{ "about": "Structured data behind the WebMCP tools on iwooten.com. Generated from the pages; the pages are canonical.", "updated": "2026-10-02", "person": { "name": "Isaac Wooten", "headline": "At Google, I lead design. On my own, I build companies. Either way, I ship.", "title": "Sr. Staff UX Design Manager, Google (BigQuery and Google Cloud’s AI tools)", "ventures": "Founder of Digital Pool; co-founder and CTO of HangarX and Northlit", "location": "Northwest Arkansas", "availability": "Not stated on the site. Ask Isaac directly." }, "contact": { "email": "i.wooten@gmail.com", "book_a_call": "https://calendly.com/i-wooten/30min", "linkedin": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/levid", "github": "https://github.com/levid", "x": "https://x.com/iwooten", "site": "https://iwooten.com" }, "case_studies": [ { "slug": "google", "title": "Google", "url": "https://iwooten.com/work/google", "summary": "Twelve years designing Google Cloud, and today I lead the team behind BigQuery’s AI-native tools.", "signals": [ { "value": "7", "label": "Products designed from zero" }, { "value": "Sr. Staff", "label": "UX Design Manager" }, { "value": "5 → 11", "label": "Team grown, at peak" }, { "value": "14", "label": "Features to GA in three quarters" } ], "overview": "BigQuery is where companies keep their data, and getting answers out of it has always meant hand work: SQL for every question, a pipeline for every new source, time spent hunting for nulls and PII. I lead the design team building agentic BigQuery, so engineers and business users alike can ask their data a question in plain language and let an agent do the heavy lifting around it.", "result": "Agentic BigQuery, BigQuery Studio and the Data Agent Kit are live on a top-3 revenue product in Google Cloud. They were built by a team I grew from five to eleven, and the patterns we set have been adopted across the org. Further back, Cloud Logging, which I designed from zero in 2014, is among the most used products in the console today.", "sections": [ { "id": "designing-agentic-bigquery", "label": "Designing agentic BigQuery", "text": "Getting an answer out of a warehouse shouldn’t require writing SQL.\nBigQuery’s promise is one place for all your data: connect your other sources to the warehouse and everything lives together. The cost has always been the hand work in between. Every question meant a SQL query written by hand; every new source meant a pipeline built by hand; every messy table meant hunting for nulls, PII and inconsistencies yourself.\nAgentic BigQuery lets people talk to their data. Ask a question in plain language and get an answer, and let the agent do the heavy lifting around it: migrating data, setting up pipelines, cleaning tables and flagging PII, nulls and inconsistencies before they cause trouble. The goal is that technical and non-technical people alike can get from a question to an insight without writing a line of SQL.\nBefore\nWrite the SQL by hand\nBuild each pipeline yourself\nHunt for nulls, PII and bad rows\nGet an answer, if you know SQL\nWith the agent\nAsk in plain language\nThe agent plans the query or pipeline\nYou review what it proposes\nIt runs, and flags what looks wrong\nYou\nAsk the question, in your own words\nDecide what matters and what the answer is for\nReview and approve changes to data and pipelines\nThe agent\nTurn the question into SQL and run it\nMigrate data and set up pipelines\nClean tables, and flag PII, nulls and inconsistencies\nBring other sources into the warehouse\nThe hard part: one product has to serve the engineer who lives in SQL and the business user who has never written a query. The same question has to come back at the right depth for each of them, with the agent’s work visible to the one who wants to check it and out of the way for the one who just wants the answer." }, { "id": "how-i-led-it", "label": "How I led it", "text": "I took the team over at a hard moment. The org was mid-reorg, the team had lost people, and its work was invisible to the leadership deciding the roadmap.\nThree things fixed it, and the order mattered.\n1 · Direction\nI ran a week-long vision sprint for a platform-unification effort with one job: a north star, named personas and real customer journeys that UX, product, engineering and docs had all agreed to. Agreement on the problem is the expensive part of design; once you have it, most of what follows is cheap.