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After more than three decades in design, José Manuel Fernández knows that the best part of the job rarely happens in the menus of Photoshop or between the layers of an Illustrator file. It happens in the ideas, the details and the decisions that turn a brief into something worth looking at. Yet getting there often means hours of repetitive work. When AI entered the picture, Fernández saw both its promise and its limitations: it could explain almost anything about design, but it couldn’t reach into an existing document and get the work done. So he decided to build the missing link. The result is Sekondo, a tool that brings AI directly into the Adobe applications creatives already use, helping them spend less time on production and more time doing what they do best. We spoke with Fernández about the thinking behind Sekondo, the craft that shaped it, and what happens when technology finally starts working the way designers do.
Slanted (S): Jose, when you started in 1992, Photoshop had no layers and only one step of undo. Over thirty-four years you’ve learned to work with ever more capable software. At what point did you start asking how much of that work you could stop doing by hand, and how did that question turn into Sekondo?
José Manuel Fernández (F): With a craftsman’s distrust. In this trade we’ve spent decades hearing that the next machine will do everything, so when artificial intelligence arrived I did what I do with any new tool: I put it in front of a real job.
Two things surprised me. The first was how much it knew: you asked it about a grid or a typographic hierarchy and it answered like someone who had read every manual. The second was how little it could do with everything it knew. It could explain a whole catalogue to you and couldn’t move a single text box. It was a master with no hands. That’s when I understood that the intelligence was already there. What was missing was someone to get inside the file. That’s Sekondo.
S: Sekondo started by reading the very simple notes you used to leave on your own pages, like “CAPTION MISSING” or “CONTENTS DON’T MATCH”. What did turning your work habits into instructions for software teach you about your own craft?
F: I have a layout artist’s habit: I leave messages in my documents. A box on top of the page that says “photo missing” or “this doesn’t match the contents”. One day I asked it to read them and do what they said. And it did, first time, without me explaining where anything was, because the note was already in its place.
It taught me that my way of working was already a way of giving instructions. It’s just that until then I’d been giving them to myself, to a colleague or to the client. That day I stopped chatting with a machine and started leaving it work, which is something else. Chatting is entertaining. Leaving work at night and finding it done in the morning changes your week.
S: In your demos, when a decision isn’t Sekondo’s to make, it leaves the designer a note instead of guessing. How did you decide where that line runs, between what the tool can settle on its own and what has to stay with the designer?
F: I learned where the line runs by working with it. I decide how the first one is done, and the tool does the rest. If ten identical pages need fixing, I fix one by hand to decide how I want it, and Sekondo does the other nine with the same judgement I have.
What I don’t let go of is what isn’t production: looking for the idea, which almost never comes first time, and looking the client in the eye and telling them no. That’s craft. So when something depends on my judgement, Sekondo doesn’t make it up: it asks me, or it leaves me the note and tells me where it is. The decisions belong to the designer.
S: You learned the early design tools by struggling with them. Today a junior designer can get the result without understanding the process. Does Sekondo help people learn, or does it make learning easier to skip?
F: People ask me this a lot on social media: “now that you don’t have to touch the tools, how are young people going to learn to design?” The same way as before. It’s no good sitting in front of it without knowing what the machine is doing. You have to go through that. When you know how to use the tool, you know what to ask of it, and then you can automate. If you don’t know how it works, you’ll hardly be able to automate anything.
What changes is what will be valued. For years we’ve measured a designer by how fast they moved through the menus, and that will be worth less and less. What will count is knowing what to ask for and knowing when something is right. And Friday afternoon changes: the client will still send you, at the last minute, the translation of three brochures for Monday. The difference is that you go out with your friends and, when you come back, they’re done.
Fernández’s idea of progress is ultimately a simple one: less time spent navigating software, more time spent making creative decisions.
Sekondo is already listed on Adobe Exchange, Adobes official marketplace, for four of its six apps: Photoshop, InDezsign, Premiere Pro and Lightroom Classic. The other two, Illustrator and After Effects, are in Adobe's review.
For readers who want to try it themselves, Sekondo has prepared an exclusive offer: use the code SLANTED1MES to get the first month free on the monthly plan.
Applications: Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, After Effects, Premiere Pro and Lightroom Classic.
AI assistants: Claude and ChatGPT, via their desktop apps.
Operating systems: macOS and Windows.
Where it works: On the user's own computer, directly within their existing files.
Pricing: See the pricing page.
Company: Sekondo Solutions, S.L.U. · Córdoba, Spain.
Website: sekondo.app
