Jose Manuel Fernández · Designer since 1992
I built Sekondo to get more time to design.
Now I want to share it with fellow creatives.
01 Who is behind it
A designer who knows
the work from the inside.
I am Jose Manuel Fernández. I started in 1992, drawing comics and laying out pages in QuarkXPress, PageMaker and FreeHand.
Today I run Colectivo Zulú, a studio for graphic design, 3D architectural visualisation and digital set design, based in Málaga and Córdoba. I still work with clients, handle their changes and get deliveries out every day.
02 How it started
I built it for myself first.
The studio gets jobs that ask for the same operations over and over again. They are necessary, but they eat the hours I would rather spend thinking through an idea. I started developing Sekondo so it could take on part of that work inside my own documents.
It started with a layout artist’s habit: leaving eye-catching notes on the pages to remember what is still pending.
Those notes were already part of the way I work. The first thing I asked Sekondo to do was read them. From there, I kept widening what it could do.
03 Sharing the tool
Now I want to put it
in the hands of my peers.
Using it on my own projects, I began to see how far it could go.
The tasks that take my time are part of the daily work of a lot of creative professionals too. That is why I decided to share Sekondo with peers everywhere: so they can use it in their own work and bring needs and ways of working I have not come across yet.
Your messages come straight to me. Every suggestion helps me decide how to improve the tool, and whatever gets better, we both get to use.
After thirty-four years in the trade, I still want to design. And I want to spend more of my time doing it.
Acknowledgements-Sekondo would not have come this far without these people. Thank you.
- To Adobe Exchange and its technical team, for reviewing Sekondo app by app and opening the doors of their store. Being there is the best guarantee for whoever installs it, and something we are proud of.
- To Eva, my daughter, my best design and the only one I've never wanted to retouch. Thank you for your joy and for understanding my absence when I'm creating. You're the best thing I've ever signed. And to María del Mar, her mother, for her endless patience and for always having the strength and courage I sometimes lacked.
- To Somi, my rock and my inspiration: thank you for your unconditional support, for standing by me every step of the way, and for always reminding me why I do all this. This achievement is yours too.
- To Marta Aranda, our designer at Colectivo Zulú and my right hand: thank you for your excellent work, for listening to me step by step throughout this whole project, for always giving me your honest perspective, and for putting up with me through the hardest moments. You are a great designer and an even better colleague.
- To Domingo Merlín, for his encouragement and enthusiasm, for believing in me and in my design, and for offering his support for whatever this project needs. Some people push you forward without being asked. Thank you for being one of them, my friend.
- To Gràffica, one of the leading graphic design publications in Spanish, for their interest and for an interview grounded in the craft: for asking where the designer’s decision ends and execution begins, how you review the work of such a fast tool, why working on the original, editable file matters, what changes in our relationship with software, and what we do with the time we gain. Thank you for bringing that conversation to designers. Read the interview
- To Larry Jordan, for his time and for an interview that went beyond the product: the privacy of our projects, authorship of what we make with AI, and the future of the profession. Thank you for opening that conversation. Read the interview
- To Slanted, the German design and typography magazine, for an interview that went back to where it all began, and for calling Sekondo “the missing link” between AI and Adobe. Thank you for telling designers about it. Read the interview
- To El Club de la IA, for the live interview on how to bring ChatGPT and Claude into Adobe and the future of creative work with AI. Watch the interview
- To EIN Presswire, BetaList, FOROALFA, Motionographer, Córdoba Buenas Noticias, Córdoba Hoy, Blanco Sobre Negro, Foro3D, Digital Production, The Columbus Dispatch, Knoxville News Sentinel, Launchstag, The National Law Review, Middletown Life and Buswe, for helping us tell so many people about Sekondo.
The tools have changed. Now the way we work is changing.
The path that led me to Sekondo.