Brand rework · exploration · 26 Oct 2026

Una baraja,
dos colores.

kadabra is turning from an AI-workshop studio into a design studio that also teaches. This page is the deep dive before any code. It covers what leaves and what stays from the current site, one central idea, four directions, six live experiments, palettes, a site map with its scroll plan, a game list without risk, a copy bank in Spanish, research from five scouts, and the decisions I need from you.

Was it this chat? Yes. kadabracr.com serves the exact same files as kadabra-site.pages.dev, byte for byte, and both are built from this repo (kadabra-web). Every round of feedback, the spanish-unslop rules and the r19 changes live here, so the rework starts with all of that history.

One assumption. I read "car aesthetic" in your message as card aesthetic (voice dictation). The whole page is built on that reading. If you did mean cars, tell me and I'll redo the directions.

Black suits = the studio. Design and software, the tools we build.
Red suits = the people. Training, the team that learns to use them.
The card = kadabra. One deck needs both colours to be a deck.
Diagnosis

What leaves, what stays.

The casino doesn't come from the cards themselves. It comes from the felt, the gold, the risk language and the darkness around them. The scouts confirmed the cue list (dark felt, metallic gold, coins and crowns, red "bonus" urgency), and the current site has three of the four. Here is the inventory, item by item.

Leaves

  • Felt green and gold. These are the casino table itself. Gold also spends "reward" on footnote marks.
  • Fear copy. "Sin ayuda, tarde o temprano se paga", "Es peligroso sin ayuda", "Están tentando la suerte". It sells risk. The new brand sells today's tools working.
  • The hero shooting game. Phrases about leaked IDs and Hacienda fired at the visitor. It's fun to build and it frightens the buyer. Its craft can return in a friendlier game (see the games list).
  • "Reglas de la casa" and the gold seal. "La casa" is the casino's house. Same content, new name: "Las reglas de su equipo".
  • Smoke as a visual. "IA sin humo" stays as the workshop's name, but grey smoke drawn on screen is the opposite of friendly.
  • Dark as the default. Carbon and felt covered most of the page. Dark becomes one side of the duality, not the room.

Stays

  • The voice. Ustedeo, Costa Rican warmth, "con todo gusto los atendemos", and every spanish-unslop rule you corrected into it.
  • Cards and the four suits. They are the play, now without stakes. Red and black become the meaning.
  • Square to suit. The owned morph. It now forks: square to heart for people, square to spade for tools.
  • "¿Puede la IA encargarse de esto?" The swipe deck is learning, not betting. It moves to the training route.
  • Sourced numbers. 93%, 9%, +34%, 47%, with links. The framing turns from "tentando la suerte" to what a team gains.
  • Gabarito and Hanken Grotesk, the motion rules, routes and WhatsApp first. No flash, no scroll hijack, reduced motion respected, buyers book by message.
The central idea

A deck has two colours,
and so does kadabra.

Every deck is half red and half black, and neither half is a deck on its own. That's the business: a studio that builds tools, and a team that teaches people to use them. A deck is also the most familiar game object there is, and solitaire, memory, card tricks and flashcards all use one with no stakes. Kids learn to count with it. That's the friendly register you asked for.

Black. The studio.

State-of-the-art interfaces and internal tools, built fast because the studio works with AI, at a price a Costa Rican SME can pay, with support that stays after launch.

"Diseñamos las herramientas que su equipo usa todos los días."

Red. The people.

Training that is a game, not a lecture. Teams learn to use AI on their own work, with the risks shown honestly. "IA sin humo" stays the flagship workshop.

"Y le enseñamos a su gente a usarlas con criterio."

The AI shows up in how fast and how well the work gets done, never as a glowing orb.

Why it holds upNo competitor the scouts found gives both halves equal weight. Most bury training under the build offer, or the reverse.
Why it's friendlyRed and black on white is a child's deck, a flashcard, a school stencil. Felt and gold were the casino.
Why it scalesWhen kadabra adds more lines of work later, they become more suits or more cards. The deck grows, the brand doesn't break.
Experiment 1 · hero candidate

La carta de dos cabezas.

