my head into a working prototype that a client can experience, or art direct a specific asset that previously might have required a photoshoot. It expands what I can realise, but it doesn't supply the creative voice.
TBI Which other parts of your work has AI not touched?
NDJ I still like to write my email; it’s a skill I don’t want to lose, and it’s important for me to communicate as a human, as nobody wants to deal with a meat proxy.
TBI If sites start being visited by agents as often as by people, what will change about them?
NDJ For people, I don’t think much has to change. Underneath, I can see an agent layer handling the boring stuff, like re-ordering the socks you like or booking flights. I’m 100% happy for agents to do that.
But I don’t think agents have to be purely functional visitors either. If we design sites only for efficiency, we’re inviting agents to strip-mine them for information. I’m interested in what happens when we give them something else to do. Could they become part of the culture too?
I don’t want the web reduced to pure utility, for people or for robots.
I grew up with the web as a weird creative playground.
TBI You mentioned that “tools have become so accessible that I can literally continue working on a website while walking home.” Is that freedom, or is there no off switch anymore?
NDJ It's both.
Being able to fix something on the walk home is genuinely great. Ideas don't arrive on a schedule either, so now I can act on them when they do. But it means the off switch isn't built in anymore; you have to choose it. For me that's no work after 8pm, when I’m with family, or on the weekends.
Deciding where that boundary sits has become part of the job.
TBI Looking forward, what do you think Grafik will be in five years?
NDJ I hope Grafik is still a practice where I get to make websites that feel alive, and that I’m working with more clients who want to see how far we can take that. I grew up with the web as a weird creative playground, and I don't think people should forget that.