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Why we changed

The old agency model has changed.

AI has put brand-making in your team’s hands. What you need from an agency is different now, so we changed how Strut works.

Two Strut developers at a desk, looking at a screen together in the studio.

1 · The situation

What changed

A smiling face poking out of a mound of sand: a head buried in the sand.

Your team can now write, design and edit in minutes, with tools anyone can use. Work that once went to an agency and came back a week later can be drafted before lunch.

That is good news. But those tools have never seen your brand guidelines. The more your team makes, the further the brand drifts.

Burying our heads in the sand isn’t in our DNA. We know the industry is shifting, and instead of ignoring it, we’re leaning all the way in. We’ve explored exactly what AI can do, welcomed the change, and built a more effective way of working.

2 · The problem

Why the old model no longer fits

The old agency model sold time. Every change was a request, every request was a wait, and every wait was a bill. It made the agency the bottleneck. It kept your brand in files only the agency could use. And when the project ended, nobody measured whether it had worked.

When your team can make things themselves, paying to wait makes no sense.

“So if I can do it all myself, why do I even need an agency?”

The tools make it look easy, and for a lot of everyday work it is. Your team should keep making things.

But making something is the easy part. Knowing it is right, safe and on brand before it goes out is the hard part. Here is what we see people run into when nobody is checking.

  • No strategy

    Without an overarching strategy, every decision stands alone. A strategy gives each one something to adhere to, so the work adds up instead of drifting.

  • AI slop

    Copy and images that sound and look like everyone else’s. Made-up facts, stock phrases, odd details. People spot it in seconds, and it costs you their trust.

  • Security holes

    Sites and apps built with AI often go live with exposed keys, open forms and out-of-date plugins. Nobody notices until someone else does.

  • Code bloat

    Generated code works on the day, but it is heavy, slow and hard to change. Pages load slowly, search engines notice, and every fix takes longer than the last.

  • Accessibility gaps

    Text too faint to read, images with no descriptions, forms a keyboard can’t use. It shuts people out, and it is easy to miss if you don’t test for it.

  • Rights and privacy

    Images, fonts and music you don’t have the rights to use. Customer details pasted into tools that keep them. Small shortcuts with big consequences.

  • Hard to find

    Pages without the structure that search engines and AI assistants read, so the people looking for you find someone else first.

3 · The insight

Not all content is equal.

Whether a person or AI made it matters less than how much care went in. Low effort shows either way.

High effort

AI

  • AI, high effort

    Directed AI

    A series of high-value prompts, refined until the output matches or beats the original vision.

  • Human, high effort

    Handcrafted

    High quality. A lot of consideration. It carries the brand’s essence and serves its purpose.

  • AI, low effort

    AI slopSlop

    A single low-value prompt and the first result accepted. It often looks formulaic, artificial and disconnected, though it does a job.

  • Human, low effort

    Rushed

    Rushed, lazy or poorly made, and it doesn’t always serve its purpose. It often looks under-designed and messy.

Human

Low effort

So what is AI slop?

AI slop is what you get when AI is left to run on its own. One low-value prompt, and the first result accepted. Nobody checks it, shapes it or asks whether it is any good.

It does a job, which is why it slips through. But it often looks formulaic and artificial, and disconnected from the brand it is meant to serve. People spot it in seconds.

Think you can tell the difference? Let’s find out.

Let’s play…

Slop or Not

Ten pieces of work. Some made with care, some pure AI slop. You get one call on each. Can you spot them all, or will the slop slip past you?

1 / 10

  1. A poster for The Great Glen School community spring fete, with bunting, hand-drawn stalls and the Highland hills.

The centaur and the reverse centaur.

AI can help you make good work faster, or make a lot of bad work very quickly. It depends who is in charge.

Ed’s pixel-art centaur, a person at the head of a horse body, standing ready.

The centaur

A person at the head, AI doing the legwork.

  • The person sets the direction. They set the vision, make the critical decisions, challenge what the AI produces and keep shaping the work towards the goal.
  • The AI does the legwork. It speeds up complex work, handles the heavy computation, checks the logic and applies proven best practice at scale.
Ed’s pixel-art reverse centaur, a horse with a person strapped to its back, standing ready.

The reverse centaur

AI at the head, a person doing the legwork.

