But 4 years since I first started using it, my excitement around it has worn off together with my optimism.

To me, the benefits most of today’s AI use brings to the wellbeing of humans seem far offset by its harm.

For the first time, AI-powered machines are killing humans autonomously and businesses are developing nuclear-powered datacenters. Both use cases result in fields of electronic waste that pollute the planet while AI-generated slop pollutes the internet. Big tech’s promise of a post-scarcity utopia is driving history’s biggest stock bubble and creating the first trillionaires.

In return for this disruption of our ecology, economy, and society, most of us don’t work less or more easily. A lot of jobs are simply changing from creation to curation, or disappearing altogether.

The obvious solution is to stop the development and adoption of AI technology. But no matter how disruptive they are, no tools that increase productive output have ever been stopped. Like the printing press and conveyor belts, in the best case scenario, tools can be slowed down and delayed, but not stopped.

That’s why instead of fighting against AI, it’s probably more productive to fight against its harmful uses:

• Against generated ideas and content being presented as human-made.
• Against AI and algorithms designed to addict or manipulate.
• Against AI datacenters polluting our planet in exchange for inflated stocks.
• Against machines and weapons killing people autonomously.
• Against profit-first businesses putting human wellbeing second.

We can be optimistic and try to change the tools. But realistically, it might be easier to change humans.

But the process has just started so the company can continue branding on its own:

• Every time they show up with something useful
• Every time they say something memorable
• Every time they make a person smile.

The work of influencing a brand never stops.

It’s a long path that you mostly navigate on your own.

A brand designer just gives you a compass and a push in the right direction.

Your personal brand already has that. Your face.

It ticks all the boxes of great logo design:

• It’s unique
• It’s memorable
• It stands out quickly
• It doesn’t change often

Online, people mostly recognize you by your profile picture. It’s right next to every piece of your content they see.

Every time you change that profile picture, it takes time for people to reassociate it with you.

So take a quality photo that shows your face, and use the same one as your personal logo for the next decade.

Unless you have an identical twin. Then you need the damn logo.

While so many people focus on solving issues, designers have the exclusive power to prevent them from appearing in the first place.

A package designer can choose better materials before they get printed. If the packaging is compostable, there’s nothing left to recycle.

A web designer can envision a more lightweight website before it gets developed. If the website takes almost no energy to run, there’s nothing left to optimize.

A brand designer can guide new brands towards being more sustainable. If better choices are made at the first steps, there’s less to fix at the next.

When you drifted onto grass to save time, you walked on a “desire path”.

Not because you didn’t care about the grass, but because you cared about your time more.

The designers didn’t. Those worn-out paths reveal their poor planning, not your disobedience. They show what the users wanted, right next to what the designers wanted them to want.

That’s crucial feedback for the few who care.

In cities, products, software - people who take shortcuts create a more efficient world for those that follow.

You just need to look for the wear, then pave over it.

Branding is an additive process. You start by adding new ideas, insights, concepts. But when we discover the key story we want to tell, I like to start removing, until we’re left with just the essential.

For my own, I started by sketching 1 page that leads to 1 offer with 1 price. With a transparent scope and price, founders can make a decision before my schedule is filled with intro calls. The website can filter out low-intent inquiries so I don’t have to.

To go from a sketch to a website, I designed my sections on top of a free Astro template. With AI prompts and sketches as input and Tailwind code as output, I could quickly design section by section until I reached the bottom of the page.

I repeated the process to make the sections responsive. I repeated it once more to add animations, and one last time to make it accessible.

The result is fast, open-source code I can own locally and host for free forever.

And with the launch of this website, I can stop designing websites for clients and go all-in on branding.

1. The process: I will focus exclusively on brand strategy and identity while learning to say no to all other work. As AI is making authenticity more important, branding will bring my clients the most value, and my work the most meaning.

2. The offer: I will sell my service like a product. Fixing the price and deliverables helps everyone know what they get. Even if it sometimes leaves money on the table, it will be left right next to friction and guesswork.

3. The funnel: To help the right founders find my offer, I will share more content but worry less about it. Slowly writing ideas without any pressure makes it more fun, which makes it more sustainable.

Productizing a service doesn’t turn it into a conveyor belt. It just makes some parts of the machine fixed, so others can run more smoothly.

I think the best way to do that is with focus. Focus on the right people, the right skills, and the right work.

Since reading and writing improve focus, I’m starting to do more of both.

For reading, I just bought my first physical books since school. For writing, I just started a yearly email to all my friends and past colleagues. Happy new year!

Forget the jargon about branding, positioning, messaging, and narratives.

A brand is simply the sum of people’s feelings about you.

One part of those feelings comes from the story people heard about you. This is what brand designers help you communicate.

The other part is people’s real experiences with you and with the people you associate with.

Make a single person feel good, and your brand goes up.

Make them feel bad, and your brand goes down.

Make someone feel excited, calm, happy, bored, angry, or surprised - and your brand ties to that feeling.

Only once you see brand in that way, you can actively shape it, one small action after another.

We’re taught at an early age that we should aim for perfection. If you study hard enough, you’ll get a perfect 10. 10 is better than 9 and 9 is better than 8.

When that mindset turns into a work ethic, it makes people produce the best work of their life. The greatest symphonies, the most beautiful artworks, and the most stunning architecture were crafted by perfectionists who considered every detail.

But business is not art.

It doesn’t always give you the luxury of taking your time to polish the details. It often rewards the fastest and most adaptable people, not the ones with flawless execution.

That’s why I’m learning to allow myself mistakes wherever I can afford them. To use perfectionism tactically, only for things that are designed to last, like logos and brands. And share all my other work like writing and products before I think they’re ready.

If you learn and improve slowly over time, one thing is for sure:

Your best work lies ahead, behind a million small mistsakes.

I’m Luka, and I want to welcome you to my online home.

I built it for writing, refining, and sharing my ideas. Some just fleeting thoughts, some, hopefully, bits of wisdom. Always challenging the default settings of everything - tools, methods, habits, societies.

If you’re looking for the best writing, it’s not in here. I’m just a designer starting to design sentences instead of brands to see how my brain adapts to the new creative process.

Over time, this will become a memory book of my ideas, frozen in time as I first had them. Something I can look back on, and perhaps something you can look up to.

There are no house rules. Wander around, take what’s useful, and ignore the rest. You’re welcome to share your own thoughts or help me improve mine.

I hope you feel at home here as I do. Welcome.

So don’t start writing. You don’t have enough time to start, let alone maintain a new habit.

Don’t start writing. You’re interested in everything but an expert in nothing.

Don’t start writing. Machines do it faster than you do, better than you ever will.

Don’t start writing. You think your ideas are worth sharing, but people have more important things to read.

…

I found these thoughts about writing convincing for years. All I needed was enough time and a shift in perspective to realize they are also great reasons for the opposite:

I’m constantly in a race against time, so writing can help me slow down and see what ideas are worth keeping.

I have less expertise than interests, so writing can help me dive deeper and explore topics that matter.

Content is increasingly artifically generated, so writing it makes it special.

Most people mostly care about themselves, so I’m free to write anything I want, whenever I want.

…

Life is too short not to put your ideas into writing.

Especially since it might be the most permanent thing you’ll ever do.