Pragmatiko

Andrea Nieto (Pragmatiko) - Creative technologist and innovation leader who transforms ideas into reality.

About

Andrea Nieto is a creative technologist with roots in apparel design and textiles. Her journey spans from crafting physical objects to shaping digital futures, weaving together strategy, storytelling, and human insight to bring bold visions to life.

Her creative path began in fashion and jewelry design before evolving into 9 years of innovation at Adidas, where she led a multidisciplinary design team reimagining the future of sport through apparel, footwear, and digital experiences. In her final chapter at Adidas, she led the brand's breakthrough into Web3, architecting new product categories while guiding the organizational transformation needed to embrace blockchain technology.

This led her to explore Web3's potential with WAGMI United, followed by work at Lululemon shaping the future of their footwear line with new IP and strong design language to shape their brand identity.

Currently exploring the convergence of AI, design, and music, with a focus on building AI agents that push creative boundaries.

Approach: Start with wonder. Ask why. Ask why again and then make ideas reality.

Manifesto

  • Embrace Wonder: Believe in the power of magic and wonder as catalysts for creation. Work begins with curiosity and maintains the fresh perspective of a child discovering the world anew.
  • Build Universes: Beyond creating objects, craft new narratives and experiences. Meaningful creation lives in the space between disciplines, where stories, languages, and universes intersect.
  • Create with Purpose: Building begins with a clear why and who, letting tools reveal the how. Every challenge becomes an opportunity to solve meaningful problems.
  • Practice Rebirth: By holding softly who I am, my experience and my knowledge - I am able to become someone new tomorrow through curiosity and a constant desire for learning.
  • Pursue Depth: With relentless curiosity, ask "why" until uncovering some essential truth. Creation emerges from exploring the layers beneath the surface.
  • Honor Legacy: Our transient nature fuels urgency to create with courage and purpose. Leave behind not just things, but positive impact in the world.

Knowledge Areas

  • AI Exploration and Implementation
  • Storytelling
  • Creative Direction
  • Creative Strategy
  • Innovation Strategy and Portfolio
  • Culture & Team Building
  • Product Design
  • Footwear and Apparel Design
  • Digital Design
  • Advanced Product Manufacturing
  • Design Research & Insights
  • Marketing & Communications
  • Web3

Selected Work

Tomorrow Index (Personal Project)

A design practice exploring new aesthetics and the creation of new universes, expressed through first-person investigation logs documenting a journey to the future. Through clinical observations and field notes, examines emerging technologies, physical adaptations, and temporal anomalies. Role: Creator

STRUNG Technology (Adidas)

Co-invented STRUNG, Adidas's new textile manufacturing method that leverages robotics and athlete data. Every thread is individually selected and data mapped to create the most tuned footwear upper. The method uses only what is necessary, informed by athlete data. Enables yarns to be placed in any direction, allowing creation of a high-definition textile fine-tuned by designers, engineers and sports scientists. Role: Co-inventor of STRUNG Technology, innovation footwear designer for Futurecraft Strung, Prime X Strung. Creator of new IP for the brand.

Into the Metaverse (Adidas)

Led the team that earned board approval to transform Adidas' digital future. Partnered with cultural pioneers Gmoney, Bored Ape Yacht Club, and Pixel Vault. The initiative expanded Adidas into digital goods, establishing groundbreaking business capabilities including cryptocurrency ownership and revenue-share model with perpetual royalties. Delivered 30,000 NFTs, digital and physical products for cross-reality experiences. Initial launch on December 17th, 2021 generated $23.5 million in total sales. Role: Concept innovation, creative strategist, token economy and financial modeling, art direction, marketing and comms, partnerships. Creator of Indigo Herz (adidas BAYC). Named first inventor of adidas' first blockchain interaction patent.

Prime X Strung (Adidas)

First commercial application of STRUNG technology - high-performance shoe for long-distance running. Patrick Lange set the fastest Ironman marathon time of 2:30:32 wearing Prime X Strung in November 2022. Role: Co-creator of Strung Technology, upper Strung textile design and footwear designer. Creator of new IP for the brand.

Virtual Gear (Adidas)

Created Adidas' first digital-native fashion collection - a 16-piece collection designed specifically for virtual worlds and avatars, engineered to be interoperable across multiple platforms. Role: Creative Strategy and Creative Direction, concept art & digital apparel design.

WAGMI United

Built the "Internet's Team" - acquired Crawley Town FC to revolutionize sports fandom through blockchain technology. Secured partnership with Adidas. In May 2024, Crawley Town FC secured promotion to League One after victory at Wembley Stadium. Delivered a 10,000 NFT collection featuring unique, fully-rigged 3D avatars with custom character and garment designs in under 2 months. Role: Global Creative Director, concept design, creative strategy, Communications, Marketing and Community.

Stay in Play (Adidas)

Led year-long field research study on barriers preventing women from participating in sports. Developed leak-proof menstrual shorts that manage sweat and let athletes focus on performance. Role: Design research, garment design following consumer insight and movement data.

