Hello, hi, pull up a chair.  I want to talk about how the Piki Riki designs are born. Because I don’t just slap whatever it crosses my mind on a T-shirt and call it a day. Here’s how it actually goes: an idea hits me, I laugh and say to myself “this belongs on a shirt”. Then I start doodling and playing with my drawing pad. Sometimes I feed the sketches to AI, but man, is this annoying! We fight. A lot. Wrong and very wrong outputs, weird hands, creepy faces, nope, nope, nope, hell no. When things are not working out fast, I really wonder if Al tools are helping, making things faster, or get in the way...

I go back to the drawing pad and get my hands dirty (literally, I have apple pie next to my laptop). I redraw, tweak, rebuild, fix details no machine understands. I change composition, details, I adjust, add elements, all while swearing a little. Sometimes a lot. The cats are looking and judging. This is how the design becomes mine.

It’s the way I work in 2026. Fast where it can be, slow where it matters.

Remember how people freaked out about Photoshop? If you don’t, please just keep your age to yourself. But yeah: in the early 2000s, when Photoshop became mainstream, people lost their minds.

Fast forward a bit: Photoshop became industry standard. No one asks if a poster, album cover or magazine spread is “Photoshop-made” anymore. It’s just assumed. What matters is the idea, taste, execution.

Will it be the same with AI tools? Will it became unavoidable integrated in the creation process? Only time will tell, I guess.

Until then, once again for the people in the back: everything you see in the Piki Riki store is original. Built from scratch ideas, meant to make nice people feel seen at a gig, a con, a festival, in supermarket, at family reunions, while walking a dog, petting a cat, dropping kids at school, quietly swearing at people who do not return the shopping cart to the designated area… You get the point.

If that speaks to you, welcome and add to cart.

If not, that’s cool too. I’ll be over here, refining pixels and blasting metalcore like the classy lady that I am.

Alexandra