Court cards are drawn twice, once upright and once upside down, so they read from either side of the table. That is the duality in one object we already own. Scroll down, and the card turns half a circle. The black half reads first, then the red half comes up the right way.

StudioPeople
Estudio

Diseñamos las herramientas de su equipo.

Formación

Y le enseñamos a su gente a usarlas.

Baje para girar la carta

On the siteThe home hero. Header, card, one WhatsApp button. The card can tilt toward the pointer and settle when idle.
PhonesWorks as is. It's a vertical object and the scroll is the only input.
RiskA 180° turn costs about two screens of scroll. Past the hero, the page can't repeat it.
Experiment 2 · hero candidate, "a header that measures the duality"

La balanza.

Your words were a header that measures the duality. Here the header is a scale. Move the pointer (or drag on a phone) and one side grows while the other shrinks, with the reading on top. Let go and the needle returns to the middle, because kadabra works in the middle.

Tecnología de punta
Hecha por personas
Herramientas 50 · 50 Personas
On the siteThe home hero, or the strip between the two offers. The pairs could cycle slowly when idle.
PhonesDrag works. The words are long, so the phone version stacks the halves (top and bottom) instead.
RiskIt's a toy until it carries meaning. It needs the reading on top and the return to the middle, or it's just a before/after slider.
Experiment 3 · the bridge between both offers

Elija una carta.

The oldest card trick without stakes, and the kadabra name finally does work. Pick the task that takes your team the most time. The card turns over and shows both halves of the answer, what we would build and what we would teach.

Experiment 4 · the owned asset, forked

Cuadro a corazón, cuadro a pica.

The square-to-suit morph you already own, now with a meaning per side. Move across the row. On the left, ordinary work becomes a heart (taught). On the right, it becomes a spade (built). It's the same lerp, the same 24-curve paths and the same no-flash rule as the current site.

Enseñado, se vuelve corazónConstruido, se vuelve pica
Experiment 5 · "we work alongside the team"

Barajar.

A riffle shuffle is two half-decks becoming one. That's what working alongside a team looks like. The studio half and the people half interleave as you scroll until they are one deck. It's the visual for the "how we work" section.

Trabajamos al lado de su equipo, no por encargo y adiós.

EstudioLo que construimosPersonasLo que enseñamos
Experiment 6 · portfolio takeover (placeholder)

La carta se abre.

Your portfolio idea, where the work takes over the page. Each project is a card in the deck. As you scroll, its card opens to the whole screen and the page hands over its colours, type and motion to the project for a few screens, then the card closes back into the deck. I left the content empty on purpose. The blue and yellow belong to an imaginary client, to show the hand-off. The receipt in the corner is explained below.

Recibo de este trabajo
Tiempoespacio reservado
Lo que hizo la IAespacio reservado
Lo que hicieron personasespacio reservado
Quién lo revisóespacio reservado
Proyecto 1 · espacio reservado

Aquí entra el trabajo.

Desde este punto el proyecto manda. Sus colores, su letra y su movimiento ocupan la pantalla mientras se baja, y al terminar la carta se cierra y vuelve a la baraja.

The receiptEvery project shows how it was made. The studio's version of "IA sin humo": what the AI did, what people did, who checked. The idea comes from Mindset Consulting, which labels each AI illustration with its model and date. 2026 surveys show buyers penalize AI-generated work much more than AI-assisted work, so saying how it was used is the safe side.
PhonesThe takeover works the same. Each project needs its own phone composition when we build it.
Build costEach project is its own little site. Two or three strong ones beat eight thin ones. We fill these when you give me the work.
Four directions

Four ways to play the same deck.

All four keep the red and black duality and drop the casino. They differ in what kind of card the brand is. My pick is A as the base, with C's light-and-dark rhythm for the two routes. B and D are real options, but each pulls the brand to one side (school or toy).

Recommended

A · Baraja nueva

A brand-new deck. White card stock, real ink black, one warm red. Graphic, confident and very clean, so the portfolio can take over without fighting the frame.

Card
The double-ended court card. Every surface is half one colour, half the other.
Motion
Turning, dealing, shuffling. Physical card moves, nothing glows.
Risk
Red, black and white can turn harsh if the red spreads. Red stays the people's colour, never a warning.