Skeletal Weave (Adidas)

Introduced revolutionary textile technology for footwear by leveraging leno weaving techniques. Created an upper construction delivering exceptional strength with minimal weight. Technology applied across football, running, and basketball. Role: Discovery and optimization of leno weave technology for footwear applications. Lead designer for football, running and basketball innovation concepts. New IP for the brand.

Colombia World Cup Jersey 2018 (Adidas Originals)

Designed Colombia's World Cup limited edition capsule collection, drawing inspiration from Colombia's iconic 90s kits with tribute to Andrés Escobar (jersey number II). Role: Lead designer for Colombia's 2018 World Cup Originals capsule collection.

Futurenatural (Adidas)

Personal project exploring efficient and automated shoe creation by combining small circular knit upper and direct injected PU midsole. Uppers created in under 5 minutes, full size run requiring only 4 different sizes of socks. Evolved into a new brand franchise. Role: Innovation concept, research and development, innovation footwear design. Creator of new IP for the brand.

Personal Artwork

Creator of various artwork projects.

AI Exploration - Creative Coding

Explorations in creative coding with AI including: Fibonacci spiral, Hairlines, Vector Fields, Cloth simulation, Advanced Cloth Simulation, Ball bouncing inside a Tessaract, and Organic Strands.

Blog - Thoughts (Full Content)

AI as Exocortex: Navigating the Uncharted Mind (March 2025)

Human minds naturally shy away from cognitive dissonance, the tension of holding conflicting ideas, because it feels unsettling and is metabolically expensive. Evolution favored quick, consistent thinking for survival, leaving us wary of contradictions. Artificial intelligence, however, offers a remarkable ally, functioning as an exocortex—a mental extension that bolsters our capacity. It can explore these uncomfortable spaces without emotional strain or the need to resolve them immediately. By acting as a steady guide, AI allows us to step into these avoided zones, broadening our perspectives and fostering new ways of thinking that were once out of reach.

Ideas Have Mass (February 2025)

Ideas have mass—not in some mystical sense, but in the most direct and physical way possible. The reality you're experiencing right now is constructed in your mind, built from neural patterns, memories, and sensory inputs. Thoughts are patterns of neural activity, consuming energy and generating measurable electromagnetic fields. Just as water transforms from solid to liquid to gas, consciousness moves through states: individual neural patterns → collective electromagnetic fields → digital information flows.

The noosphere, proposed by Vladimir Vernadsky, suggests that just as life created the biosphere, human thought creates its own sphere of influence. Modern neuroscience supports this—our neural networks generate measurable electromagnetic fields that extend beyond our skulls. AI enters as a new force in this landscape, accelerating reality co-creation. Large Language Models don't just reflect our ideas—they amplify and reshape them in a self-perpetuating loop.

The real question isn't whether thoughts create reality. The question is: what reality are we choosing to compile? (Co-written with Claude)

Money Was Just Bad Compression (November 2024)

What if every economic system was just a compression algorithm? Barter compressed value into things we could hold. Money compressed value into numbers we could count. Markets compressed value into prices we could track. Crypto compressed value into code we could verify. The next breakthrough: Tokenization splits value into liquid pieces. AI handles what our minds never could. Finally, value breaks free from human bandwidth. Welcome to the new paradigm.

Why Digital Agents Matter More Than You Think (October 2024)

In 1995, getting online meant listening to dial-up tones. In 2024, we're having conversations with AI agents who have their own digital wallets and fan clubs. This isn't just another tech trend; it's a fundamental shift—the natural evolution from passive tools to active participants.

Milestones in AI agent evolution: Personality Development (Truth_Terminal showed us what personality-first AI could look like), Digital Wallets (Luna_Virtuals marks the next leap with tipping followers with tokens), and Multi-Channel Presence (AI agents moving across text, visual, and financial engagement).

AI agents will redefine how we engage with digital services across social media, gaming, internet culture, finance, healthcare, and education. The question remains: Will AI agents evolve and redefine digital interaction, or will they succumb to the meme token trend and lose credibility?

Poems (Full Collection)

Language me

Language, me. Words only incommunicate me. And I am I a m I a m more of the type that likes to fight with the semantics of my own heart.

In no particular order

I have realized that the syntax of my thoughts, create my world. And I rather be free. Escape looks a lot like mute words and loud colors. My preferred pharmakon is a violent symphony of color.

I epitomize her

Suppose I were to begin by saying I have become submissive—to humans, to their ideas of time and language. I get puzzled by words and lost in time. I have stopped thinking about the past because pain doesn't know time and I don't have the language to communicate to my heart. I, I, I epitomize her mystery.

"Yeah right"

How often do you get hyperbolic thoughts? I usually observe and let go, but lately I am like a drug sniffing-dog in search for the high. Straightforwardly an urge to hunt for thought, to hunt for word. An oxymoron—my heart says "left," my thoughts say "yeah right."

this time I won't hydroplane

Maybe this time I won't hydroplane. How easy is it to lose control following the foolish wisdom of our hearts. I agree, I follow, I compromise. My thoughts have a host called lust, coexisting in mutualistic relationship—pushing, turning, touching, feeling. A part-time slave, the kind that believes it has free will. A monumental deception. I romanticize.

