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This submission was made with a little bit of pure, mindless vandalism against AI.
I wanted a killer website for my brand, Discern Like a Rebel. So I fed Claude with Envato assets (fonts, textures, illustrations, sound, templates, generations...) and asked it to build. It did. But it was all clean grids and neat boxes.
So, to make it more me, I let the drawings spill over the nav bar and loosened the grid up. Even than, the generator kept sliding back to safe, when it refused to animate a nude Greek statue (only once though). But rebels fight haha.
The big step was to bring it to life with looping animations, paper tears, and hand-drawn lines (all using Envato's library).
A pro designer would have moved the drawing in seconds. I spent my time changing AI's mind instead, since I am not one yet. Funny enough, that friction became the creative process. AI can follow a rule beautifully. It can't feel when breaking one makes something come alive.
I must say, very on par with my brand's philosophy.
P.S. This is a re-upload because the sound quality on the first attempt was awful. Enjoy much better audio this time around!
The idea of using AI while keeping a deliberately rebellious, imperfect brand voice is a fun tension. Which Envato asset pushed the Discern Like a Rebel site in the most unexpected direction?
Strictly speaking, it's not an asset, but the image/video gen features were the ones that made my site feel "alive". I'd never even considered that I could do that. Maybe just in my wildest dreams. Although this whole project was made on the fly and direction changed constantly...
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Project Title
Human by Design — Open Training Day
Project Description
This project began with raw stock footage sourced from Envato Elements and was transformed into a fully branded piece using Envato's AI-powered tools. The process included generating and refining the video through Envato AI, applying custom color grading to establish a consistent visual tone, carefully paced cuts to build rhythm and momentum, and custom typography to reinforce the brand identity. The result is a cohesive concept video — "Open Training Day" — that turns raw footage into a polished, story-driven piece with its own distinct visual voice.
Process Walkthrough
Generated and refined using Envato's AI video tools — from raw footage to final branded output, including color grading, pacing, and typography.
Video/Social Media Post Link
https://www.instagram.com/reel/Da7s4KWunB5/
Assets Used
Stock footage sourced from Envato Elements, processed with Envato AI tools
Hashtags on post
#envatochallenge @envato
Starting from raw stock footage and building it into something this branded is impressive. How much manual refinement did the Envato AI output need before it matched your vision?
Architect of Chaos: Branding Cobalt Analytics for the Envato Challenge
AI has completely changed the creative landscape, but it hasn’t changed what makes a digital product functional. For the Envato Challenge, I set out to design the brand identity and UI concept for a B2B SaaS platform, Cobalt Analytics. The goal was to show the crucial difference between machine generation and human curation.
The Insight: The Azulejo Metaphor
Data analytics is often visually represented by clichéd glowing nodes and neon webs. I wanted a metaphor with history. I turned to Azulejo — traditional Portuguese ceramic tiles. Historically, the art of Azulejo was about taking thousands of fragmented, independent tiles and assembling them into one grand, coherent narrative. This is exactly what a predictive data platform does: it turns chaotic metrics into a clear system.
The Process: AI as the Miner, Human as the Filter
I started by feeding AI historical references of Azulejo tiles. The result? Absolutely stunning, yet completely unusable visual noise. AI generated beautiful chaos, but as a designer, I know that algorithms don't understand scalability, negative space, or modular grids.
The Extraction: I rejected 95% of the AI generations, extracting just one perfect geometric silhouette hidden in the noise.
The Clean-Up: I moved to Envato Elements to source mathematically perfect vector shapes and rebuilt the AI's concept into a clean, scalable brand mark.
The System (Figma): I established a strict modular Bento-grid, paired the complex geometry with a brutalist sans-serif typography, and built out the core UI dashboard widgets in Figma.
The Execution (Zero Photoshop): To bring the brand into the real world, I utilized Envato’s native mockup generator. I applied my designs directly to premium physical and digital mockups right inside Envato's browser tool—no Photoshop required. A completely streamlined, modern workflow.
The Result: Cobalt Analytics.
A brand identity that is mathematically precise, highly scalable, and ready for development. AI generated the noise, but human judgment built the system.
And for the brave souls, here is the link to the full Figma file. Fair warning: it’s a typical creative mess inside, you know how it is 😅
https://www.figma.com/design/5Du5Sjr7jCCZYNgH5Y9QtB/Envato-Challenge?node-id=17-2181&t=vap8tOu6fACNieNW-1
more detail
An amazing challenge - But with a twist for me (unfortunately)
(Zoom in on designs or halftone looks weird)
I only had 24 hours to create a design. Completely new setup, time ticking, barely any space, no presets in my software and many many distractions.
I spent 50% of my time, throwing out ideas, redesigning, completely back to 0. But I saw that my skills have a chance even though I am not used to designing and editing as much.
My submission is created for an actual brand in the making (luckily I am not the only one who will make posters, because framez would never launch)
Side note: Framez is a real project we are working on: posters, art, monthly art club - with an aesthetic meaningful twist.
This opportunity was perfect except the fact that I am going on a trip and renovations caused me to be in a very new and interesting position. But I dont like giving up even if it meant no time for a serious after effects animation and brand launch video as well as 3x fully edited reels with animations etc.. - yes that was my actual plan for 24 hours without any presets I ussually use. (I quickly realised I had to scrap a lot of things)
I am really happy with the poster design - its really made for my style but I think some people will resonate.
What tools I used:
Imagen
Image edit
Mockups
Graphics
Many micrographics, textures
Fonts - they are really good
Sounds
Music
Feedback: I love the platform as I have already used it and had assets from there but today there was about an hour of constant failed image generations (I relogged, wifi was good, tried different settings, no reference etc) it slowed me down and I almost quit seeing I dont have anything to submit but it magically got fixed and we were back on track.
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