Ficha de estudiola IA subraya, la persona decide

B · Ficha de estudio

The flashcard and the index card. White card, blue ruling, the red margin line, and a highlighter that stands for the AI (it marks, a person decides).

Card
A flashcard. Question on the front, answer on the back. Flipping is learning.
Motion
Lines that rule themselves, highlighter strokes, notes in the margin.
Risk
It's warm and very clearly "teaching", but it can feel like school and undersell the studio.
Día
Noche.

C · Día y noche

The two sides as two lights. Training lives in daylight, red on white. The studio lives at night, white on ink, where the portfolio glows by its own colours.

Card
Front and back of the same card. Crossing between routes flips the page.
Motion
The whole page turns from day to night as you move from people to tools.
Risk
Alone it's generic light-mode and dark-mode. It works as a rhythm inside A, not as a brand.

D · Juego de mesa

Tabletop and hanafuda pop. Vermilion, black and a sky blue, hard offset shadows, cards that sit up off the table. Nintendo began in 1889 making hanafuda cards, which is the closest story to kadabra's (cards first, then software).

Card
Thick game cards and pieces on a bright table.
Motion
Bouncy, snappy, very gamified.
Risk
The friendliest and the least premium. It reads as a toy brand for a buyer who pays for software.
Palette lab

Palettes, with their contrast checked.

Green and gold are gone. The red moved from a deep wine (#8E1424, the casino's) to a warm poppy red, friendlier and still readable as text. Bright reds fail as small text on white, so each palette carries two reds, one for text and one for big shapes. The ratios below are computed live (4.5 is the AA line for body text, 3 for large text).

Site map and scroll plan

Five routes, one deck.

Each section gets one card move with a reason. The black route and the red route mirror each other. The home page is where they shuffle together.

Inicio

/
  • Hero, the double-ended card or the scale.One sentence that holds both halves, one WhatsApp button. Scroll turns the card.
  • Two colours.The two offers as two half-decks. Each one deals its cards (what's included) as it enters. Equal weight, side by side on desktop, one after the other on phones.
  • Elija una carta.The trick. One problem from the visitor's week, answered by both halves.
  • Trabajos.The deck of projects. Each one opens to a full-screen takeover with its receipt. Empty until you hand me the work.
  • Barajar, how we work.The riffle. Building and teaching interleave, ending in one deck and the line about staying with the team.
  • Numbers, reframed.93% already save time, 9% have rules, taught teams do up to 34% more. Same sources, framed around what a team gains, not luck.
  • Close."Cuando ustedes quieran." The four suits settle into one card, and the WhatsApp button.

Estudio

/estudio · the black route
  • What we build.Internal tools, interfaces, websites. Each kind of work is a card with a small live demo on its face.
  • How fast, honestly.The AI boost shown as a timeline with receipts, never as sparkles. What took weeks and now takes days, and who checked it.
  • Accessible price, explained.Why it costs less (AI speeds up the build) and what doesn't get cheaper (support, review). Prices can wait until you want them shown.
  • Support that stays.The tool gets adjusted with the team after launch. This is where the red half appears inside the black route.

Formación

/formacion · the red route
  • IA sin humo.Today's workshop journey, rebuilt on white and red. The seven moments stay, the smoke drawing goes.
  • ¿Puede la IA encargarse de esto?The swipe deck, kept nearly as is.
  • Las reglas de su equipo.The old house-rules sheet, renamed and without the gold seal.
  • Then the tools.Where the black half appears inside the red route. After the workshop, the team can ask for the tool.

Trabajos

/trabajos
  • The full deck.Every project as a card. Opening one is the takeover from experiment 6, as its own page.

Fuentes

/fuentes
  • Unchanged in content.Every number with its source, in the new palette.
Games without risk

Card games where nobody loses money.

Every game on the site must teach something or show the work. None has a score, a winner or a penalty. The crossed-out ones are what the old site used, or what reads as betting.

Elija una carta

Home · built above

A magic trick that gives the visitor something useful. The name kadabra finally earns its place.

¿Puede la IA encargarse de esto?