\n2 · Visibility\nI put the team's work in front of senior engineering and product leadership on a fixed weekly cadence, and set up a standing cross-functional group so information could move without me in the room. Design that nobody senior has seen does not get built, however good it is.\n3 · An operating layer\nThen the things that make a team run: one project tracker that engineering and product treated as the source of truth, engagement models so every partner team knew what support it had and how to ask for more, a shared capacity planner, and an onboarding document that made a new designer useful within days.\nThe team grew, its work landed in the roadmap, and I stopped being the bottleneck. A team in trouble usually does not need better taste. It needs a direction it believes in and an audience that can see it.\nBeyond my own org, I led a six-month design collaboration across BigQuery, the streaming products and the Cloud Setup team that removed real friction from onboarding and unlocked new roadmap areas and additional funding for a partner team ." }, { "id": "products", "label": "Products", "text": "Seven of these I designed from zero: Cloud Logging, Cloud Trace, Cloud Profiler, Cloud Debugger and Security Command Center in the Stackdriver years, then Managed Service for Apache Kafka and BigQuery Engine for Apache Flink.\nMost of what my team is building now is unreleased: the agentic Data Cloud, and the future of BigQuery Studio, Conversational Analytics, BigQuery Graph, the Data Agent Kit and the Gemini Enterprise integrations. Below is every product I have led or shaped that Google documents publicly, linked to the real thing.\nNow · Data Cloud, 2022 to present\nBigQuery and BigQuery Studio\nThe console surface my team designs: Explorer, SQL, notebooks, data canvas, pipelines and Gemini assistance in one workspace over the same data.\nBigQuery ↗ BigQuery Studio docs ↗\nBigQuery Studio today.\nCode composition, completion and chat with Gemini in BigQuery. Google Cloud blog.\nProactive agentic workflows in BigQuery. Google Cloud blog.\nGemini Enterprise\nGoogle's agentic platform for the workplace, and my team owns the part where it meets the Data Cloud, so answers and actions are grounded in BigQuery.\nGemini Enterprise ↗\nData Agent Kit for VS Code\nData agents inside the editor: plain-language questions, SQL or Python over BigQuery, and pipelines built and deployed without leaving VS Code.\nData Agent Kit docs ↗\nData Apps for Notebooks\nA notebook analysis becomes a shareable, managed app: pick the cells, publish, and hand the business team something they can use instead of a screenshot.\nData Apps docs ↗\nManaged Service for Apache Kafka, and BigQuery Engine for Apache Flink\nThe two streaming products I led design on from zero: Kafka end to end from MVP and now generally available, Flink serverless stream processing in preview. Both were built inside a large org with an existing roadmap, which is a different skill from founding something.\nManaged Kafka ↗ Flink announcement ↗\nDataflow and Pub/Sub\nI designed more than twenty features across the two, fourteen of which reached general availability inside three quarters, plus the Pub/Sub and Managed Kafka integrations into BigQuery.\nDataflow ↗ Pub/Sub ↗\nThen · Cloud Diagnostics and platform, 2014 to 2021\nCloud Logging\nDesigned from zero in the Stackdriver years: a query, a histogram of volume over time, and the entries underneath. The 2019 and 2020 shots are as I shipped it; the first is the surface today. It rolled into Cloud Operations and is among the most used products in the console.\nCloud Logging ↗\nLogs Explorer today. Google Cloud documentation. Logs Explorer, 2019, as shipped. Logs Explorer, 2020, as shipped.\nCloud Trace\nDistributed tracing, designed from zero alongside Cloud Profiler: the trace list, the waterfall and the daily analysis reports, with the heatmap as the explorer today.\nCloud Trace docs ↗\nTrace Explorer today. Google Cloud documentation. The waterfall, 2016. Overview and daily analysis reports, 2016. The trace list, 2016. Analysis reports, 2016.\nError Reporting and Cloud Debugger\nError Reporting grouped, counted and trended errors so the one that mattered surfaced first; the Debugger, which I designed from zero, took snapshots in production without stopping anything.\nError Reporting docs ↗\nError Reporting, 2016, as shipped. Cloud Debugger, 2016, as shipped.\nSecurity Command Center\nThe security posture of a whole organization on one page, designed from zero while the product was still finding its shape. That v1 has since grown into a large suite of security products.