  • The AI runs unchecked. With no strategy or guidance, it produces high volumes of unrefined output, slop, that takes a lot of editing and checking.
  • The person just watches. They stop making decisions, accept what the AI gives them without question and give up their creative and strategic vision.

The term “reverse centaur” was coined by the writer Cory Doctorow, who uses it for a person made to serve a machine. Our take on it is our own, but the idea is his: read The Reverse-Centaur’s Guide to Criticizing AI.

A 90s bedroom at night: a television on a stand shows the Strut Fighter II title screen, with a games console and two controllers on the carpet, stacks of games either side, posters, a lava lamp and an unmade bed.

Let’s play…

Strut Fighter II

Centaur vs Reverse Centaur. Pick a side and settle it: strategy against slop. Take on the computer, or grab a friend for two players.

We work as centaurs.

Agents do the legwork. People make the calls.

Strut is a people-first company, and always will be. AI helps our team move faster, but it takes people to steer it, check it and make it human.

People do

  • Workshops
  • Strategy
  • Vision
  • Positioning
  • Design thinking
  • Ideation
  • Taste
  • Relationship building
  • Sign-off on everything that ships

Agents do

  • Collecting research
  • Computation
  • First drafts
  • Code and tests
  • Monitoring
  • Reports

4 · The answer

A whole new model

We give you control of your brand, add guard rails to keep it on track, and stay to make sure it works.

  1. 01

    You make the everyday work.

    Your team creates everyday content and social posts, when it needs them, from the design system file in the AI tools it already uses. No briefs, no waiting.

  2. 02

    We build what you can't.

    The strategy, the identity, the voice and the design system file at the heart of it. Then the complex design and creation, the campaigns and the film, made from that same file.

  3. 03

    We keep it on brand.

    A small monthly subscription for continuous checking, with quarterly reviews. Voice rules, brand instructions for your AI tools, and checks on what gets made. Guard rails, not gatekeeping.

See what we do

Good content needs a design system that works.

None of this means you should stop making things. It means you need a system to make them from, and someone who knows what to look for. We give you both.

New to design systems? See ours

design-system.md
# Your design system

## Colour
Primary, secondary, and when to use each

## Type
Headings, body copy and sizes

## Voice
Plain words. Short sentences. Sound like us.

## Always / never
The rules your AI follows every time

  1. A brand identity

    We set your direction with you, then design an identity built for how your team works now.

  2. Your design system, inside your AI

    Your brand as a design system file that sits inside the AI tools you choose: colours, type, voice, layouts and the rules that hold them together.

  3. Tuned until you can do it without us

    We test it with your team, then tweak and improve it until they can make their own assets, on brand, without waiting for us.

  4. Check-ins and quarterly reviews

    Regular check-ins on what is being made, and every quarter a review of what is working against your roadmap.

  5. We build what you can’t

    Websites, campaigns, film and anything bigger, built with the exact design system we made together. Yes, that one.

  • Consistent

    Everything starts from the same system.

  • Easy

    Your team works in tools it already knows.

  • Flexible

    Make what you need, when you need it.

  • Safe

    Checked work, not slop or shortcuts.

  • Cost-effective

    Fixed prices and a monthly subscription. No paying to wait.

  • On brand

    Above all.

5 · How it works

From first conversation to a brand that runs.

  1. Check

    A free look at how your brand shows up today.

  2. Decide

    Brand strategy: a position and a roadmap, in two to three weeks.

  3. Build

    Brand identity, then your website, app and design work, priced up front.

  4. Shape

    Ongoing support every month, with a review every quarter.

New market, product or channel

6 · The impact

What this means for you

  • Your team makes everyday content quickly, without waiting for us.
  • Everything they make starts from your brand system, so it looks and sounds like you.
  • We spend our time on the work that needs us: strategy, identity, campaigns and film.
  • We check what gets made, and every quarter we show you what worked against the roadmap.
  • You know the price before we start. We do not charge by the day.
  • You own the system. If you leave, you take all of it with you.
“Since working with Strut we have made leaps and bounds with our brand. Chris, Ed and Andrew spent the time to really get to know our business and our people, which is always reflected in their work. They are knowledgeable and passionate about what they do and are a valuable extension of our inhouse team.”
Eleanor Mackay, Digital Marketing & PR Manager at Bell Ingram

Read the Bell Ingram story

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