Visual Metaphor
AI-Adjacent Creative Tool
Visual Metaphor represents the creative and theoretical component of Marius Bartkus’s doctoral research at the Vilnius Academy of Arts. Conducted in 2017, the project predates publicly accessible AI tools and explores the limitations of machine-generated imagery at the time, when even rendering convincing human figures was highly challenging. The research combined a theoretical framework with practical creative exploration, and the visuals presented here are drawn from the creative portion of the dissertation.
Client and Collaboration Overview
This is an academic research project without a client or external commissioning body. The focus was on investigating how visual metaphors—images combining two sources to generate a third with new meaning—could eventually be produced and curated with the assistance of artificial intelligence. The system was designed to enable iterative learning: initially, human selection would guide AI training, eventually allowing AI to autonomously generate and evaluate visual metaphors.
Project Objectives
The objectives were to formalise the logic of visual metaphor creation into a usable system, build a conceptual identity for the research, and create a digital interface supporting idea generation. The identity needed to reflect combinatorial thinking, conceptual layering, and the integration of AI into creative workflows. It was also essential to translate abstract research concepts into clear visual communication for designers and creative professionals.
Project Outcomes
The logo employs mirrored, repeating forms that grow from left to right, symbolising the accumulation of meanings. A coherent set of schemes and pictograms supports conceptual clarity and navigation of ideas within the system. The responsive website, VisualMetaphor.com, extends the identity into an interactive tool, enabling fast and structured exploration of visual concepts. The project anticipated contemporary AI-assisted creative workflows, positioning designers as curators, editors, and trainers of generative systems rather than solely as image producers.
Institution: Vilnius Academy of Arts
Project type: Doctoral dissertation (theoretical + creative research)
Design Strategy Director: Marius Bartkus
Website: VisualMetaphor.com
Year: 2017