A small room in Berlin. Twelve seats around one long table. The kind of space where conversations slow down enough to be useful.
A half-day workshop in Berlin for freelancers and solo studios who want to bring AI into the work — without losing the work.
Next session: June 18, 2026 | 10:00 - 14:00 | Berlin
AI isn't coming for design — it's already here, and most designers are either avoiding it or using it badly. The risk isn't being replaced. It's slowly losing the taste, judgment, and fundamentals that make design worth paying for, while colleagues who learned to work with AI pull ahead.
This workshop is for designers who want to start, properly. Four hours, hands-on, in-person, in Berlin. We cover how to fold AI into your practice without losing the craft.
You'll set up a working stack. You'll prompt against a real brief. You'll rebuild a piece of your own work using the AI-augmented process. And you'll leave with something portfolio-able to show for it.
Introduction round with all participants
The foundation. How to write prompts that produce work you can actually use, and a guided tour of the tools worth knowing in 2026.
A working session. You'll set up the same stack we uses in studio, applied to a real piece of your own work.
Where AI fits across research, exploration, systems, copy, prototyping, and handoff — and where it shouldn't. Walked through on a real project.
The deliverable. Pick one stage of a real design problem and rebuild it using the AI-augmented process. You'll produce a portfolio-ready piece of work, a documented process, and a short reflection.
Share your work. See what your peers built. Ask anything. We close with a clear map of how to keep going after today.
A small room in Berlin. Twelve seats around one long table. The kind of space where conversations slow down enough to be useful.
You'll recognise yourself in one of these — probably more than one.
You've been freelancing for years. The work is good, the clients trust you. But you've been watching the AI conversation from a distance and you're starting to wonder if the gap is widening.
You run a one-person studio. More clients, more deliverables, not enough hours. AI feels like the obvious answer — but you don't want to use it in a way that costs you the quality your clients hired you for.
You've watched three AI cycles come and go. You're skeptical of breathless takes and "this changes everything" essays. You want a calm, practical answer to what actually works in real client work.
Across every format — fundamentals first, AI second, shipping always.
Claude or ChatGPT, Figma's AI tools, and one or two specialist tools — chosen for your workflow, not the latest announcement. Configured during the day. Yours to keep.
Worked through your own real projects. The places it earns its place; the places it gets in the way; the decisions still worth making by hand.
Not abstract demos. Real workflows for the kinds of tasks freelancers and solo studios actually face — proposals, moodboards, design systems, client revisions.
Hi, I'm Maxime 👋
I've been designing and building for the web since the late 2000s — through Flash, through skeuomorphism, through flat design, through the Material era, through the design systems boom, and now through whatever this AI moment turns into.
I came up as a designer who codes, which back then was unusual and now is just useful. That's shaped how I work and how I teach: not as a designer who hands off to engineers, but as someone who understands what happens on both sides of the line.
House of Maestro is what I built when I realized the thing I wanted to spend the next decade doing was teaching this craft to other designers — without losing my hands-on practice in the process.
Across every format — fundamentals first, AI second, shipping always.
That's exactly who this workshop is for. About half the room usually arrives in the same place.
Both can get value. The framing is "first proper hour designing with AI" — beginners get a structured starting point, intermediates get a working setup and process they didn't have before. Senior designers tend to value the framework for where AI belongs across the design process.
A laptop with Figma installed, a project you're currently working on (or recently finished), and an open notebook.
No. The free tier covers everything we do in the workshop. Pro is recommended if you plan to keep using Claude after — but it's not a requirement to participate.
Full refund up to 7 days before the workshop. After that, we can transfer your seat to a future cohort.
Yes, regularly. The newsletter usually announces them first, including early-bird pricing and waitlist priority for past attendees.
Weekly notes on design, AI, and the craft of doing both well. Written from a working practice, not a content calendar. Subscribers get early access to courses, special discounts and the occasional resource we don't publish anywhere else