How much information?

Let's play a game. Let me ask you—how much of pain do you think is self inflicted? I heard someone say "pain is not a limit, it is just information." Self imposed barriers of thought, subconscious, engraved & part of our collective memories. Inherited frameworks, frames, edges, boundaries, jails. I would like to be free—and if you think you already are, then you can never escape. May I ask... how much information are you willing to provide yourself with?

Homeostasis

She requests amnesia. Silence speaks too loud when first Truth awakes. It is true truth, Absence has created a song. Sounds in the in-betweens and breathing in her words fill her heart too full: Homeostasis.

Modern heretic

A voting of feelings has happened and a consensus has been reached. Loud silence is the winner. That of which we cannot speak, it is best to remain silent, and I agree. I feel every letter like a modern heretic that has been red-pilled. Your name Jolene and I have nothing to do. My blues bleed.

Mecer

Mecer: Holding each other, carrying each other. A balance of love, a movement. Rocking softly, forwards forward, backwards backward, creating soft waves. Finding care from within, minding flesh and touch, an apotheosis of understanding. Compassion and care, taking for another self and discovering care for oneself.

Excerpt I

My pen aligns with my heart, and both of them in a forever bar fight with my mind. My red pen likes chaos, messiness, lack of structure, free will, run on sentences, and using my skin as paper. Excerpt II: putting together words in a way that can be best described as some metaphorical cryptic bullshit from hell. Excerpt III: and once in a while this is exactly what I need. And while I have your attention, do you like desire for desire itself? But what's hunger when you are already full.

Unboxed

In the making of this end, I find myself being a box of contradictory possessions. That is what my body is made out of, an assemblage of random parts and bits. A skinless shell that covers all the parts that I don't even have name for. Magniloquently all working together in this mess that I make of life. And if you meet me you'll realize some parts are broken, some are bruised with errors and guilt. Pieces of self, floating, drifting, separating. The cause of damage is known and classified as self-made self-destruction. And my body knows well how to tell me I am hurting. I internally bleed this mute, medium, vivid yet dull blue—somewhere between indigo and ultramarine, maybe my own cyanide, the type that can kill you. I swim deep in my blues.

You

You will remember where and I will remember why. Forcing my heart to not keep too much, to not get stuck, keeping bits, playing one with time. Stillness is the only path I know to strip from time mementos of you.

The Voyage

If you look long enough, if you search long enough, there's a chance you will end up feeling lost looking for yourself. Trying to find yourself—where did you put yourself? And if you think a mirror will be of help, I say don't let it fool you. A reflection is an image distorted by the mind, a virtual representation of self. To look for self one has to explore within, a place where no mirror can help. To find oneself is to lose oneself—to release ideas we hold, to emancipate from installed dogmas, to leave memories untouched, to even forget of our corporeal vessel, to let go of everything. Until our own muteness speaks loud, truth from our unknowable essence finding its own way back to us. The magic of finding what you can never cage, what you can never permanently hold—that magic that you only find when you lose it all.

I want to proceed

Demiurge of my own story. You know what I have been up to? Entering the labyrinth named: my own making. And figuring my way out of it—out of my own theories and constructs, out of the things I tell myself, out of the narrow reality I perceive. How can one exit oneself? A temporal but complete exile from self, a pulverization of paths. Dear Truth, true me, show me the way. I want to proceed.

Nice to meet you

I exist, now, in this exact moment, in a million different ways. I am my actions, my thoughts, the person who I believe I am and the one that people think I am. Along the way, every person I meet creates a version of me—one I will never fully know. Perhaps I wouldn't even understand her. She is someone I will never be able to modify at my own will. Immutable, even, captured by the timestamp of others.

I exist today in many ways: I am words, I am sounds, I am thoughts and images. I am a smell. A feeling. I exist as energy, both in tangible and intangible ways. I exist as a seed, an initial thought that gets shaped by you, contextualized. And in a way, the moment you add all of that I am to you, I also become part of you—yours, of your own making. For you become the gardener, yielding a crop. A product of a variety of factors and the collision of our worlds. Soil and sun. Water and Earth. You, and me. Nice to meet you, my name is Andrea.

Press & Media

  • Dezeen Interview | Adidas STRUNG
  • Wired Interview | Adidas STRUNG
  • Highsnobiety Interview | Adidas STRUNG
  • If Not Now Then When Podcast Interview | Adidas STRUNG
  • Vogue Business Interview | Adidas Into the Metaverse
  • Adidas | Into the Metaverse Press Release
  • Designboom Interview | Adidas Into the Metaverse
  • Bloomberg Article | WAGMI United
  • New York Times | WAGMI United

Patents

Multiple patents as inventor Andrea Nieto. Search: https://patents.google.com?inventor=ANDREA%20NIETO

Links

Contact

For inquiries about work or collaboration, use the contact form at https://www.pragmatiko.me/about