The best prompt is still experience

Hi there! It’s been a while since we showed up here.

And honestly, it wasn’t because we had nothing to share. Quite the opposite. A lot has happened during this time: projects that challenged us, clients that made us think and rethink, launches, awards, learnings, and changes. There were also plenty of back-and-forths, reworks, and a lot of what usually doesn’t show up once a project is finished and ready to be seen.

Maybe that’s why we didn’t write. Or maybe it’s because we were running from one thing to the next like crazy. We’ll save that truth for an after-office someday.

But the truth is, we’ve been thinking for a while about creating a closer space. And we didn’t want to come back with just another update. Or another “look what we did.” Or another perfect case study ready for LinkedIn.

We’ve been thinking about how to make this space feel more meaningful. How to write something that isn’t just /nk marketing, but a way of opening a door. Showing what happens behind the scenes. Telling what comes before something starts to look simple.

So we gave ourselves a rule: each edition of this newsletter will try to live within 1000 words. Something like a 5-minute read. Enough to open up an idea, not so much that you get lost in it.

A mate, a coffee, five minutes, and something to think about.

This year, /nk turns 20. Twenty years since we launched our first website. And while preparing that project, an idea appeared that moved us quite a bit:

Before inspiring others, we were inspired.

By people. By projects. By conversations. By references. By clients. By things we saw, heard, read, or lived through. By moments that may have seemed small at the time, but ended up shaping the way we see the world.

Going through all of that gave me a lot of satisfaction. Joy. Even emotion.

Because one thing is to say we are one of the most awarded studios in Latin America. Another very different thing is to understand what that actually means.

For us, it doesn’t mean making projects to win awards.

It means doing everything we can to make things work. Wrestling with the problem. Challenging the brief. Thinking again. Forging a path. Getting it wrong. Adjusting. Discussing. Insisting. Caring about details that probably no one will ever see.

And then, if an award comes, it’s more than welcome.

The process is rarely as polished as the final result.

And maybe this newsletter exists to tell a bit more of that part: the one that doesn’t make it into the case study, the one you don’t see on the homepage, the one that happens before a brand, a platform, or a campaign starts to feel inevitable.

And right now, talking about that process also means talking about AI.

Because yes: AI is touching absolutely everything in our industry.

It’s changing processes. Accelerating exploration. Shortening the distance between an idea and a first image. Making things that used to take days appear in hours.

At /nk, we see it every day.

Before, for an audiovisual piece, the path could be long: think of a script, turn it into a storyboard, look for references, present an intention, wait for the first frames, and adjust the tone around something that still couldn’t fully be seen.

Today, we can have an idea, turn it into a script, translate it into a storyboard, and start seeing it with real images much earlier. From weeks to hours.

That changes everything.

In motion, design, development, prototyping, and exploration. It makes us more agile, faster, and more capable of testing more paths in less time.

It would be absurd to deny that.

But it would also be naive to fully buy into the promise that now anyone can do anything.

Because no.

AI empowers those who have intention, judgment, sensitivity, and craft. Those who know what they’re looking for. Those who can tell the difference between an interesting image and an empty one. Those who understand when something is well executed, but has no soul.

But if there’s no point of view, no tool can save that.

Put simply: AI doesn’t turn a bad idea into a good one. It just helps it arrive faster. And when there is talent, judgment, and sensitivity, it can help take that idea much further.

And that, to me, is where things get interesting.

AI can help us produce. It can help us explore. It can help us organize. It can help us prototype. It can help us visualize possibilities that used to take much longer to appear.

But it can never tell us where to find inspiration, what to look at, what conversations to have, or what to feel. It won’t know which conversation with a client changed an idea. It won’t understand why a reference stayed with us for years. It won’t replace that strange mix of experience, intuition, sensitivity, memory, culture, obsession, and the desire to do things well.

That remains human.

And maybe, in a world where everything is accelerating, that becomes even more important.

Because the problem is no longer just how to produce faster.

The problem is knowing where it’s worth going.

That’s why we felt this was a good moment to start writing again.

Not to talk about inspiration as a pretty word. Not to romanticize the process. Not to deny technology.

But to return to the source.

To everything that feeds an idea before it becomes a project. The conversations, the doubts, the references, the friction, the invisible decisions. What we see, what we hear, what we read, what we discuss.

Every 15 days, we’ll use this space to tell stories from that place.

Stories about projects. Clients. Processes. Decisions. Things that worked. And also everything that had to happen before something could work.

Maybe it’s about looking a little less at the final result and a little more at everything that comes before.

Because in times when everything seems to move faster, maybe returning to the source is also a way of moving forward.

Lucas
/nk.studio

P.S. If this left you thinking, we’ll keep the conversation going by email every 15 days. You can subscribe to our news from the footer of our site.