B/D.

Bruto pero decidido.

Rough, but all in.

I connect dots nobody else can see. The machine just draws the lines fast. I've taught design at Isthmus for 16 years and written three books with Editorial Planeta.

How the work starts

Can it even be done?

Some projects start without any real goal, just something I'm curious about and want to try. These days that usually means asking the AI for strange things and seeing how far it gets. CCWEAROS started like that, with me wondering if I could talk to Claude Code from my watch.

See the play projects →

First, understand.

Other projects start a long time before I open the AI. I read a lot and compare sources until I actually understand the problem and know what I want out of it, and only then do I put the AI to work. ParentMap came out of weeks of trying to understand families who homeschool.

See the research projects →

The work

Selected lessons

  1. Nº0

    Lettering sin límites

    Could we make a living drawing letters? Alejandra Perdomo and I tried long before any AI, and it turned into three books with Editorial Planeta.

    Still in Planeta's catalog · door: can it even be done?

  2. Nº1

    CCWEAROS

    Could I talk to Claude Code from my watch? I asked myself that one afternoon looking at my wrist, and eight days later it was running.

    Live. I use it every day. · door: can it even be done?

  3. Nº2

    ParentMap

    A tool for homeschooling parents to find out what level their kid is really at. I spent weeks understanding the problem before I touched the AI.

    Live at parentmap.co · door: first, understand.

  4. Nº3

    MUFU

    What does a record traveling on Voyager 1 have to do with a staircase in Ciudad del Saber? Twelve students sealed a museum inside a wall, and I built the site that tells the story of their trimester.

    Live at mufu.today · door: first, understand.

  5. Nº4

    Lazarus 360

    Could I bring a dead camera back? Samsung dropped the Gear 360 years ago and mine still worked fine.

    In development · door: can it even be done?

  6. Nº5

    Aprende, Aplica, Avanza

    The launch campaign for UDES's technical careers, made for people who already know the trade and want a degree that says so.

    Delivered 2024, out in the street · door: first, understand.

The machine is fast because it doesn't care.

It gets that speed by skipping the part where someone decides if the thing is any good and answers for it, and that's where most of my work happens.

On top of that, these tools are built to please you. They hand back what sounds right and agree with whatever you already thought, and if you never learned to be suspicious of a nice result, you end up the machine's slave without noticing.

In 16 years of teaching design, the tool was never the problem.

I call these projects lessons because that's how I treat them. After 16 years of giving crits at Isthmus I can't close a project without asking what it taught me, and I always end up showing the weak parts first.

In the workshops, every confused face told us which page of the method was lying.

years teaching design at Isthmus, in Panama

  • · Author of Lettering sin límites 1, 2 and 3 with Alejandra Perdomo, for Editorial Planeta
  • · More than 30,000 copies sold
The three Lettering sin límites books held over a worktable next to markers and colored pencils

Lettering sin límites 1, 2 and 3 · Editorial Planeta

Invite me to teach this
Luis Miguel mid-gesture, teaching a class on AI in education in front of the projected slides

About

Luis Miguel sketching in a notebook under a desk lamp, black and white

I think of AI like a bike. However good it is, it doesn't decide where you're going, it just gets you there fast, and if I point it the wrong way it takes me there just as happily, because for the machine both directions are the same. So the steering is still on me, and honestly that's the part I like.

The direction comes from whoever pedals.

I've been saying bruto pero decidido for years, every time I start something I don't know how to do yet. Bruto is the stone before anyone carves it, or the raw concrete the brutalists left unpainted, and the longer I use the phrase the more I like that it never apologizes for the rough part. The decidido part is on me, since a model can polish anything in seconds and still won't decide anything for you. I tried to build this site the same way, with the seams showing.

I used to do astrophotography, and I let it go. It's an expensive hobby that depends completely on the weather and on the sky being clear, and between the clouds and what it cost I ended up leaving it.

Based in Latin America. I work and teach in English and Spanish.