Formación · keep

The swipe deck. Two piles, a note per card, no right answer. Already liked, already built.

Memoria

Estudio or a workshop teaser

Pairs that match a task with a tool. Each match turns over and tells you what the tool does. It teaches the catalogue.

Solitario de flujo

Estudio · "find the best workflow"

Drag the steps of a process into order, like patience. The game shows where a tool or the AI fits in the visitor's own flow. Finding workflows together is your phrase.

Barajar

Home · built above

Not a game but a card move. The visitor's scroll does the shuffle, so it feels played rather than watched.

Repartir

Everywhere

Lists that enter as dealt cards instead of fading in. The cheapest way to keep the whole site in the deck.

The shooting hero

Retire

Danger fired at the visitor. Good craft, wrong feeling for a friendly brand.

Chips, bets, odds

Never

No stakes, no "tentando la suerte", nothing that rewards luck over learning.

Scores and badges

Never

Points turn a lesson into a test. The swipe deck already proved the "no right answer" format works.

Copy bank, in Spanish

Frases para empezar.

Written under the spanish-unslop rules (ustedeo, full sentences, no dashes, no "sin" lists). These are starting points for you to rewrite, not final copy. A note on "vanguardia". "De vanguardia" is on the slop list, so the lines say what the tools do instead.

Diseñamos las herramientas de su equipo, y le enseñamos a su gente a usarlas.

The hero line, holding both halves. My first pick. It reads in two parts, like the double-ended card.

Hacemos la magia y le enseñamos el truco.

It extends your current tagline ("El truco no es la herramienta, es saber usarla"). It's a metaphor, so it works best as a second line or for LinkedIn.

No le vendemos el futuro, le vendemos lo que sirve hoy.

Your line from this brief, kept close to how you said it. It's a "no X, Y" contrast, so it should appear once, as the grounding statement.

Trabajamos rápido porque usamos IA, y trabajamos bien porque la revisan personas.

The AI boost, said plainly. Good for the studio route above the receipts.

Hacemos las herramientas junto con la gente que las va a usar.

For the studio route. I avoided "a la medida", which is kiub's line and the most common phrase in the Costa Rican market.

Cada trabajo trae su recibo, qué hizo la IA, qué hicieron personas y quién lo revisó.

Intro line for the portfolio. Note that it uses a comma where I'd normally use a colon.

Elija la tarea que más tiempo le quita a su equipo.

The instruction for the card trick.

Nos quedamos después de entregar, para ajustar la herramienta con su equipo.

Support, said as something that happens.

Mandarnos un mensaje es gratis, con todo gusto los atendemos.

Kept word for word from the current site.

Research · five scouts, 26 Oct 2026

What the scouts found.

Five read-only scouts searched the web in parallel. Treat their findings as leads. I've kept only what changes a decision, with links to what they actually opened.

Costa Rica, both sides of the market

  • kiub (Escazú) is the closest rival on the studio side. Its line is "Diseñamos software a medida, automatizamos procesos…". It publishes no prices and offers no training. kiub.co
  • None of the local builders the scout verified (kiub, Sweven, MiHost, Grupo Asesor) teaches AI, and none of the trainers (TEC, INA, CENFOTEC, Global Knowledge) builds tools. Doing both is open ground.
  • Dojo Coding / AvanteLab does both on paper, but sells to enterprises (its build slider runs $10K to $200K). dojocoding.io
  • Free programmes set the floor for "IA para pymes". Kolau with MEIC reached 1,256 companies by 1 Oct 2026, and INA's disruptIA is 95% subsidized. A workshop that ends with a working tool has no free equivalent.
  • No verified local studio publishes an entry price. Clutch minimums run $5K to $25K+, so "accessible" is credible only if it's shown.
  • Market clichés to avoid are "a la medida", "soluciones integrales", "transformamos", "potenciar" and "lleva tu marca al siguiente nivel".

