The piece highlights how Chinese AI company DeepSeek chose a distinctive logo—a friendly, plump blue whalepaired with a rounded, fractured sans-serif wordmark—to stand out from the more abstract, tech-centric visual identities common in the AI industry. This approach evokes approachability, curiosity, and exploration, contrasting sharply with the minimalist or futuristic designs of competitors like OpenAI and Google, and signals a different kind of brand personality in AI. Designers featured in the article see this branding as a bold, human-centric choice that could reshape expectations around how AI companies present themselves, though some note inconsistencies in typography and detail that may need refining. DeepSeek’s chatbot even interprets the whale as symbolizing “depth, intelligence, and exploration,” aligning with the company’s mission and open-source ethos
