← All working docs

99designs brief — Slowdown.AI (DRAFT — for Dan's review before submission)

Question for Dan first: what do you want out of this contest — a logo mark, or a broader visual direction for the site? Yesterday's discussion leaned toward a lightly-branded campaign (FLI-statement model) rather than a heavy new identity, so the brief below is scoped to logo + wordmark + palette and deliberately excludes full brand systems. Say the word and I'll widen it. Learnings from the last contest applied: shorter brief, harder constraints, examples of what to avoid.

Project name

Slowdown.AI — logo & wordmark

One-liner

A public campaign website calling for the development of the most advanced AI systems to be slowed down until safety can keep up. Think of the visual weight of a movement mark (recyclable-arrows, CND peace symbol) — instantly readable, reproducible by hand, works on a protest placard and a policy one-pager alike.

What we need

1. Logo mark — simple, geometric, monochrome-safe. Must work at 16px (favicon) and on a poster.
2. Wordmark — "SLOWDOWN.AI" or "Slowdown.AI" lockup with the mark.
3. Color palette — 3–5 colors, accessible contrast, one dominant.

Audience

The general public — not the tech industry. A teacher, a nurse, a student should feel this is theirs. It must feel serious and hopeful, never doomy or fringe.

Personality (pick-your-poles)

• Urgent, not panicked
• Serious, not academic
• Movement, not ministry
• Warm, not corporate

Concepts worth exploring

Time and pace: hourglasses, dials turned down, a pause held; the fork in the road; a hand on a lever. The word "slowdown" itself has graphic potential (letterforms decelerating, wide tracking).

Hard avoids

• Robots, brains, circuit boards, glowing blue AI clichés
• Skulls, doom, apocalypse imagery
• Partisan color coding (no all-red / all-blue)
• Gradients that die in one-color print
• Generic tech-startup minimalism

Deliverables & formats

Vector (SVG/AI), mark alone + lockup, light and dark variants, favicon crop.

Context links (for designers)

Draft site directions exist; palette references on request. Comparable statement-style pages: safe.ai/statement-on-ai-risk, futureoflife.org's statement page.

Internal notes (not for the listing): budget ~$1,000 per last time (~70–100 designers, 2–7 concepts each). Run results past Rochelle before any selection; treat winners as raw material for the site's aesthetic, not an auto-commit.