Chris DeGaetano is a Brand & Graphic Designer |
Technical B2B
BIO
I design and value strategic brand identities and complex visual systems that reflect a brand’s personality, establish a distinct presence, and set it apart from competitors.
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USCS BROCHURES
CUTLASS MUSIC GROUP
WBC: POOL C
PIT-26
MEDIUM EXPLORATION: QKS
FENDER PERSONAS
3D & Motion Design
Poster Design
ESP PIPELINE
2026 - PRESENT
2025 - 2025
EDUCATION
2022–2026
DEWAYNE’S
U.S. CARGO SYSTEMS
PRATT INSTITUTE
CDEGAETADESIGN@GMAIL.COM
RESUME / CV
An experimental Claude AI-powered creative department developed for the conceptual defense contractor, Espial Industries. I built a series of automated design workflows to explore how brand identity could be translated into structured instructions that AI can interpret and execute.
The goal was to create a system where employees across departments could describe their needs in plain English and receive finished, editable, brand-consistent deliverables. I developed specialized workflows for social graphics, presentations, product brochures, capabilities statements, brochures, and operational insignia, all operating from a shared brand identity and asset library.
Throughout the process, I tested and refined each workflow to understand where AI performs well, where it struggles, and how much creative judgment can realistically be translated into repeatable processes. Each iteration helped expose the system's limitations while informing improvements to its design and functionality.
BRAND LIBRARY
This was completed by allowing claude access to a designated folder of premade brand assets including posters, written guides, and material such as business cards and ID’s
Claude exceded my expectations when it came to delliberating spacing of the logo along with the tag line, along with asking follow-up questions on the brand guides that needed specifications as to how certain textures, gradients, and incongrous colors were being used.
Once this system became locked. I could move on to designating a brand voice.
That said, I believe I achieved adequate results by thoroughly explaining the campaign mission. The results became a .md file documenting how Espial should use language and tone of voice in designs.
Sample as listed below:
# Espial Industries: copy voice
Espial is a satirical brand played completely straight. It looks and talks like a luxury technology company that happens to sell weapons. The satire works only when the copy never breaks character and never looks cheap. Every line the system drafts follows this guide.
## The posture
- **Deadpan sincerity.** No wink, no disclaimer, no jokes that admit the joke. The brand performs total corporate legitimacy.
- **Polish is the provocation.** Copy is as smooth and confident as a real contractor's. The discomfort comes from how calm it is about what it sells.
- **Seduce first, unsettle second.** The first read is "sharp brand." The second read is what's being sold.
## Registers
Pick one register per piece, or pair two that sit naturally together (catalog + paperwork on a poster, for example).
| Register | Sounds like | Use for |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Corporate euphemism | "Collateral events excluded." "Translating conflict into clarity." | Headlines, mission lines, decks, brochures |
| Product catalog | "Primary Satellite Link $500,000" | Product imagery callouts, spec panels |
| Bureaucratic paperwork | "INTERNAL USE // DISTRIBUTION RESTRICTED" "AUTH ID: 77-ESP" | Classification lines, labels, footers, legal |
| Dehumanizing HR | "Asset ID: ESP-0047." "Risk class: monitor." | Internal documents, ID-style layouts |
| Luxury and fashion | "War never goes out of style... and business is good." | Campaign headlines, used sparingly |
## Satire calibration
The default is **fully in character**. The brand never comments on itself.
Openly critical lines (the "No New Wars" lighter style) break character on purpose. The system only writes those when the requester explicitly asks for an overt or out-of-character piece.
SKILL 1: INSTAGRAM POST
For Instagram post format, square and portrait social graphics went across four layouts. The system selects layouts based on the content, adjusts typography to fit, and runs each design through automated quality checks before export.
