The artistic research and creation of this young American designer reaches beyond both the timeless principles of graphic design and the mere use of contemporary digital tools; he combines them, revealing a fresh way of thinking capable of interpreting and elevating the world of today’s sports. In his imagination, sports, fashion, pop culture, and nostalgia are unified and made iconic through the use of artificial intelligence. These elements, once stripped of their original functions, are able to give shape to new narratives, imaginary campaigns, and collaborations between brands and athletes, all of which prompt us to reflect on the power of the imagination.

What makes his work so compelling is both the speed with which he transforms an idea into an image, and an image into a communication campaign; and the awareness with which he emphasizes the centrality of research and taste, elements that remain fundamental to the creation of high-quality work even today. Behind every viral concept or unexpected collaboration between seemingly irreconcilable worlds lies invisible work of cultural interpretation, in which technology intervenes only in the final phase as an aggregator capable of increasing the creative idea and boosting the impact of a championship victory, a record-breaking feat, or a last-second shot in the ever-accelerating world of digital media.

Having Fun

“I began when I was thirteen. Much of my work originated in Photoshop, which I taught myself during the pandemic, largely out of boredom. After some time, a friend of mine, who ran an Instagram page dedicated to NBA news, asked me to create a few mock-ups of NBA 2K covers. I had an enormous amount of fun making them. At that point, I thought I should start posting them and open an Instagram account devoted specifically to my creations. I launched the page in 2020, began posting consistently, and gradually improved. Looking back, those early pieces were not especially sophisticated, but I genuinely loved making them and wanted to grow my platform.

I then started to reach out to many creatives, asking whether they might be interested in collaborating. On one hand, I wanted to learn from them; on the other, I also wanted to connect with their audiences. Most of them never replied. Then, one day, a creator named Jeff Cole, who I was very inspired by and had a large following on Instagram, somehow answered my DM. We ended up arranging a call, and Mark, the co-founder of his brand, IKONICK, was there as well. They were struck by the fact that I was only fourteen. Evidently, they saw potential in me and appreciated what I was doing, so they initially offered me an internship, which, within a few months, turned into a proper job. During that period, I helped work on creating canvas art and helped with growth for the brands page. About 2 years in they pivoted to apparel design so I got to learn about creating different collections along with seeing how the printing process worked .

When I entered my final year of high school, some of the projects were around carrying out marketing work for major companies using AI and Photoshop. It was precisely the beginning of the moment surrounding artificial intelligence, and I was able to see how the combination of real images and AI generated images could give rise to new forms of visual content for social media. For me, it was an enormous advantage, because it allowed me to understand from the inside how large companies operated. Instead of investing a considerable amount of money in a photo shoot with leading players, while also trying to find space in their schedules, it became possible to create images digitally, artificially, with a level of quality that was virtually identical.”

Learning from the Best

“I was admitted to the USC School of Design, where I am still studying today. At first, I thought I could do both: keep the job and be a student at the same time. Then, however, I decided that I wanted to fully experience college life. I left the job and I began working as a freelancer, and everything started to take shape through my Instagram profile. Since then, what I have been trying to do is grow my page. I began creating a lot of conceptual work: imaginary advertisements, fictional collections, capsules, and campaigns. It has been a very important journey for me because, ultimately, all I want is to become a designer and, one day, have my own brand.

Through this process, I am able to take the companies that inspire me, the ones I admire, and analyze them in depth: the look of their Instagrams, the garments they design, the way they tell their story, the kinds of videos they produce. I then combine that with either a sports team, or a personality, or another brand that inspires me to create one unified campaign or capsule. I publish it online and, if people like it, that is wonderful. If they do not, that is fine too. I will simply keep going, keep improving, and keep learning.”

Real and Imagined Cultural Cross-Pollinations

“For me, the connection between fashion, sport, sneakers, and culture has always been the central point. Today, we are seeing sports enter fashion and, at the same time, fashion enter sports. That is why much of my work explores the different possibilities opened up by this phenomenon. 

I imagined and designed a clothing collection inspired by this year’s World Cup, trying to visualize what a collaboration might look like between various national teams and some well-known streetwear brands. Brazil and Chrome Hearts, for example, because I had noticed a visual relationship between Brazil’s crest and the Chrome Hearts logo. Then Kith and France because of the Statue of Liberty/New York connection, Spain and Supreme because of the red connection and the letter “s”. Recently, Nike started releasing collaborations between streetwear brands and World Cup Countries. This gave me the confidence that my head was in the right place. I believe there is an authentic connection, because people are emotionally attached to sport and perceive it as entertainment, belonging, and imagination. But what happens if that same connection is used in a different way? What happens if it becomes a fashion garment that is exclusive and can be collected?

