Michal Hlavaty AI Design Architect · Technical UX Lead
Cologne · Germany

AI film, UX architecture and image systems — built in-house.

Cinematic AI film, conversion-driven UX and production-grade front-end. Systematised, in-house, built to ship. Nano Banana, GPT Image, Midjourney · Kling, Seedance, VEO · ElevenLabs · Premiere Pro.

2.44M views and plays · four months · three markets

Index — selected work 2025–2026

01

Interface and front-end

Conversion-led UX delivered as production-grade front-end, not static comps.

01–06
01

The Universal Configurator

UXPhotobook editor UXTwenty-one sections, four shown

An in-house replacement for a third-party configurator platform. I owned the UX architecture, the visual design and the product film. The flow was simplified early and built as working screens rather than mockups — live price and preview, progressive disclosure, one clean variable per test. Rolled out to the German shop after the UK.

The work · four plates. Open any one at full size.

Twenty-one sections were prototyped this way — menu, formats, print options, patterns, fonts, orientation, prices, checkout and last step. Each one is a real screen with live price, live state and a working control, which is what made the flow arguable before anything was built.

Format & priceConfigurator sectionFull screen ↗
Aspect ratio & sizeConfigurator sectionFull screen ↗
Art styleConfigurator sectionFull screen ↗

↑ Index01 / 15

02

Stampa su Tela

BuildShopify replatformFour running templates

The Italian shop has to move off its old platform and be rebuilt on Shopify. I built the four templates the rest of the shop is generated from — homepage, category, product and a gift finder — as working front-end, not mockups. Reviewed and endorsed internally before hand-off.

Preview

What each template replaces · open one and toggle. The before is a capture of the live Italian shop, the after is the build itself, running.

The product page carries the size matrix and the on-wall preview — the same scale argument the calibration plates in case 12 exist to make honest.

Every after is the working front-end file, not a screenshot — open one and use it.

The offers page becomes the gift finder: the same discount logic, asked as a question — who is it for, what is the occasion — instead of four cards each carrying its own code to copy.

↑ Index02 / 15

03

Universal Product Card

UXCross-shop componentThe component in place

Live tiles made a £4.50 canvas and a £26 acrylic look identical, so customers defaulted to the cheapest. I rebuilt the card around material-first imagery and a fixed spec line, benchmarked it against four category leaders, tested it for German string lengths, and cut card height by a quarter.

Preview

What it replaced · open it and toggle against the rebuild. Both start at the bestsellers grid and scroll the full section.

  1. A raking macro of the real surface replaces the floating cut-out — weave, edge thickness and finish are visible before anything is read.
  2. A fixed spec line on every card: finish, build and what the material is best for. Same three slots, every product, tested against German string lengths.
  3. One line under the heading explains the range before it is browsed, so the six are read as a considered set rather than a price ladder.
  4. The discount becomes a corner badge and the price reads after the spec, not before it — so material decides the choice instead of the cheapest number.
  5. A single call to action per card instead of two competing buttons, and card height cut by a quarter, which puts more of the range above the fold.

Header, teaser, trust bar and footer in the prototype are placeholders — the card grid and editorial row are the work.

↑ Index03 / 15

04

Photo Books

ShippedTwo markets, one dayOne working day · two markets

A category page the UK shop did not have, taken from nothing to two market-ready documents inside a single working day. I restructured the page, designed it, built a price database off the universal configurator so every figure on the page is the live one, produced the whole image and film set, and wrote the copy — one clean route through four bindings instead of a spec sheet. The German document followed the same day, written for its own market rather than translated.

Preview

The films made for the page · one per binding. Open any one full size.

What it replaced · open it and toggle against the running build. Six changes below.

  1. Seven cards became four. The old grid mixed product types with paper sizes and left an orphan card on a row of its own.
  2. The page is organised by binding — the decision that actually changes the object — instead of by format.
  3. Size moved inside the card as a selector, so choosing A5 or 30x30 no longer means choosing a different product.
  4. Size and price resolve before the editor opens. People want to know what their binding at their size costs before committing an hour to building it — the old page gave one from-price per product and left the real number several steps inside the editor.
  5. A real hero replaces the banner: one next step, priced from, with the review score next to it rather than halfway down the page.
  6. Paper and certification move up under the hero, where they answer the question people actually ask before they commit.