\nSecurity Command Center ↗\nFindings, 2018. Assets, 2018.\nNetwork Topology\nA live graph of the network and the traffic moving through it, with insights on the edges and a detail panel that turns a node into something you can act on. The same design later carried into Anthos Service Mesh.\nNetwork Intelligence Center ↗ Cloud Service Mesh ↗\nNetwork Topology, the network visualised with insights. Google Cloud blog. Egress traffic breakdown. Google Cloud blog. Auditing with a filter. Google Cloud documentation.\nOnboarding and the setup checklist\nGrowth UX for the console: an organization's first hour, written as a checklist a new administrator could actually finish. A later six-month collaboration on this journey, across BigQuery, the streaming products and Cloud Setup, unlocked new roadmap areas and additional funding for a partner team.\nSetup checklist ↗\nThe setup overview, 2020. Identity and organization, 2020. Resource hierarchy, 2020.\nProduct icons are Google Cloud's official icons. Screenshots are Google Cloud's, from its public documentation and from the product as it shipped at the time, framed here to show work I led. For the unreleased work I can talk through process, decisions and tradeoffs in a conversation, within what I am allowed to say. Book thirty minutes ↗ ." }, { "id": "role", "label": "Role", "text": "I have been at Google for twelve years, across three offices and seven teams, and went from individual contributor to design manager along the way. Today I lead the developer-experience design team in Data Cloud: BigQuery, Gemini Enterprise, BigQuery Studio, Databases Studio, the Data Agent Kit for VS Code and Data Apps for Notebooks.\nMy depth is data and big-data tooling , and at the center of it sits BigQuery , a Gartner Magic Quadrant leader and a top-3 revenue product in Google Cloud. Data is the substrate of modern AI, and the analysts and engineers who work with it are exactly who the agentic era has to serve well.\nStill technical\nI still read the code and the Figma before I weigh in. It makes my calls faster and more specific, and engineers can tell the difference.\nGrowing designers\nI grew the team from five to eleven, and hiring was the easy half. The harder half is the mentoring and calibration that mean people leave more senior than they arrived.\nDirection over decisions\nI give the team sharp intent and a high bar rather than my sign-off on every screen. A clear direction scales to eleven designers; a queue outside my door does not.\nInfluence at scale\nDesign lead in an org of several thousand people, where nobody is obliged to take your advice. Landing work at that scale means building the case until the right thing is also the obvious thing.\nMost of what ships is designed by the team, not by me: the surfaces have owners, and those owners make the calls. I keep the first pass at whatever does not exist yet. The team is six senior-and-above designers today, most with more than five years at Google, and in a discipline where two years is a normal tenure that retention is the number I am proudest of. Their names are theirs to publish; ask me and I will tell you who did what." }, { "id": "ai-native-every-surface", "label": "AI-native, every surface", "text": "Agentic tools have to follow the developer wherever the work happens, so we design for every surface they use.\nFive surfaces, one agentic core. The developer moves; the agent follows." }, { "id": "brand-world", "label": "Brand world", "text": "Google Cloud's brand DNA, locked and rendered across surfaces: product UI, out of home, data visualisation and the data story itself. Studies I made with my own tool, not Google's work, and the marks are Google's." }, { "id": "career-arc", "label": "Career arc", "text": "Pixels first, then patterns, then people. Twelve years, from IC to manager:\nSr. Staff UX Design Manager Data Cloud UX from Jul 2026 · team of 11, 6 today\nNov 2024–Present\nUX Team Lead / Manager BigQuery UX & BigQuery Experience, lead · team grown to 11\nMar 2024–Nov 2024\nStaff UX Design Lead Data Analytics UX, lead\nOct 2023–Mar 2024\nStaff UX Designer Data Analytics · Streams & Lakes\nFeb 2022–Oct 2023\nStaff Interaction Designer / UX Engineer Google Cloud\nJul 2018–Jun 2021\nStaff UX Architect Google Cloud Platform\nJan 2016–Jul 2018\nSenior Interaction Designer Stackdriver · Cloud Diagnostics\nMar 2014–2016\nThe team ran at eleven from 2024 until November 2025 and is six senior-and-above designers today, after company-wide layoffs. The months between 2021 and 2022 are LunarCrush, where I went full-time as Chief Design Officer before returning to Google in February 2022 on the streaming products. Lead of the Data Analytics UX team from October 2023, of BigQuery UX from March 2024, and of Data Cloud UX from July 2026." }, { "id": "scope", "label": "Scope", "text": "Products I led or oversaw design for, with research, engineering and product.