The most inspiring example of this for me was what Kith did with the Knicks. It was extremely inspiring, especially because I am a diehard Knicks fan. Usually, the apparel of any NBA team is fairly basic. It doesn’t really have a particularly rich aesthetic identity. But when you take a brand like Kith, who took the Knicks and began creating more elevated designs, studied  the history of the logo, worked differently with the colors, experiment with different fits, introduce leather jackets and garments capable of moving beyond conventional sports merchandising, then you also elevate the Knicks brand itself. When I saw that project, my thinking became: every company, in every category, should have something like that. I believe people connect with what I’m creating because they are able to read it as a form of abstraction. Sometimes it’s two companies that would never in a million years collaborate, but when they’re put together you can understand why in another world it may work. 

Viral Concepts

“The first thing I would like to emphasize is that I use many different tools. Everything begins with Photoshop, but I also make extensive use of artificial intelligence. The non-negotiable element, however, is quality. The work has to look professional. In this way, when someone sees it, even if they do not immediately understand that it is only a concept, the brand is nevertheless elevated by it.

The second aspect is that the project must feel realistic in some way, while still proposing something that, for various reasons, would be unlikely to happen in reality. Nike and Adidas, for instance, would never collaborate on a product. For me, that is where the boundary lies: the work has to present the brands in the best possible light. I do not really care whether they see it or not. Some of my more recent projects have gone viral, and many people have in fact seen them, appreciated them, and understood the vision behind them. In the end, the concept has to be strong, it has to be compelling, and it has to convey a powerful image of the brand.

To return to an example from a few weeks ago, during the Western Conference Finals, people were talking about Wembanyama versus SGA. At the beginning of the series, public opinion regarded Shai as the favorite, while Wemby was seen as the underdog, the player from whom victory was not necessarily expected. Then the Spurs won. I was watching the game and noticed nuns in the stands cheering for San Antonio. At that point, I thought: how interesting would it be to create a concept linking nuns, known for always wearing the same habit, with Nike, which, by contrast, is known for an ever-renewed, highly futuristic athletic imagery? That is where the idea came from. Then I noticed another connection as well: on one side, the nuns, small in stature; on the other, Wemby, nearly twice their height. I then began thinking about what text I could add, something that would sound like Nike, while at the same time making a person stop and ask: ‘Did Nike really post this?’ That is how I came up with ‘Just Pray.’ It was also a moment that had happened that very same day, only a few hours earlier. It is exactly the kind of situation that could never turn into a real photo shoot, because they would never be able to have Wemby available for a shoot the day after a game. For me, this is one of the unprecedented qualities of these new tools.”

Communicating the Moment

“In the communication of many brands today, there is not enough storytelling, especially when it comes to building a narrative around a player and truly developing it. At the same time, if you look at contemporary advertising, much of it seems to be trying to recover a kind of vintage, nostalgic force, almost as though attempting to restore a certain feeling from the past. The problem today has a great deal to do with the way people consume content. Everything moves at such speed that a campaign lasts only a very short time; it never remains relevant for long. Today, communication could emerge simply from a photograph taken at precisely the right moment, transformed into a campaign with a single line of text placed over it. But then why should we not be able to see a full campaign built around that very same moment? I am only one person, and I do not even have all that much experience, yet I am able to do it. Imagine what might be possible with an entire team of people working on a single brand. 

Imagine like an eighteen-year-old player from Cape Verde scoring a hat-trick at the World Cup. People want to connect to that moment; they want to see it translated into imagery, into narrative, into content. Communication, however, does not move quickly enough, because there are too many layers of approval. When an idea has to pass through all those stages, it ends up being diluted. Everyone has a reason why something might not work. And when an idea passes through too many hands, it is often reduced to something familiar, something safe, that no longer works. That is where I see the problem. You begin with an original idea and, instead of allowing it to grow outward, you force it to fold back in on itself. To become smaller, rather than larger.”

