Gemini 4 makes design iteration cheap: 40 directions per brief
With Gemini 4 pushing concept generation to single-digit dollars, the author proposes a five-step workflow: spread 40 directions, cull derivatives, pair survivors, push the winner, then lock.
Gemini 4 makes a design cheap enough that approving one version stopped making sense. A round of concepts used to cost a week and a fee, so you asked for three and picked one. That number was never a creative decision - it was a budget. At the current rate the same brief returns forty directions before lunch, and the bill stays in single digits. > SPREAD - one brief, forty directions, no favourites > CULL - anything derivative dropped before you see it > PAIR - survivors shown two at a time, not as a grid > PUSH - the winner re-run against its own strongest variant > LOCK - only then does a direction get named final The pairing step is what keeps it usable. Forty options in a grid produces paralysis, two options produce a decision in four seconds. What changes is where taste enters. You stop describing what you want and start recognising it, which is the thing humans are actually fast at. The weak version of this is generating forty mediocre layouts and shipping the least bad one. The culling stage exists so that never reaches your screen. Agencies priced revisions because iteration was expensive. Iteration is now the cheapest part of the process, and the pricing has not caught up. The brief, the cull rules and the full forty are in the article below ↓
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