Apple Music recently unveiled a new brand identity built around Apple's Liquid Glass design language. Ars Technica's creative director initially dismissed the rebrand as another passing design trend. But a short behind-the-scenes video changed his perspective, showing a physical production that included a design agency, music producer Fred again.., and a mineral oil tank fitted with a transducer to translate audio into ripples.
The video documents real people doing real work in the physical world, with the oil interacting with transparent branding panels. The author acknowledges the production is "peak Apple" and a bit pretentious, but argues that the visible effort matters. In an era where generative AI makes it easy to produce images from a prompt, he suggests audiences are becoming suspicious of what they see and increasingly value proof of human craftsmanship.
The column is explicitly an opinion piece, so it does not present opposing views or data. Its significance lies in the argument that provenance and process will become more important as AI-generated content becomes harder to distinguish from human-made work. The author concludes that celebrating and showing behind-the-scenes effort is a worthwhile response to the persistence of generative AI.{