The BBB Creative Workbook
A practical guide to directing AI, seeing what is wrong, and making the next version better.
Choose a route. The numbers below are clickable in the PDF; the browser workbook also has a lesson menu.
Start at 04. Tell the AI what you want to make. It will ask one question at a time.
Start at 07. Add your approved facts and assets. Then try one of the three case lessons.
Jump to 11, 14, or 17. Use the asset locks, revision controls, and hierarchy exercise on a live brief.
Ray Sgambati is the person. Bruce is the creative identity he has built alongside his brands and community.
The image stays in this workbook. Save a new copy after adding it.
Bruce’s Bespoke Brands is the creative studio of Ray Sgambati, built around branding, design and AI-assisted creative direction. Branding, design, technology, customer experience, and imagination meet here.
“This guide isn’t just about how Bruce’s Bespoke Brands looks—it’s about how I think.” Ray’s approach centers on intention, craftsmanship, curiosity, and experiences that feel timeless rather than trendy.
This workbook helps you explain your idea, direct the tools, review the result, and improve it. No prompt, downloaded file, or GitHub repository can guarantee great work or business income.
Your audience, offer, real assets, and what matters. An AI may not know you or remember another conversation.
It can ask questions, suggest directions, draft, and revise. What it can actually make depends on the tool you are using.
Read every claim. Compare real products and faces. Open the exported file. Correct problems before release.
Goal: leave with one clear task. You are not asking for a whole brand, website, and campaign at once.
Open the AI chat app or website you already use. Start a new conversation so this exercise is easy to find.
Select the entire prompt below and copy it. In the browser workbook, click Copy. Click the message box in your AI chat and paste.
Press Send. Answer the first question in everyday words. “I don’t know yet” is a valid answer.
Help me make one useful piece of creative work. Ask me ONE question at a time, starting with: What do you want someone to understand or do? Do not assume I have a brand, logo, audience profile, design skills, or paid tools. If I am unsure, offer two concrete options and explain them simply. After my answers, write a short brief for one small deliverable. Ask me to confirm it before making anything. Do not promise results or invent facts.
Make a working direction for this task. You can replace it later.
I am starting without an established brand. Use my answers above to propose TWO simple directions for this one task. For each, give a plain-language mood, two readable colors, one font option, and a short example headline. Label these as working proposals. Do not invent a logo, business history, event date, testimonial, or sales claim. Ask me which direction feels closer before continuing.
Give each proposal one reason linked to the audience. Reject a direction that looks impressive but hides the date or action.
A brand profile is simply a short record of what is true and what should stay consistent.
1. Try a starting palette or click a color swatch to open your device’s color picker. 2. Pick a type style. 3. Look at the sample. Nothing is approved until you decide it fits.
Color numbers identify the exact shade. You can ignore the numbers and use the picker. These are proposals for your brand, not fixed BBB requirements.
A sample headline and sentence. Choose the version that feels right for your audience.
See the detailsThis adds readable instructions to “Approved look and voice.” It also updates your Practice Desk preview. It does not change a logo or invent a brand history.
A reference is an example you use to explain one decision. It is not permission to copy somebody’s identity.
Upload a photo, screenshot, logo, or mood reference. Pick the part you want to learn from: the light, colors, spacing, or something else. You can use several images for different reasons.
Images stay in this workbook on your device. Save your workbook to keep them. This page does not analyze images with AI or send them to ChatGPT. Attach the original files in your AI chat when you use the reference brief.
The copied brief names each image and its job. It does not copy the image files themselves.
Read my profile and attached references. Tell me which files you can actually see. Summarize what to preserve, what you may change, and what is missing in three short lists. Use each reference only for the purpose I named. If you cannot inspect a file, say so. Do not describe unseen details as if you checked them.
Start in a normal chat. A dedicated project is an optional way to keep related work together.
Paste your completed profile into the conversation. Attach only the real images or files needed for today’s task.
Paste the gold box below. For repeated work in ChatGPT, create a Project and put these in its project instructions.
Ask: “What is my task, what must stay exact, and what do you still need?” Correct the recap before proceeding.
Act as my creative collaborator. Use my current brief, brand profile, and supplied assets. Ask concise questions when missing information would change the result. Explain unfamiliar terms. Keep approved identities, product details, facts, and exact copy intact. Prioritize a clear message and useful output over decoration. Propose one manageable next step. Inspect the result if you can; otherwise tell me what I must check. Never invent proof, clients, results, approvals, or completed actions. Treat design choices as proposals until I approve them.
Use a question to find a problem. Then turn the answer into a visible edit.
If three things compete, choose the one the reader needs first. Make the other two quieter.
If a glow, badge, or paragraph explains nothing, try removing it and compare.
