CLIENT – IBM
PROJECT – Mixture of Experts Podcast Brand Identity
ROLE – Brand Designer

CHALLENGE
IBM is positioning itself not just as a technology company, but as a content creator with a robust ecosystem of podcasts, explainers, and thought leadership. Launching a new podcast into an already saturated AI and tech content space required a visual identity strong enough to stand out — at thumbnail scale.

CONSIDERATIONS
Stand out in a crowded space: YouTube and podcast platforms are overwhelmed with tech and AI content, most of it visually similar. IBM's owned channels skewed heavily blue, making differentiation within the brand itself an additional challenge.

Ease of production: With episodes produced and published weekly, turnaround time between taping, editing, and posting is minimal. The system needed to be simple enough for non-designers to execute consistently without creative oversight.

SOLUTION
The show's title, Mixture of Experts, is conceptually rich — it refers simultaneously to a machine learning architecture that divides an AI model into specialized sub-networks, and to the format of the show itself. The cover graphic is a direct visual nod to that diagram, grounding the brand in genuine technical meaning rather than generic AI imagery.

The color palette draws from IBM's design system but deliberately avoids the brand's default blue — creating a visual identity that feels unmistakably IBM while standing apart from every other channel in the space.

The resulting toolkit — including gallery mattes, lower thirds, animated introductions, transitions, and episode thumbnails — gave the show a cohesive, scalable identity from launch through ongoing weekly production.

OUTCOME
Mixture of Experts has run for 110+ episodes over two years on IBM Technology's YouTube channel, which has 1.68 million subscribers. Individual episodes consistently reach thousands of views, with top episodes exceeding 120,000. The brand system has remained consistent and recognizable across every episode — a direct result of building for scalability from day one.