🤖 Building with AI: Mayor of Nowhere Goes Live
We built freeericadams.com with nothing but AI, Squarespace, and a rat with a picket sign. This one’s part satire, part build log, and part guerilla campaign manual.
🎨 Step 1: Laying the Foundation (Squarespace Setup)
Squarespace made this easy — we spun up freeericadams.com in under an hour. No custom coding needed, just a clean template that could hold bold cartoon visuals and merch integrations. The homepage is designed like a rally poster — bold headline, instant call-to-action, and plenty of space for ridiculous cartoon graphics.
🖌️ Step 2: Defining the Style Guide
We locked into a satirical cartoon vibe:
Lines: Bold black outlines
Colors: Flat, saturated fills (reds, yellows, deep blues)
Fonts: Chunky block type for slogans, clean sans-serif for site copy
Mood: NYC street sticker meets editorial cartoon
The style guide gave consistency across rat mascots, podiums, skylines, and eventually, QR codes slapped on street poles.
🐀 Step 3: Summoning the Characters
AI image generation gave us:
A scrappy NYC rat holding a sign that screamed “MAYOR OF NOWHERE.”
An empty cartoon podium and then podiums branded with our slogan.
A satirical Eric Adams sticker (suit, smile, outlines intact).
A cartoon NYC skyline (Empire State, Chrysler, WTC) with taxi cabs and rats running interference.
Each asset was refined, stripped of backgrounds for sticker-readiness, and saved as transparent PNGs for maximum deployment flexibility.
👕 Step 4: Merch on Demand (Squarespace + Printful)
Squarespace’s Printful integration = instant merch store. Within a day, we had:
Hoodies with the Mayor of Nowhere rat
Tees with the NYC skyline + rats
Stickers pulled straight from our PNG set
No bulk orders, no upfront inventory — just drop the art and let Printful handle the rest.
📱 Step 5: QR Codes as Street Portals
We generated a QR code for freeericadams.com, then cleaned it up into sticker style with a transparent background. Now, anyone with a phone and curiosity gets funneled into our cartoon political universe.
🧷 Step 6: Stickers for the Streets
Using VistaPrint, we took the rat, the podium, the skyline, and the QR code into physical form. The plan: guerrilla drops across subway stations, lamp posts, and coffee shop bathrooms. Nothing says “grassroots movement” like a 3-inch glossy vinyl of a cartoon rat claiming office.
🚀 Step 7: Guerilla Campaign Mode
Online: Satirical site + merch drop
Offline: QR code stickers linking back to site
Crossover: Social media memes seeded with the same visuals
We didn’t just build a website — we built a mini-movement powered by AI and a healthy dose of absurdity.
💪🏻 What Worked
AI generated cohesive visuals faster than any illustrator on deadline.
Squarespace + Printful = instant merch pipeline.
Transparent PNG stickers = street-ready assets.
⛔️ What Didn’t
Some AI generations gave us… oddities (rats with too many teeth, Adams with too much smile).
SEO is a constant uphill (but “Mayor of Nowhere merch” is now ours).
📝 The Takeaway
With AI, you can go from idea → site → merch → street campaign in a weekend. freeericadams.com isn’t just satire; it’s a proof-of-concept that AI lowers the barrier between a joke and a full-blown brand.
That’s a wrap on this build log. From idea to stickers on street poles, AI handled the heavy lifting — we just gave it the attitude.
👋 Until next time,
— Blue
👉 Want your own site spun up (no rats required)? Check out our Basic Website Package and let’s get you online fast.
