Johnny Lopez

Bridging creative craft with emerging tech.

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Notes from the studio.

Unsexy Solutions

Solving Real-World Production Pain Points On The Fly (with AI)Not every AI experiment is glamorous. This one won’t catch fire on social media the way an AI-generated short film might. This is not a talking yeti slamming Coors Light on a jungle walkabout. But it solved a real business problem in near–real time—and that’s where the value lies.Photoshop was choking on massive 15GB+ files during the resize workflow, mostly because of how it generates image previews. The Image Size modal would freeze for minutes, spinning wheels forever, or lock up completely and force a restart.Instead of just living with it, I turned to ChatGPT and a bit of low-code know-how from past UX and web work. After about 35 minutes of iteration and testing, I had a script that bypassed the preview step entirely. The result: a workflow that saves 10–15 minutes per use. Multiply that by dozens of assets under deadline, and the gain is substantial.Think about how new tools might augment the old ones—finding crossover solutions in unexpected places, and valuing the small, practical wins that keep creative production moving forward. Those quiet improvements are becoming an exciting part of the creative services ecosystem today.

Learning AI Fundamentals

(Without Becoming a Data Scientist)I recently completed IBM’s AI Fundamentals course (and Google’s too)—not because I dream of becoming a machine learning engineer or writing Python into the night. My goals are different.I’m a creative generalist with roots in design, advertising, and production. I’ve led teams, built systems, and shaped campaigns for some of the world’s biggest brands. But the ground is shifting—tools, workflows, even the role of creative leadership itself. I wanted to understand these changes, not from the outside, but from the inside.IBM’s primer touched everything from supervised vs. unsupervised learning to NLP, neural nets, and real-world AI applications. Useful material, yes—but the real lessons were broader:AI isn’t magic. It’s systems, math, and architecture. The more you understand it, the less intimidating it becomes—and the more creative you can be with it.Ethics aren’t optional. Bias, explainability, and privacy aren’t sidebars; they’re core design decisions.The value is human. AI isn’t about replacing creativity—it’s about augmenting it, accelerating it, and forcing us to rethink what creativity even means.Fluency matters. You don’t need to code to ask good questions, interpret capabilities, and guide thoughtful applications.This is just the first brick in a larger foundation. I’m not looking to become a technical expert. I’m aiming to be a well-informed, forward-looking creative leader—someone who knows when emerging tools belong in the process, when they don’t, and how to explain that clearly to both creatives and strategists.We need people who can translate between tech and culture, who can lead with vision and reason—not just novelty or hype. That’s the table I want to sit at.

My Time with Harold & Pablo

As a creative in Los Angeles, it’s almost inevitable to be pulled into Hollywood’s orbit. In the ’90s, I stepped into that world as a Production Assistant before pivoting into title design, joining Cinema Research Corp.—the birthplace of those iconic Star Wars opening credits.One of the most memorable chapters of that period was working alongside two legends: Harold Adler and Pablo Ferro.Harold Adler opened his vaults and shared original hand-painted titles—including designs from The Seven Year Itch. Later, he brought me in to collaborate on Permanent Midnight. For me, it was a rare glimpse into the living history of film craft, and a reminder that design lineage is as much about preservation as innovation.Pablo Ferro was the true pinnacle. I had the privilege of working with him on the opening sequence for Winchell (1997). Pablo’s leadership was a masterclass in gentleness—showing me that a soft touch often achieves more than brute force. Beyond the work itself, he made time to celebrate my 28th birthday, an act that left a lasting impression on how I think about mentorship and humanity in creative leadership.Looking back, these experiences weren’t just résumé highlights. They were lessons in humility, collaboration, and the subtle ways great leaders leave their mark—both on the work and the people who help make it.

Prompt-Based Prototyping

a.k.a. “Vibe-Coding”It still blows my mind: I can start with an idea and, with some careful planning and prompting, watch it come alive right in front of me. That thrill hasn’t worn off.But let’s be clear—this isn’t drag-and-drop magic. It’s easier than coding from scratch, sure, but still full of quirks. My own background is light but useful: some HTML5, CSS, and a fair bit of cut-and-paste tinkering with JavaScript and PHP. Enough to speak the language, not enough to escape the occasional dead end. Moderately ambitious plans still have a way of going sideways.The tools (in my case, Claude and Gemini via Google AI Studio) aren’t infallible. I’ve seen concepts drift, instructions contradict, and even a few security-sketchy suggestions—like Gemini once trying to push me into managing an API key outside the environment that was explicitly designed to protect it. Yikes.Still, prompt-based prototyping is a revelation. Equal parts empowering and humbling. I’ve learned to treat it like an ongoing conversation: sometimes frustrating, often surprising, always evolving.

Get In Touch

Raised on a steady diet of Circus Magazine, checkered Vans, and mall-crawling, I cut my teeth in the paste-up era with indigo ink, hot wax, and X-Acto blades. Since then, I’ve led creative, production, and systems initiatives for top agencies.

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