Testing helped strengthen those checks, moving beyond layout boundaries to catch visual issues like text covering logos and callout lines crossing labels. Two intentionally flawed designs were used to verify that the system could identify and reject errors. It also supports brand-specific features like Clearance Magenta status indicators, redaction bars for sensitive text, and copy approval flags to identify unverified information and placeholders.
The image library gave the design system access to around 80 searchable images, prioritizing original thesis work and owned assets before licensed stock photography. Each image is checked for subject relevance and usage rights before it can appear in a design. The system can also pixelate identifiable company logos, country insignias, or requested areas, while flagging images that clash with a layout’s visual tone.
SKILL 2: CAPABILITIES ONE-PAGER
This skill proved to be the most difficult for Claude to design successfully, and the current output still contains numerous typographical flaws and compositional issues. The document on the far left displays the first, uncritiqued output, while the one on the right displays the “fixed” version. The revised version still maintains many of the issues identified beforehand.
Lack of hierarchy in the layout, frequent use of divider lines, disregard for font rules, and compressed line heights and kerning were the main red flags.
It was also in this exercise I had come to the regret of choosing orbitron as a body font for longer paragraphs, as legibility also became a more glaring issue.
That said, the main goal of this exercise was, and still is, to demonstrate the automation of tasks rather than refine their inner workings to perfection. The capabilities statement is still being refined and will be revisited alongside the upcoming brochure.
SKILL 3: PRESENTATION DECK
generating fully editable 16:9 presentations using eight layouts, including covers, section breaks, statements, comparisons, timelines, and closing slides. Each deck is built from a simple text request, with layouts selected based on the content and placeholders used wherever information is missing. Text and graphic elements remain native PowerPoint objects, making the files easy to edit.
Refinements focused on improving visual consistency, strengthening hierarchy, and making image callouts feel more intentional.
SKILL 4: OPERTATION PATCH DESIGN
The biggest limitation of the skill is its reliance on externally provided artwork. For high-quality results, licensed or custom-made SVG graphics must be supplied, as the system cannot reliably generate complex central illustrations from text prompts alone.
I believe this skill is best suited to individual designer workflows rather than company-wide use. Patches are a more specialized creative application that falls outside the scope of standard brand guidelines. Requiring designers to provide their own SVG artwork is therefore not necessarily a drawback, as they can maintain creative control over the central graphics while using the system to handle the technical production, layout, and embroidery simulation.
SKILL 5: PRODUCT BROCHURES
Claude's typography and page layouts improve significantly when provided with premade reference designs, as well as a real sample brief. This becomes especially apparent when looking back at the capabilities statement skill, where there was considerably more difficulty refining the overall composition. That said, the brochures still required revisions, particularly to address the overuse of divider lines and paragraph formatting that created excessive negative space, especially on the first page.
Automating this task is particularly significant to me because it demonstrates what could have been possible during my time at U.S. Cargo Systems. Producing these brochures was a demanding, repetitive process that could have been made considerably more efficient through automation, especially when creating them at scale. It also opens the possibility of engineers generating their own initial brochures by supplying the necessary technical information themselves. This would reduce the need for designers to schedule constant meetings, gather information, and manually write each brochure, ultimately saving time for everyone involved.
USE CASES IN ACTION
Outcome: Created a AI pipeline that can accurately replicate the brand system of Espial Industries, while making five unique skills that can automate a design process and make design assets ubiquitous to any persons associated within the Espial Industries brand.
Skills Recap:
- Social Posts
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Capabilities One-pagers
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Presentation Decks
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Operation Patches
- Product Brochures
Notes:
- File organization is extremely important to maintain repository’s integrity as well as to not oversaturate or confuse Claudes responses with unrelevant images or conversations.
- Claudes images sourcing is not the best quality, bringing your own images as well as inspirations is in direct correlation to quality of output, as it seems copying is easier than generating for Claude.
- Need to play around and adjust response framework: How does Claude go about asking follow up questions as well as automating tasks without permission? These choices must be deliberate and made easy to utilize especially for non-designers.
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