Inspect faces, materials, repeated details, strange text, and impossible geometry. Fix the evidence of a problem.
“Would Apple ship this?” and “Would a luxury agency present this?” are Ray’s quality filters, not requests to copy another brand.
A beautiful image is not useful if the product in it has become a different product.
The supplied Little Wing carton has specific lettering, colors, artwork, and folds. These are facts to preserve, not styling suggestions.
For dependable product accuracy, keep the real photo and ask AI for a separate scene or layout plan. Place the photo yourself.
Compare the instructions. Both may produce something attractive; only one tells the tool which truth to protect.
Create a BACKGROUND ONLY for a portrait product layout. Use muted warm gray with soft light from the upper left. Keep the center-right quiet for the real product photo I will add later. Leave the upper-left area plain for a headline. Do not generate a product, package, logo, label, words, or watermark. The attached photo is a lighting reference only, not an object to redraw.
A “preserve exactly” prompt cannot guarantee unchanged pixels. A protected original photo on its own layer gives you a reliable comparison point.
Use your own product photo for the exercise. No product? Use a book, mug, or another object you can photograph.
Choose one clear image. Keep an untouched copy. Write its filename below.
Use the background prompt on 12. Compare the light direction before combining the images.
Use the simple Photoshop lesson on 23, or your familiar layout app. Zoom in and compare the original label letter by letter.
“Make it better” gives the tool too many possible jobs.
“Make this more premium.” The tool may change the face, product, colors, layout, and background together.
“Keep the photo and headline. Remove the three decorative badges.” Now you can judge a specific change.
Fill in three short lines before asking for a revision.
Revise the attached work using my KEEP, CHANGE, and CHECK notes above. Make only the named change. Preserve the remaining copy, identity, product details, and layout decisions. If your tool cannot make that change without risking the protected parts, explain a safer method before generating. Return the revision and briefly name what you changed. Do not say you checked something you cannot inspect.
A repeated failure is information. Change the method when the same problem returns.
Open the current result next to your previous version. Look at the protected areas first.
Example: “The label changed again.” Save the failed result as evidence, not as your new source.
If a small edit keeps damaging the product, return to the original photo and change the background or text in a layout app.
Hierarchy means the order in which people notice things.
One main message. Make it easy to find.
One image or supporting detail that explains the message.
One next action, only when the piece needs one.
Try a layout plan before asking for a finished graphic.
Plan one portrait graphic using my message, image, and next action above. Give me a simple top-to-bottom layout: headline, image, supporting line, optional action. Keep the main message readable at phone size. Use my brand choices; do not automatically apply BBB black and gold. Do not invent benefits, prices, statistics, or testimonials. Explain one thing you would remove and why. Ask me to approve the layout before making the finished graphic.
The final size is part of the design. A graphic that only works when enlarged is unfinished.
Open the image on your phone, or reduce the preview until it is about phone width.
Without zooming, say the main message aloud. If you cannot, simplify or enlarge the headline.
Read the date, address, link, or button. Remove secondary details if they compete with what matters.
Glass should belong to the world around it. It takes on the scene’s light, color, and mood.
The environmental behavior: a warm scene produces warm reflections; a cool scene produces cool reflections. Space imagery is optional.
The crafted object: considered thickness, readable edges, controlled tint, believable refraction, and a purposeful shape.
If the glass makes words difficult to read, increase the solid backing, simplify the scene, or move the words.
Treat these as BBB creative concepts, not a software effect name. An app may not have an “Atmosphere Glass” button. Describe the visible behavior you want.
Choose each detail because it helps this audience understand this task.
BBB: black, champagne gold, restrained contrast. A playful brand: vibrant pink, purple, blue, turquoise. Use approved brand files for exact values. Start with one readable font and two weights.
Align related elements. Leave visibly larger gaps between unrelated groups. Use a consistent spacing step. Glass, metal, and light should support the subject.
Use authentic reference photos. Preserve identity, proportions, texture, and product shape. Inspect hands, teeth, eyes, skin, edges, and reflections.
Starter spacing for a 1080px-wide composition: 72px outer margin, 24px small gaps, 48px section gaps. These are exercise values, not platform requirements.
Nano Banana is an image model. Higgsfield is one place you can use it. This exercise makes an empty background for your real image.
Sign in to Higgsfield. Its help route is Image → Nano Banana Pro. If labels differ, open the official help link on 30.
Use the image upload control. Select your photo. Wait until its thumbnail appears so you know it is attached.
Paste the background-only prompt from 12. Choose a portrait shape if available. Check any displayed credit cost before generating.
Reject generated products or text. Check the light and empty space. Download the usable image; write down which model and settings you used.
First win: a simple portrait graphic with the full photo. Cutting out objects can wait.
