What started as a poster for a local Longboard Fest turned into a creative playground.

I began by generating an illustration from two reference images. After a LOT of iterations, I finally found the direction I was looking for.

Then I experimented with Envato's Style Transfer, exploring different visual styles until one really stood out.

My first idea was simple: place the poster into mockups and animate a flyer falling onto the sand. But once I saw it... it just didn't feel right.

So I changed direction.

While browsing Envato's video templates, I found one with layered posters. Instead of choosing a single design, I decided to animate five different versions of my poster.

That unexpected decision completely transformed the final result, and became my Human by Design moment.

AI helped me explore possibilities, but the creative direction, the decisions, and the final story were entirely human.

Created for the Contra × Envato Human by Design Challenge.

Envato assets used: AI Image Generation | Style Transfer | Mockups | Video Generation | Music | Voice Gen

@envato

I like that you shared the changes in direction instead of just the final result. Those creative pivots are usually where the strongest ideas come from.

I decided to resubmit my video promo because I didn't put the explanation video showing my process while using Envato and those can be really helpful to other people that are going to be doing their Envato submissions. I think discovery is the most relevant "Human by Design" moment... not correcting a mistake or a design change. We do that too when we collaborate with other people, but discovery is an exclusively human sport. We are the curators of taste, the creative funnel of inspiration. Yes, tools make it faster, and we can now follow every spark to create whatever we want. But that inspiration comes mostly from the need for constant discovery in our ever-changing world.

@dylansiegel thank you for the heads up

"Discovery is an exclusively human sport" is a great way to put it - tools speed up execution but they don't go looking for the thing that sparks the idea in the first place. What does your discovery process actually look like day to day, mood boards, random scrolling, something more structured?