\nData & analytics\nBigQuery\nGemini Enterprise\nBigQuery Studio\nAgentic BigQuery\nDatabases Studio\nData Agent Kit (VS Code)\nData Apps for Notebooks\nDataflow\nDataproc\nDataform\nDataplex\nComposer\nPub/Sub\nKafka\nFlink\nSpark\nObservability, security & platform\nCloud Trace\nCloud Profiler\nCloud Debug\nCloud Logging\nError Reporting\nCloud Security Command Center\nNetwork Topology → Anthos Service Mesh\nTerraform Blueprints & onboarding\nCritical User Journeys (GCP)\nPerceived-performance patterns\n3rd-party auth & data regionalization\nCapabilities\nDesign leadership & management\nUX architecture\nDeveloper experience (DX)\nData & AI product design\nDesign patterns & systems\nCross-org strategy\nCloud & enterprise UX\nMentorship" }, { "id": "what-i-d-tell-you-over-coffee", "label": "What I’d tell you over coffee", "text": "A team in trouble rarely needs better taste.\nIt needs a direction it believes in and an audience that can see it. Get everyone to agree on the problem first, because that is the expensive part; after that, most of design is cheap. Then put the work in front of the people who decide the roadmap, every week. The process comes last. Direction, visibility, process, in that order." } ] }, { "slug": "hangarx", "title": "HangarX", "url": "https://iwooten.com/work/hangarx", "summary": "Applied AI systems that build, decide and launch businesses.", "signals": [ { "value": "CTO", "label": "Co-Founder & CTO" }, { "value": "Lab", "label": "Many experimental projects" }, { "value": "2", "label": "Portfolio companies on Cortex" } ], "overview": "Every AI venture pays the same hidden cost before it ships anything: getting real business context into a model, then retrieval, memory, orchestration, brand, UI and a deploy pipeline. I co-founded HangarX to pay that cost once. As CTO I run all of its engineering, starting with Cortex, the knowledge engine we built first, and now Northlit.", "result": "An applied AI lab: vertical intelligence for our own ventures, the platform deployed for select clients, and founder programs that launch new businesses. As co-founder and CTO, every engineering project in it is mine. Cortex, the knowledge engine, came first; it runs our own work, two companies we invest in, and the Obsidian plugin it spawned. Northlit is what we build now.", "sections": [ { "id": "the-cost-nobody-quotes", "label": "The cost nobody quotes", "text": "The first AI venture teaches you what it actually costs. Not the model. The rest.\nGetting real business context into a form a model can use. Retrieval that returns the right thing. Memory that survives the session. Orchestration that keeps a chain of agents honest. Then brand, then UI, then the deploy pipeline. Months of it, and none of it is the product.\nThe second venture pays it again. So does the third. That is where applied AI labs quietly die: not from a bad idea, from re-buying the same foundation.\nSo we built the foundation first and gave it a name. Cortex is the knowledge engine: a unified knowledge graph, semantic retrieval, a memory and context layer, reasoning orchestration. One thing to harden, one thing to make fast, one thing to get right. Everything on that line is thin on purpose: know with Cortex, decide with Apex, teach with Academy. A vertical, not a rebuild." }, { "id": "what-it-bought", "label": "What it bought", "text": "The newest work starts on a running system: knowledge layer live, agents deployed, brand locked, pipeline warm. What is left is the part that is actually new.\nThe same stack ships three ways. We build vertical intelligence for our own ventures, deploy the platform for select clients, and partner with founders through programs to launch new businesses. For clients that means custom agents built and tuned on the stack, forecasting models that turn historical data into signal, research and analysis across their own and outside data, landing pages to test new positioning, and AI learning tailored to their team.