In Photoshop desktop, choose File → New. Set width 1080 and height 1350, with units Pixels. Choose RGB, 8 bit, and the sRGB color profile under advanced options. Click Create.
Choose File → Place Embedded. Select your image, then Place. Drag a corner to fit while keeping its proportions; press Return/Enter to confirm.
Choose Window → Layers if the panel is hidden. A layer is a separate piece of the picture. Double-click the photo layer’s name and call it ORIGINAL PHOTO.
Select the Type tool (T), click in empty space, and type your approved headline. Choose a readable size. Keep text away from the photograph’s important details.
A composite combines images or text on separate layers so you can adjust one piece without rebuilding everything.
Place your background image with File → Place Embedded. In Layers, drag it below ORIGINAL PHOTO.
If the photo has its own background, keep a rectangular photo panel for your first attempt. For a cutout, use a layer mask: it hides parts without deleting them.
Check that the background and photo suggest the same light direction. Add a subtle contact shadow on a separate layer only if the object needs grounding.
Put final labels, headlines, and legal copy in real text layers. Do not rely on generated words for exact production text.
I am using Photoshop desktop and need help with ONE next step in this composite. My goal is [describe the step]. Here is a screenshot showing the canvas and Layers panel. Explain exactly what to click, what I should see afterward, and how to undo it. Do not give the entire workflow at once. If you cannot see a control, ask for the relevant panel instead of guessing.
A five-second study can teach more than a complicated thirty-second animation.
Use an approved image. Choose one motion: a slow camera push, a light change, or a text reveal.
In Higgsfield, open its video-generation workspace, choose an image-to-video route, and upload that still as the starting frame. Model names and controls vary; check the current interface.
Use the prompt below. Pick a short supported duration and inspect the displayed cost before starting.
Pause at the start, middle, and end. Reject warped labels, identity drift, flicker, invented objects, or moving text that should stay fixed.
Animate the supplied still with a very slow, smooth camera push toward the main subject. Keep the subject’s identity, product shape, packaging, and scene contents consistent. Add no text or objects. Keep motion restrained; no orbit, morph, or dramatic transition. If the tool cannot preserve exact product details, this is a concept study only, not a final product advertisement.
Use the row for what you are making. The same creative brief can lead to very different files.
Show the real task and a clear next action. Test links, mobile layout, keyboard access, readable contrast, and error/empty/loading states. A beautiful mockup is not a functioning website.
Use one idea and an honest hook. Check the actual crop, thumbnail size, exact offer, and destination. Keep the face and product recognizable; do not invent results.
Keep artwork separate from the production dieline. Use the manufacturer’s dimensions, bleed, safe areas, and color requirements. Approve a physical proof before a production run.
Use familiar icons with labels when meaning is unclear. Keep line weight/material consistent. Provide a calm static alternative to decorative motion; do not let animation hide information.
I am making [deliverable]. Before I release it, give me a short checklist specific to its destination and my current files. Separate what you can verify now from what I must test in the actual app, exported file, or physical proof. Do not mark an unchecked item as passed.
Do these on the exported result, not only on the editable canvas.
Keep a rule only when it helps you make a better decision repeatedly.
Write what failed, what you changed, and why the newer approach helped.
Try it on another relevant task. Keep a local fix local until it proves useful as a recurring rule.
Record the date and replacement rule. Remove the outdated wording from the instructions your AI is actually using.
Review this project with me. Identify one reusable improvement supported by the versions or feedback we actually have. Separate an observed result from a hypothesis. Propose a short update to my creative instructions and show which old sentence it replaces. Do not claim to update my saved files, settings, or other AI tools unless you can actually do so.
When another person or AI joins the project, give them the current decisions instead of the entire chat history.
Use this handoff as the current working record. Briefly repeat the deliverable, protected details, and next step. Ask only about gaps that would change your work. Do not treat proposed decisions as approved. If another file conflicts with this record, point out the conflict before proceeding.
This is a BBB teaching workbook, not an official manual for the tools it mentions. Tool instructions were checked on 14 September 2026.
ChatGPT Projects • Adobe new documents • Adobe Place Embedded • Adobe Save your work • Higgsfield Nano Banana help. Click the links below.
Portfolio photographs were supplied by Ray. Layout comparisons are authored teaching reconstructions. They do not document a measured AI test, sales result, or a third-party endorsement.
Your brand choices, tool account, publishing destination, and approval. Proposed layouts and workbook palette values do not override your existing brand standards.
Choose an exercise, replace the wording, and add your own photo. Export a PNG to see it at its final size. These are practice layouts, not automatically approved brand designs.
The whole photo is fitted inside the panel. It is not redrawn. Use a product photo for an asset exercise or your approved character image for a commentary card.
Your typed wording and added photo are kept when you save the workbook. The PNG is a separate shareable image. Check it before publishing.