The Designer's Dilemma: Quality vs. Control
💙 This month we dive into the balance between creativity and control in design processes as AI evolves. Featuring our conversation with the founder of Recraft.
New Renaissance Notes: a monthly newsletter where we share insights about the intersection of culture, creativity and technology. We include our updates from New Renaissance Ventures - Europe’s first venture fund dedicated to the Creative and Cultural Industries.
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See here for our previous edition ‘AI Won’t Kill Cinema. It Will Set Creativity Free.’
💙 NRV News:
🚀 We’re thrilled to announce two new investments that have been closed this month. While they’re currently under wraps, we’ll be sharing more details soon.
🇦🇹 This month, during ViennaUP, we had the pleasure of co-hosting the event Investing in the Creative Economy with EIT Culture & Creativity. The event explored the intersection of capital, culture, and creativity, highlighting the opportunities and challenges in funding the creative industries. A heartfelt thank you to the insightful speakers who shared their perspectives during the panel discussions and keynotes: Javier Arias (EIT Culture & Creativity), Wolfgang Bergmann (Belvedere Museum), Christina Maria Hummer (Best Nights VC), and Samanta Pena (CultTech Association).
May was quite busy as we attended several amazing events this month, including
🇺🇸 Artist and the Machine hosted the inaugural AI & Creativity Summit in the heart of Williamsburg, bringing together 400 leading innovators, cultural pioneers, executives, and founders for a day at the cutting edge of human-machine collaboration.
🇲🇦 The EWOR team hosted their annual Connect event under the bright sun just outside Morocco, bringing together a curated list of a total of 60 guests, 30 founders and 30 investors. They clearly optimised for density of exceptional people and not volume.
🇮🇹 In Venice, we had the pleasure to join the CultTech Association at the Venice Biennale, exploring the future of contemporary culture, architecture and design.
☀️ Summer event season has started! We’ll be on the ground and we’re always down for a chat about the Cultural and Creative Industries, soon at
🇬🇧 SXSW London
🇫🇷 Cannes Lions
Reach out to us here, on Linkedin or via Whatsapp and speak to our team.
🇦🇹 Later in October the next CultTech Summit will take place in Vienna. New Renaissance Ventures is a proud partner of the Summit, and we look forward to two days of exploring the intersection of culture and technology. If you'd like to join us, use the discount code COMMUNITY20 at checkout here.
💙 New Renaissance Talks
E4: Killing the Designer’s Dilemma: Getting Quality and Control with AI - Anna-Veronika Dorogush, Founder of Recraft
Recraft, founded by Anna-Veronika Dorogush, aims to bridge the gap between creativity and consistency. Their platform, powered by their proprietary model, is designed specifically for creative professionals. Recraft V3 offers a range of features, including image generation of any size or text length, precise control over visual elements, vector graphics generation, and more. Trusted by 4M+ creatives and teams at Amazon, NVIDIA, and Salesforce, the company just raised a $ 30m Series B led by Accel.
You can listen to the full episode on Spotify here:
💡Key Takeaways:
Designer-Centric Product: Quality and control are non-negotiable for designers—prompt-to-image tools alone aren't enough.
Leadership: Everyone on the team must understand the company’s current state and next steps—regular all-hands are essential.
Organic Growth Drivers: Word of mouth, Product Hunt, and model leaderboards have fueled mostly organic growth.
Creative Inclusion: Creatives need recognition, financial incentives, and involvement in business decisions.
Anna-Veronika’s recommended book for founders: The Design of Everyday Things
💙 The Last Next Supper
AI Won’t Replace Designers. But Poor Design Might
72% of creative directors viewed AI as an assistant that enhances human creativity rather than replacing it.
With the rapid rise of AI in graphic and visual design, maintaining quality and control in design processes has become both more essential and more challenging. Professional design tools must deliver precision, consistency, and nuance—qualities that creatives rely on to communicate ideas effectively. As AI-native tools like Recraft emerge, their success hinges on how well they empower professionals while respecting the core values of good design. A single misstep in model training or UI interaction can lead to outputs that feel generic or lack intention. The team behind Recraft recognized this, emphasizing the need to deeply understand user needs and ensuring that control remains in the hands of the artist. Their experience—having only one shot at training their foundational model—underscores the high stakes and pressure to get AI implementation right the first time, especially when building for professional, high-fidelity use cases.
At the same time, AI offers a unique opportunity to expand creative horizons—if designers remain in the loop. Tools that lack transparency or override user intent risk alienating professionals and eroding trust in automated workflows. The evolution of Recraft’s leadership and their focus on regular team alignment reveal a critical insight: scaling AI design tools without losing touch with artists and their craft requires deliberate communication, clear strategic pivots, and artist inclusion in both feedback and compensation infrastructure. Innovation in interface design becomes just as vital as the model itself—how AI communicates with designers directly impacts whether the tool enhances or obstructs the creative process. The push for artist compensation and maintaining control speaks to a broader industry reckoning: in the era of AI-powered design, creators must not only retain ownership but also be partners in shaping the tools they use.
💙 NRV Picks
No Country for Junior Designers — Unkown Arts
Fuel your creativity with new generative media models and tools — Google I/O Blog Post
Figma’s new AI updates — Tech Crunch
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