An ode to NYC and human resilience everywhere; a global first reveal of the DKNY brand’s next chapter; in the form of a 1-of-1 issue, custom piece of visual art, crafted using A.I. technologies at the hands of artistic collective, OBVIOUS, in Summer 2021.
Available exclusively on Rad with all net proceeds of the sale going to the American Nurses Foundation.
“To us, A.I. offers a new way to create. This is true not only in art, but in every creative process. These algorithms are offering a new source of inspiration for creatives, and we believe they can lead to entirely new aesthetics within the realm of design.”
— Pierre Fautrel, Hugo Caselles-Dupré, Gauthier Vernier: Obvious
Obvious, an AI art collective based in Paris created the DKNY logo nft artwork. Read more about Obvious.
From Then till Now
For decades, DKNY’s mural of its bold, 4-lettered-logo as windows to the lower Manhattan skyline, stood at the corner of Houston & Broadway, serving as the de facto ‘entrance’ to NYC’s vibrant Soho shopping district.
Imagined & executed by the inimitable branding & design guru Peter Arnell, with whom Donna Karan worked for years, the one-of-a-kind artwork was remarkable in that it transcended commerciality as simply a brand’s billboard, and was welcomed & adored by locals and visitors alike, cementing the brand’s authentic and unique juxtaposition with its hometown – The Big Apple.
Flash forward to the year 2021, and the iconic DKNY mural, along with the building it adorned, are both gone – razed to make way for new, flashy 21st century, all-glass high rises – an evolution so inherently New York City – always chugging forward, ever onward into the unknown new – yet never forsaking its history. Where it’s been informs where it’s going.
And this was precisely the brief DKNY handed the creative partners at Mazarine for evolving the brand’s voice & visual language for the 21st century.
Bold, Expressive, Open.
So it made sense that Mazarine would pull from the old to inform the new. Viewers will notice the brand DNA shine through in the new logo – blocky & bold, but sinuously rounded corners expressing openness, more welcoming than tougher eras past.
From the days when it still sounded questionable if not absurd to try and sell fashion online, to the earliest moments of our current Social Media era where brands stay in direct contact with their customers 24/7, DKNY has always flexed that New Yorker stamina of being first adopters, testing & learning, always with the goal of reaching our customers where they are.
So, when it came time to share the brand new “look” with our fans, we looked no farther than to OBVIOUS, the artistic collective behind the first-ever A.I.-generated piece of digital artwork sold at a major auction house.
Obvious remains ahead of the curve within the digital art and NFT revolution, working with the latest models of deep learning to explore the creative potential of artificial intelligence.
Rad served as a strategic advisor and the core, exclusive platform. The Rad team played a crucial role for go to market initiative of the new iconic logo and nft.
