08/10/2026
AI can’t come up with a bold idea. Correct. That’s not the argument against learning it.
Gustavo Panichi is a design director at SketchDeck, and he was the one leading his company’s AI rollout while privately not buying a word of it. His line on the intake form, before week one:
“I’m skeptical about AI coming up with bold or disruptive ideas.”
Then he built ARC, a gym brand for Lisbon. The research came first: Perplexity mining audience patterns and reviews, a trained GPT pressure-testing the strategy. It found a city stuck between two bad options, party studios with no depth and corporate chains with no soul. So the brand sells neither. It sells The Better State, and every visual call answers that finding. Most of what he generated, deleted. 3 to 4 hours a week for ten weeks.
From his own case study:
“AI doesn’t replace craft — it amplifies it, giving more room for judgment, taste, and refinement.”
Send this to whoever at your company got handed the AI brief.
💾 Save it for the next time someone tells you the tools will do the thinking.
Comment BRANDING and the course guide lands in your DMs 👇
September cohort. Work: Gustavo Panichi, Design Director.