Now the live photo-book landing page. The old page is still up at the second address below, so the comparison can be checked rather than taken on trust.

Six films in the set — four bindings and two paper finishes, matt and glossy — alongside the stills. Prices render from a database derived from the universal configurator, so the page cannot drift from what the configurator charges.

↑ Index04 / 15

05

merchOne

UXRedesign proposalB2B print-on-demand

The brief was open — look at the current page and suggest what could be better. I proposed a full redesign: the same corporate identity and the same content, reorganised around what a reseller actually decides, and delivered as a working front-end rather than a deck. Custom AI images stand in as functional placeholders where production photography would go.

Preview

What it replaces · open it and toggle against the proposal. Both scroll the full page. Five changes below.

  1. The headline states the offer — sell your designs, we handle the rest — instead of naming the category the visitor is already on.
  2. A centred stack becomes asymmetric: copy holds the left, the product composition carries the right, so the eye has somewhere to go.
  3. Two explicit next steps, one to start and one to browse, replace a single Sign up that assumed the decision was already made.
  4. Proof moves up beside the offer — seller and product counts, EU and US production, no customs delay — rather than waiting below the fold.
  5. A capacity band carries years, daily units, sites and delivery time, doing the job the three-column text wall was doing badly.

↑ Index05 / 15

06

Corporate Sites

BuildTwo live buildsTwo live builds · Wix

Two corporate sites for the group, designed and built rather than specced — the parent group’s own site and a recruitment site for the technology arm. Structure, layout, imagery and copy are mine, assembled in Wix so the company can maintain the result itself instead of holding a comp and waiting for a developer. Both are live and both are the version that shipped.

Three more pages from the group site, and the technology arm’s recruitment site. Open any one for the full scroll.

Every capture here is of the running site, not a comp. Open one and scroll it, or go straight to the address below.

↑ Index06 / 15

02

AI film

One locked asset set per campaign, run as a documented production system.

07–13
07

All-Year Spot

FilmBrand TVC · 1.73M views, two marketsSeedance 2.0

The spot that runs outside the seasonal calendar. Two difficult subject classes in one film — a child and a pet — each held consistent across cuts by its own sheet.

The brand spotTwo markets · 1.73M views

Production · four plates. Open any one at full size.

Published

Eleven beats are stored as numbered folders, two of them named for their revision — 03-no-beard and 08-no-sofa. The board is 6336px wide and every panel carries its own lens note.

Both cuts went out on 9 June 2026 and have passed a million views between them. The end-card line on the storyboard above is the title the UK cut shipped under.

↑ Index07 / 15

08

Summer Vibes

FilmThe production systemSeedance 2.0

Every film on this page is made this way. Sheets first, board second, generation last — so the output cannot drift. Shown once, with the real artifacts from one campaign.

The hero filmCampaign · the system in full

Production · four plates. Open any one at full size.

One locked asset set, two deliverables: the emotional hero film and a companion film whose only job is making ordering feel easy. The how-to’s photo picker is filled with the hero film’s own frames — the system yields a campaign, not a clip.

↑ Index08 / 15

09

Valentine’s

FilmTVC + social, three marketsSeedance 2.0

Built on the system in case 02. The campaign also went out as vertical cuts on all three shop accounts in the same week — UK and US on 29 January, Germany on the 31st. Each is written for its own market rather than subtitled: the US copy runs favorite and cozy where the UK runs favourite and cosy, and the German is written from scratch.

The TVCThree markets · localised, not subtitled

Production · four plates. Open any one at full size.

Published

Just under 68,000 plays across the three shops.

↑ Index09 / 15

10

Mother’s Day

FilmTwo marketsSeedance 2.0 / Kling 3.0

One campaign, two markets. The same asset set carries a UK cut and a German cut, each localised rather than subtitled.

The campaign filmTwo markets · one asset set

Production · four plates. Open any one at full size.

↑ Index10 / 15

11

Pet Memorial

FilmThree marketsSeedance 2.0

The hardest brief in the set — a bereavement product that has to be tender without being maudlin. Cut vertical for social and rolled out across all three shops inside nine days: the US on 20 February, Germany on the 23rd, the UK on the 28th. The German is written from scratch, not translated.

The filmVertical cut · three markets in nine days

Production · four plates. Open any one at full size.

Published

32,000 plays across the three shops for the hardest brief in the set.

