Design & Branding
Product design and brand identity grounded in research — interfaces that work as well as they look.
Design fails commercially in two directions. It can be decorative — attractive, award-adjacent, and confusing to use. Or it can be purely functional — usable, forgettable, and indistinguishable from every competitor. Work that converts sits between: distinctive enough to be remembered, conventional enough that nobody has to learn it.
Who this is for
Companies whose product is capable but hard to use. Businesses whose brand no longer matches what they have become. Teams where every screen looks slightly different because there is no system.
Problems we solve
- Users who cannot complete tasks. Interfaces designed around the database rather than the job.
- Inconsistency. Six button styles and four spacing scales across one product.
- Designs that cannot be built. Handoffs missing states, breakpoints and edge cases.
- Accessibility failures. Contrast, focus states and keyboard navigation ignored.
- Generic identity. Branding that could belong to any competitor.
What we build
- User research and usability testing with people who actually use the product
- Information architecture and user flows before any visual work
- Wireframes and interactive prototypes for testing ideas cheaply
- Design systems: tokens, components, spacing and typographic scales
- Brand identity — logo, palette, typography and usage guidelines
- Accessible design meeting WCAG 2.1 AA as a baseline
- Developer handoff including every state, breakpoint and edge case
How we work
We research before designing, because the most expensive design decisions are made confidently and early. Ideas are tested as prototypes rather than debated in meetings. Everything is delivered as a system, so the product stays coherent as it grows and developers are not inventing spacing values. Accessibility is a design constraint, not a remediation project.
Technologies we use
Figma for design and prototyping, design tokens shared between design and code, Tailwind CSS and shadcn/ui for implementation, and usability testing with real users.
Business benefits
- Users completing tasks without support, which reduces support cost
- Faster development, because a system removes per-screen decisions
- A product that is recognisably yours rather than template-shaped
- Wider reach and lower legal exposure from accessible design
Common questions
Do we need research if we know our users?
Teams consistently know their product better than they know how people use it. A small number of usability sessions reliably surprises everyone, and it is cheap relative to building the wrong thing.
Can you work with our existing brand?
Yes. Building a product design system within existing brand guidelines is common, and we can extend the brand where the guidelines do not cover interface needs.
What does handoff include?
Components with every state, responsive behaviour at each breakpoint, error and empty states, and design tokens developers can implement directly.
Product hard to use or brand out of date? Research is the cheap first step.