Research Is Everything

“As for the first part of the work, I would say that research takes up ninety percent of my time. If I have an hour to work on a concept, it is essential for me to spend fifty minutes researching. That means being on Pinterest, Instagram, Google, YouTube; looking at old advertisements, archival images, photo shoots, websites, and any other material that might help me understand the visual universe I am trying to enter. Only afterwards, as a creator, do I truly begin to feel the desire to make something new. Once the research has been carried out properly, the production of the image can happen very quickly. With the tools I have today, even ten minutes can be enough to refine the imagery and make it stronger. In those ten minutes, I can still experiment, of course, but the true foundation remains research.

In the end, a great deal depends on taste. Taste is like a muscle, and it has to be trained. I make mistakes often. I create things that, in that moment, seem interesting to me; I publish them, and perhaps a few days later I look back at them and think they no longer work, that they are not as strong as I believed. But I am willing to take that risk. I try to publish every day, because that is how I continue to grow and develop my eye.

I also think relevance is a fundamental part of what makes something genuinely interesting. The internet moves at an astonishing speed. Even if only a week has passed since a significant event in the world of sport, if I publish something about that same moment a week later, it probably will not work in the same way, because it no longer carries the same relevance. Everything moves extremely quickly, and that is extraordinary, but one has to know how to use that speed to one’s advantage. You cannot allow it to become a disadvantage. At the same time, there will always be new trends. There will always be new products, new moments taking place, new cultural references emerging, and you can imprint your own vision onto all of that. For me, the process consists in finding correspondences and asking myself how to make them more interesting. Ultimately, that is what it all comes down to: combining two elements and making them stronger together. Taking the two or three best elements from different worlds and building something unique, rather than simply recreating something that has already been done.”

The Positive and Negative Sides

“On the positive side, I think artificial intelligence offers new possibilities to anyone who, like me, has ideas they want to bring into the world. Today, those people can create those ideas and actually see them take shape in front of them. I have a computer, I pay every month for an artificial intelligence program, I pay for Photoshop, and with these tools I can visually create almost anything and present it to anyone. For companies, the same principle applies. Every sports organization trying to sign an athlete, or every brand trying to build a partnership with another brand, needs to show the vision of what that collaboration could become. Even more importantly, today it’s possible to develop an entire campaign: commercials, images, logos, clothing concepts, billboards. And all of this can be done in a week. That is the positive side.

The negative side is that it becomes easier to create something with the sole intention of gaining likes and followers. That can mean publishing something false about someone, which is obviously one of the most well-known examples. When that happens, however, you can feel it: the content seems faster, less considered, less necessary. I can speak about this from personal experience as well. I only began gaining followers when I abandoned that mentality. For years, all I wanted were followers, likes, and that kind of validation. Then, when I stopped worrying about it and began focusing only on what I wanted to create, the page truly began to grow.

The point is that artificial intelligence can appear to be connected to this idea of immediate success. In some cases, it may even provide it. But it is not sustainable if it is not used in the right way. I use AI, but I use it to elevate athletes. To elevate companies. To elevate the tool itself. In that way, people will focus on the idea, and that is exactly what I am trying to do. I want the idea to be the first thing that comes to someone’s mind, not what the image fails to render perfectly. It has to be about the concept. That is why I think it is necessary to do everything possible to help people understand the idea. If you can do that, the rest follows.”

New Creative Processes

“I think, first of all, that we will witness the emergence of ever-new creative roles. Today, almost everything can be learned through artificial intelligence. This forces a creative person to devote greater attention to research and creation. Very often, I see creatives making the same thing over and over again. The work may even be of high quality, but at a certain point they stop taking risks. Perhaps they identify a style that brings them success, and continue producing within that same language. With artificial intelligence, trends seem to accelerate. The perception of what people consider interesting also moves more quickly. For this reason, creatives have to adapt more, and take more risks. If you conduct research in the right way and develop your taste, you can become a more complete, more versatile creative, capable of inhabiting different stages of the process. I do not see all of this as a way to spend thirty minutes instead of an hour. I still believe that one should dedicate the entire hour. The difference is that you use it differently, distributing your energy in another way. It is a matter of greater efficiency and a more fluid workflow.

For now, I am simply having fun with these tools, and I want to keep improving. I still need to train my creative muscle: to understand more clearly what people find interesting, but above all what I myself consider interesting. I want to continue developing this awareness, and perhaps one day it may take shape in many different forms, including the creation of my own clothing brand.”