Studios that teach and build

  • Of the ten sites that do both, most lead with the build side and push training into a menu item. None gives both offers equal weight, and none uses a toggle or a split.
  • DataNorth splits its menu into "Learn" and "Create", which is the plainest version of the duality. datanorth.ai
  • Thiga counts people trained inside its case cards, so training becomes visible proof. thiga.co
  • HatchWorks gives training a slot inside the build method (Decide, Build, Adopt). hatchworks.com
  • IDEO runs separate sub-brands (IDEO U to teach, IDEO AI). It's a warning for kadabra, because two names split a small studio's voice.
  • The scout found no Latin American firm that does both. (Clutch/LinkedIn not searched.)

AI-boosted without the slop

  • The 2025-2026 cliché lists name purple-indigo gradients, glowing orbs, three icon boxes, pulsing "Live" pills, wide-tracked eyebrows and "build the future" copy. prg.sh, Oct 2025 · noqta, Jun 2026
  • Mindset Consulting captions every AI illustration with its model, date and token count. "The caption stays. The artist changes." That's the source of the receipts idea. mindsetconsulting.com
  • "Human-made" badges get criticized as undefinable. Specific per-project statements hold up better. Bhargava · DesCan
  • Buyers in 2026 distrust AI-made marketing. 45% would trust a brand less (YouGov AU, May 2026), and 73% are less likely to trust a suspected AI ad (Harris/4As, Jun 2026). One unverified study says the penalty disappears when AI assisted rather than generated.
  • A counter-example to avoid is a brand calling itself "human-made" while using generative AI (Cadbury, per CSA). Receipts only work if they're true.

Cards without the casino

  • The casino cue list is dark felt, metallic gold, coins and crowns, red "bonus" urgency and roulette red-and-black cells. Red and black on their own aren't on it. 1000logos (blog)
  • Play and learning cues are flat colour with no metallic, illustration, visible labels (UNO's colour-blind symbols), and paper and print craft (Art of Play).
  • Hanafuda backs are plain red or plain black, and Nintendo was founded in 1889 to print them. Wikipedia
  • Why suits are red and black isn't documented well. The pigment-cost story (soot and cinnabar were cheap) is popular but unsourced, so it shouldn't go on the site as fact.

Award sites: duality, takeovers, decks

  • The scout couldn't verify any 2024-2026 award site built on a split or duality, or on a card deck. The Awwwards split-screen category stops at 2023. Either the lane is open, or it's out of fashion. I read it as open, because the duality here carries meaning and isn't a layout trick.
  • Emotion Agency (SOTD, 22 Oct 2026) pins five stacked scenes, and its copy runs on people and technology ("Build with people who care how things feel"). Awwwards
  • Brandon Yasin (SOTD, 24 Oct 2026) changes palette with the time of day, with a draggable clock. It's the nearest thing to direction C's day and night. Awwwards
  • The scout's headless browser couldn't scroll these sites, so the motion is described, not watched. I'd run motion-probe on them before copying any mechanic.

What this changed

  • The hero line keeps the teaching half in the same sentence, because the building half alone sounds like kiub.
  • Receipts became part of the portfolio spec.
  • Gold and felt are out with evidence, and red and black stay.
  • The logo's sparkle is flagged for later.
  • "Accessible" needs a visible entry offer, eventually.
Decisions for you

What I need from you before building.

  • Direction.A (my pick, with C's day and night per route), or another mix? You can also pick a hero separately, the double-ended card or the scale.
  • The names of the two halves.Estudio and Formación are plain. Other pairs are Herramientas and Personas, or Construimos and Enseñamos. The route names and the hero line follow from this.
  • The red.Poppy red (#C62A1F for text, #EC4433 for shapes) or something warmer or cooler? I'd test it on a phone in daylight before settling.
  • Receipts on every project.It's the strongest anti-slop move I found, but it means writing down honestly how each job was made. Are you comfortable showing that?
  • Gabarito, at more weights.Today it's 800 only. Opening 500 and 600 for subheads makes the brand friendlier. Keep the 800-only rule?
  • What leaves, for sure.The shooting game, the "modo muerto" lines and "tentando la suerte". Confirm they all go, or tell me which you want to keep.
  • Portfolio material.Which two or three projects go first, and do we have permission to show each one?
  • Skills for the build.You mentioned skills you'll give me later. Once I have them, the plan above turns into phases.