↑ Index11 / 15

12

Narrative Films

FilmTwo short filmsSeedance 2.0 / Kling 3.0

The product carries the story rather than interrupting it. On-screen lines are part of the edit, finished in Premiere Pro. Both ran as a single vertical cut on the UK account in May — from uni days to coffee dates across the ocean.

The narrative cutProduct carries the story

Production · four plates. Open any one at full size.

Published

↑ Index12 / 15

13

Product Films

FilmRange and formatKling 3.0

Shorter pieces whose job is to introduce a format rather than carry a campaign. The FlexiArt explainer is live on the MEINFOTO channel.

The product filmFormat introduction · shop and social

Four more product films · one per format. Open any one full size.

Published

The vertical cut outperformed the landscape one by more than ten to one — the assembly shot reads in a second on a phone.

↑ Index13 / 15

Published

On air

The films are not sitting in a folder. Eight cuts are running on the brands’ own YouTube channels in two languages, landscape and vertical, alongside the social reels — 2.44M views and plays in total. Every YouTube figure below is pulled live; click any of them.

Rounded down and still climbing — the two June cuts alone have passed a million. A home full of stories is the All-Year Spot in case 09: the end-card line is the one written on its storyboard, and the German cut went out the same day.

↑ IndexFilm

03

Image systems

Generated material treated as raw stock, held to a calibrated rule set.

14–14
14

Image Systems

SystemTwo arguments, three images eachNano Banana Pro / GPT Image 2

Material proved, not styled

Three surfaces at the resolution where a lie would show.

The work · four plates. Open any one at full size.

The shot is decided before it is generated

Preparation artifacts. The output cannot drift because the plate, the sheet and the reference were built first.

Character sheets are deliberately absent here. They prove tool use, not judgement — they belong in case 02, as evidence of process.

↑ Index14 / 15

04

Campaign and print craft

The studio, press and print work the last five years are built on.

15–15
15

Campaign & Print Craft

CraftStudio, press and print2007–2022

The twenty years underneath the last five. Campaign and packaging for the PepsiCo portfolio, creative direction on a seasonal magazine reaching around 850 Lidl stores, and trade press, product photography and design at volume across the group. Shown as craft evidence rather than as case studies — the argument for the current work is made above.

The work · four plates. Open any one at full size.

Shortlist to pull from the archive, in order of strength · press: PrintMag-AUS.jpg, FeatureShot-USA.jpg, preview-GB-9618-GB-10134.jpg, A4_advert_v2b.jpg, print_ad_210x141mm_3mm_bleed-01.jpg, pinterest_1000x1500px_01–03.jpg · photography: preview-textile-details-1–3.jpg, preview-GB-9565-A.jpg, preview-GB-9803-1.jpg · volume: preview_1-GB-5787.jpg, 01_2000x2000px_designs.jpg, preview-inside-FINAL 2.jpg, preview-GB-8510-A.jpg. Everything under 1500px on the long edge stays out.

↑ Index15 / 15

Approach How the work gets made — the methodology in full Read ↗
16

About

Twenty years as a designer; the last five have widened that into something broader. Working AI-first, I take a website, a configurator or a campaign from idea to a working, implementation-ready prototype — structure, design, front-end build, imagery and film included, without waiting on a chain of specialists.

That has turned into a cross-departmental role spanning Marketing, Product and Engineering at an international e-commerce group of acquired brands. The work is conversion-led UX: restructuring pages and product configurators, cutting steps that don’t need to exist, correcting the copy that trips people up — then building it far enough that engineering can ship it.

2019–nowSenior Creative Designer — The Customization Group (formerly Picanova), Cologne
UX, front-end and AI production across meinfoto.de, my-picture.co.uk and canvasdiscount.com
2018–19Creative Graphic Designer — Oman Refreshment Co. (PepsiCo), Muscat
2007–17Senior Graphic Designer — Lidl UK, London (seasonal magazine, ~850 stores)
AINano Banana Pro, GPT Image 2, Kling, Seedance; Claude & Claude Code for prototyping and build
Front-endHTML, CSS, JavaScript — prototypes handed to engineering and deployed live
DesignPhotoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, Lightroom, Premiere Pro, Figma
PracticeWCAG 2.2 AA, EU Accessibility Act, design tokens and component systems, A/B testing (VWO), GA4
LanguagesEnglish, German, Slovak, Czech