About · 2026
Daniel Quaresma Afonso.Founder, LukGud.
A one-person studio. No account managers in the way, no lost information.
Working as if things could last.
Every project is mine, from briefing to launch. No subcontracting, no hierarchies, no lost information. You talk to me, I talk to you.
01 — Manifesto
Working as if things could last.
I'm Daniel Quaresma Afonso, founder of LukGud. I trained across design, engineering, and writing — three disciplines that most studios divide between separate teams. At LukGud they remain under one practitioner, which is the foundation of how this studio operates.
I studied and trained across several technical disciplines. I spent years learning to code, to design, to write. In 2025, I realized that generative AI models had reached a point where execution speed was no longer the bottleneck — the bottleneck was taste, curation, and decision-making. And those I had cultivated my whole life.
I don't sell AI — I sell curation.
LukGud was founded on a clear position. Rather than competing on volume with twenty-person agencies, this studio competes on craft and price with the best independent studios working internationally. The result: projects that would once have required a full team, now delivered in weeks by a single practitioner.
Philosophy
Brass & Coal
Coal is the base — dense, sober, without noise. It is the quiet architecture that carries the work: clean code, structure, typography that asks for no attention.
Brass is the warmth — the heated detail, applied sparingly, at the exact moment. A single accent that lets the rest breathe. Never in excess; always intentional.
02 — Stack & approach
How I build.
The technical stack is modern but not experimental. Next.js 14+ App Router with TypeScript for all applications; Tailwind CSS for styling; Framer Motion and GSAP for animations; Sanity or Payload as CMS; Supabase or Vercel Postgres for database when applicable.
The workflow is AI-assisted — I use generative models to accelerate the mechanical part of the work (boilerplate, snippets, fast debug), but every architecture, design and product decision goes through my senior review. I don't sell AI — I sell curation.
The result: projects with quality indistinguishable from top studios, delivered in timelines that would once have been impossible, with full process transparency.
- Next.js 14+
- TypeScript
- Tailwind CSS
- Framer Motion
- GSAP
- Sanity / Payload
- Supabase
- Vercel
03 — Values
What's negotiable and what isn't.
- I
Honesty
If a project doesn't make sense, I say so. If a timeline is unrealistic, I say so. If a request is out of scope, I say so (and I quote it).
- II
Precision
Clear contracts, fixed quotes, committed timelines. The numbers on the site are the numbers on the invoice.
- III
Quiet quality
The best work doesn't draw attention to itself — it draws attention to the client's goal. That's the standard.