Designing Paths: Santiago Barrera Associate RGD challenges designers to experiment with AI

Brazil-based graphic designer Santiago Barrera Associate RGD moved to Toronto after years of emotional pushback from his parents, who wanted him to pursue engineering. 

He first fell in love with design hanging out with friends, learning Photoshop and creating graphics purely out of curiosity and for fun. With limited English and a lot of fear, he took the leap anyway, choosing to study graphic design in Toronto after months of research and tough conversations. What began as impatience and doubt later shaped how he thinks about design today, eventually leading him to move to Vancouver to work as a designer.

Why Santiago began exploring AI

Since 2021, Santiago has been closely watching how AI could affect creative jobs. At the time, people were both curious and fearful—many believe AI may replace designers entirely. Instead of avoiding the topic, Santiago has leaned into it, wanting to understand whether AI is truly a threat or simply another tool creatives can learn to use.

He has spoken with AI artists and engineers who work directly with LLMs. One example that stands out is a designer who trained a robot to generate images in her own visual style. This shifted his thinking. For Santiago, AI-generated imagery isn't art-making itself—it's art direction. The creative intention and decision-making still come from the human.

x/y lab and understanding how AI works

This curiosity has led Santiago to create x/y lab, a space where artists can learn more about AI and its underlying logic. "It uses simple vectors to process data," says Santiago. As he explored further, he noticed institutions like museums training AI models using their own design archives. Brands such as Coca Cola have also created AI-powered design systems directly within Illustrator. Explore x/y lab.

Experimenting with AI in design practice

In his own work, Santiago pushes experimentation further. "I created a script where you can plug it into Blender, run the script and it generates graphics," he explains. Visual elements such as blue spheres, abstract forms, fractal graphics and colour palettes were produced by running these scripts repeatedly. By feeding in hex codes and adjusting variables, each run produced different results. Sometimes the outputs were unusable. Other times, they revealed unexpected and compelling visuals. The value was in experimentation, iteration and discovery rather than automation.

How designers can use AI beyond a simple assistant

Santiago encourages designers to move beyond using AI as a simple assistant—he sees it as a powerful learning and thinking tool. Designers can use it to summarize books, extract notes from PDFs and quickly understand new subjects. In product design, he uses AI to help define component states, explore wireframes, think through backend considerations and improve communication with engineers. It also helps translate creative ideas into more technical or professional language when working with IT teams or GitHub repositories.

Visually, he uses AI as a form of creative direction and brainstorming—creating collages from past work, imagining photoshoots for specific furniture, planning studio lighting setups and gathering visual references and tutorials. AI also supports project management by helping structure ideas and workflows.

Community and learning through shared spaces

Beyond AI, Santiago emphasizes the importance of creative communities. He recalls early experiences learning design by sitting with friends, watching Photoshop tutorials and experimenting together. "It was not only gaming-related. It was a mix of Call of Duty, YouTube channels, cool graphics," says Santiago Barrera Associate RGD, remembering the early days of learning graphic design.

Later, X (Twitter)-based design communities and "clans" became spaces to collaborate, share Cinema 4D and Photoshop skills, exchange PSD files and learn directly from one another. These communities weren't perfect, but they were driven by curiosity, openness and shared passion.

The role of community today

Today, through the RGD community, Santiago continues to discover new designers and connect through a shared love of the craft. He values spaces where people openly discuss their process and avoid gatekeeping knowledge. For Santiago, strong design communities are built on curiosity and generosity. People want to understand how things are made—and when designers genuinely love what they do, talking about it, sharing it and learning together becomes part of the creative process.

See more of Santiago's work or get in touch: 

• Website
• Instagram
• LinkedIn
• Behance