When professional-grade AI video tools were still out of reach for most creators, Danny Saltaren, co-founder of Mendesaltaren and National Design Award winner, built Mito: a collaborative AI platform for producing films, ads, and music videos, conceived from the start by filmmakers, for filmmakers. The company raised a $4.5M pre-seed round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and is now based between Madrid and San Francisco.
The product was ready. The brand needed to catch up.
Mito had a logo, typefaces, and a base identity, but no narrative to hold them together and no clear position in a category that was quickly getting crowded. The challenge wasn't to rebuild from scratch — it was to reorder what existed and build toward something more elevated and differentiated.
The move was to pull Mito out of the production mindset entirely and anchor it in cinema. Not as aesthetic reference, but as a way of constructing meaning. Film has something AI-speed production doesn't: codes audiences recognize, a grammar of feeling, the ability to make a moment memorable rather than just visible. Mito doesn't compete on speed. Mito thinks like a storyteller.
From there, everything followed. Cinematic references — posters, frames, red circles, blur — became proof of a point of view, not decoration. The typographic hierarchy shifted, the palette warmed up, and a visual system was developed that could carry the narrative across both sides of the brand: the product and the editorial universe around it. The same logic, different expressions.
Mito came out of the project with a brand that matched the ambition of what it had built — a language its team could use to talk about what they do and why it matters.
Not the fastest. The most cinematic.
With imagery from: AI.S.A.M @samfinn.studio, Alba de la Fuente @albadlfuente_, Alina P. Aleksandrovna @baby_of_lourdes, Andrés Gil @andrees_gil, Ángel Díaz @forgrof, Anna Condo @anna.condo, Jang Yeonjeong @forside_art, Julie Roche @julierochemiya, Mac Baconai @macbaconai, Matthieu Grambert @matthieugb, Melita R. @control_command, Monica Menez @monicamenez, Novosyna @novosyna, Riccardo Romani @rromz.ai, Sam Checa, UNVEIL® @byunveil, Yasmin Gross @x.machina.flora, Yolkluck @yolkluck, YZA VOKU @yzavoku
Expertise
Mendesaltaren team
Paula Montoto
Izan Albujer
When professional-grade AI video tools were still out of reach for most creators, Danny Saltaren, co-founder of Mendesaltaren and National Design Award winner, built Mito: a collaborative AI platform for producing films, ads, and music videos, conceived from the start by filmmakers, for filmmakers. The company raised a $4.5M pre-seed round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and is now based between Madrid and San Francisco.
The product was ready. The brand needed to catch up.
Mito had a logo, typefaces, and a base identity, but no narrative to hold them together and no clear position in a category that was quickly getting crowded. The challenge wasn't to rebuild from scratch — it was to reorder what existed and build toward something more elevated and differentiated.
The move was to pull Mito out of the production mindset entirely and anchor it in cinema. Not as aesthetic reference, but as a way of constructing meaning. Film has something AI-speed production doesn't: codes audiences recognize, a grammar of feeling, the ability to make a moment memorable rather than just visible. Mito doesn't compete on speed. Mito thinks like a storyteller.
From there, everything followed. Cinematic references — posters, frames, red circles, blur — became proof of a point of view, not decoration. The typographic hierarchy shifted, the palette warmed up, and a visual system was developed that could carry the narrative across both sides of the brand: the product and the editorial universe around it. The same logic, different expressions.
Mito came out of the project with a brand that matched the ambition of what it had built — a language its team could use to talk about what they do and why it matters.
Not the fastest. The most cinematic.
With imagery from: AI.S.A.M @samfinn.studio, Alba de la Fuente @albadlfuente_, Alina P. Aleksandrovna @baby_of_lourdes, Andrés Gil @andrees_gil, Ángel Díaz @forgrof, Anna Condo @anna.condo, Jang Yeonjeong @forside_art, Julie Roche @julierochemiya, Mac Baconai @macbaconai, Matthieu Grambert @matthieugb, Melita R. @control_command, Monica Menez @monicamenez, Novosyna @novosyna, Riccardo Romani @rromz.ai, Sam Checa, UNVEIL® @byunveil, Yasmin Gross @x.machina.flora, Yolkluck @yolkluck, YZA VOKU @yzavoku
