Branded Visual Designer — Known as c0ntato in Web3
Product truths,
made to move.
I’m a hands-on designer who has spent months working inside Solflare’s community — applying and extending an established brand across photography, motion and everyday touchpoints, rather than redefining it.
OWN · Self-initiated campaign platform for Solflare · Not commissioned · 2026
Self-custody, made human.
Turn self-custody from something users have to understand into something they can feel.
Create a campaign layer for Solflare built around calm control, everyday autonomy and quiet ownership — grounded in the product, without changing the brand underneath it.
Then prove the system could live beyond a single image.
Manifesto
Nine statements on self-custody.
Applications
The system across channels.
Process
How the campaign was made
OWN developed through a long-running conversation between strategy, image generation and manual refinement.
To keep that conversation coherent, I built a project memory inside ChatGPT, supported by living context files covering Solflare’s product and brand philosophy, campaign strategy, voice, visual language, proof points, piece briefs and quality criteria. As the project evolved, I revised those files — so parallel chats could recover the same foundation without relying on one endless thread.
The photographic system was not fully designed upfront. It emerged through iteration. I first established a set of non-negotiables: believable adult casting, quiet agency, correct physical mechanics, ordinary but considered environments, and no luxury, struggle or generic fintech clichés. Character, gesture, wardrobe, camera position, lens behavior, crop, lighting, materials and product visibility were then developed as each scene took shape.
ChatGPT became both an interpretive layer and an image engine. I separated strategy, prompting and generation across different chats, then branched the directions that showed potential.
Strong results were either pushed further as single images, combined with elements from other generations, or taken into Photoshop for retouching and compositing.
Format adaptation happened in Illustrator, based on actual campaign use rather than forcing every image through the same exhaustive system. The hero, for example, was resolved across 3:4, 9:16 and 16:9. Finished campaign assets could then return to GPT to be placed into real-world or platform mockups, before another Photoshop pass when the generated context needed correction.
For motion, I extended the same reference-driven logic into Higgsfield and Seedance 2.5. Most scenes were constructed from three or four controlled inputs: a character reference, the phone asset, a 3D depth map, and a photographic reference for color, lighting or atmosphere. This made motion less about generating from scratch and more about preserving decisions already made in the campaign system.
Alongside production, I explored ComfyUI and node-based workflows, using a local Claude Code workflow connected to the DeepSeek API. It became a second interpretive layer for codifying campaign parameters and was also used to develop the portfolio site itself. When the node setup began competing with delivery time, I returned to the faster GPT-led workflow to complete the campaign. ComfyUI remains an active area of research rather than a finished production pipeline.
Before OWN
I was already paying attention.
Before I had any formal role in Solflare’s community, I sent the team an unsolicited UX report on the Brazilian PIX purchase flow. I had found a small point of friction while using the product, mapped the behavior and proposed a fix.
It was my first direct contribution to Solflare — not a campaign, just product curiosity.
June 18, 2025 — before Guardians, before OWN.
Hey Solflare team,
I’m a Brazilian user — also a designer and visual artist active in the crypto space. While using the PIX deposit flow, I noticed something odd in the UX that could be improved for users here in Brazil.
I wrote a short case study explaining the issue, why it matters, and a simple fix that could improve the experience. Document’s attached.
Not sending this as a complaint — just sharing feedback as someone who really likes the product and uses it often. PIX is huge in Brazil, and little things like this can make a big difference for onboarding and retention.
If this can be passed along to the product/design team, that would be awesome.
Thanks for the time. Happy to chat more if it’s useful.
Community work
OWN was self-initiated.
My familiarity with Solflare was not.
Before the campaign, I spent months inside Solflare’s product, voice and visual language through recurring public community content — editing 80+ approved short-form videos, from clip selection through narrative assembly, motion, sound, captions and final delivery.
Selected published work best piece — 36K+ views · 1.6K+ interactions
Weekly workshop → short-form cut
Clip selection, narrative, motion, sound and captions for a Solflare community release.
Weekly Live → short-form cut
Clip selection, narrative, motion, sound and captions for a Solflare community release.
Weekly Live → short-form cut
Clip selection, narrative, motion, sound and captions for a Solflare release.
Weekly workshop → short-form cut
Clip selection, narrative, motion, sound and captions for a Solflare community release.
Dojo
A community-led initiative built on one idea: learn by shipping.
Contributors develop through real briefs, deadlines, production feedback and published work. My contribution began with editing and expanded into co-leading the operation since May 2026 — briefs, selection, assignments, reviews, onboarding, delivery standards and contributor development.
For Solflare Weekly Lives, I help structure the workflow that turns recurring broadcasts into coordinated short-form production — organizing selection, distributing work, reviewing edits and keeping delivery consistent.
Beyond Solflare, I help adapt the same operating system for other Web3 clients — balancing contributor opportunities, client requirements, deadlines and consistent creative quality. This includes quick-turnaround reactive work: product updates and cultural moments briefed and shipped on tight deadlines through the same system.
See a Dojo / Saga published pieceAbout
The way I still like to work.
I’m Rafael Ametlla, known as c0ntato in Web3 — a designer and visual artist working across brand, campaigns and motion.
I started in 2020 by building a municipal campaign end to end, learning through the work itself: identity, social, print and physical materials. Since then I’ve worked across freelance projects, agency teams and Web3.
I don’t separate thinking from making. I like finding the idea, defining the rules around it, then seeing whether those rules survive across an image, a film, a feed, a billboard or a product surface. Photoshop, Illustrator, motion and AI are parts of that process; the decisions come first.
What I’m looking for now is depth: more time inside one brand, one product and one team, building work that compounds instead of resetting every project.
View the 2020 campaign on BehanceI’ve spent more than a year contributing to Solflare from the outside. Now I want to help shape what comes next from the inside.