\nCortex is finished for what it has to do. It started as the company brain we ran internally, a knowledge graph over everything the lab knows, and it now runs two companies we invest in and the Obsidian plugin it spawned. It is in maintenance, not active development. The engineering effort has moved to Northlit, a product for the design community that also generates all of HangarX's creative, driven from Claude Code, Claude Cowork and Codex." }, { "id": "designing-apex-a-strategy-agent", "label": "Designing Apex, a strategy agent", "text": "A company’s knowledge is scattered, so strategy starts with hours of research.\nIt lives in Slack threads, shared drives, email and Notion pages, and pulling it together is where the time goes, long before anyone decides anything. Apex, the strategy agent built on Cortex, connects to those sources, builds a knowledge graph of the business, and answers strategic questions in plain language with research, scenarios, risks and next steps, delivered as a board-ready brief. It is built for founders and operators, and for small teams such as agencies, studios and professional-services firms.\nBefore\nSearch Slack, Drive, email and Notion by hand\nStitch the findings together\nResearch the market separately\nWrite the brief yourself\nWith Apex\nConnect your sources once\nApex builds a knowledge graph of the business\nAsk a strategic question\nGet research, scenarios, risks and next steps as a brief\nYou\nChoose what to connect\nAsk the question that matters\nDecide what to do with the answer\nApex\nMap the business into a knowledge graph\nResearch the web and your own data\nModel scenarios and risks\nWrite the board-ready brief" }, { "id": "the-calls-i-made", "label": "The calls I made", "text": "Build the foundation first\nBefore a second product, we built Cortex: knowledge graph, retrieval, memory, orchestration. It meant months with nothing customer-facing to show. It paid back when every product after started on a running system instead of a blank repo.\nLet Cortex be finished\nOnce Cortex did what it had to, running our own work, two portfolio companies and a plugin, we put it into maintenance and moved the engineering to Northlit, instead of polishing a system that already worked." }, { "id": "how-the-lab-builds", "label": "How the lab builds", "text": "A new product starts on a running system, not a blank repo.\nThe foundation is already live when the work begins: the knowledge layer, agents, the brand and the deploy pipeline. What is left is the part that is actually new. Design and implementation stay in one pair of hands, and all of HangarX’s creative comes out of Northlit, driven from Claude Code, Claude Cowork and Codex.\n01 Cortex The knowledge layer is live: context, retrieval, memory\nMe Define what the new product has to know and do\n02 Claude Code · Codex Build the product on the shared stack\nMe Set the architecture and review the code\n03 Northlit Lock the brand and render every surface from it\nMe Choose the direction\n04 Pipeline Ship on a deploy pipeline that is already warm\nMe Approve what ships" }, { "id": "evidence", "label": "Evidence", "text": "What the shared stack has produced so far.\n2 Portfolio companies running on Cortex\n2 Open-source releases: Second Brain for Obsidian and the GenAI Kit\n10 min Film, The Mirror Protocol, made with the GenAI Kit\n41 Pages in its graphic novel" }, { "id": "brand-system", "label": "Brand system", "text": "The brand got the same treatment. One locked brand DNA, then every surface rendered from it rather than designed again: product UI, print, packaging, out of home, and the brand world itself, generated from the same source. Built once, used everywhere." }, { "id": "what-is-on-it", "label": "What is on it", "text": "Cortex came first and Northlit is what we build now. Everything else here exists because the shared parts made it cheap: some live, some in beta, a few still in development.\nAgents on Cortex\nApex\nStrategy. Signals, scenario modelling and agentic analysis for founders and operators.\nBeta Open ↗\nFirst-party products\nNorthlit\nThe lab’s AI design suite. Explore, direct, build, from the app or from any coding agent.\nCase study → Open ↗\nSecond Brain\nCortex, local first. Your Obsidian vault becomes shared memory for Claude, Cursor and any MCP agent.\nEarly access Open ↗ GitHub ↗\nAcademy\nGenerative podcasts and live multi-agent conversation, for leaders who want fluency rather than theory.\nBeta Open ↗\nSecond Brain ships as HangarX for Obsidian , an open-source community plugin.\nThe Mirror Protocol was an experiment with two jobs: learn how to tell a story with AI video and image models, and take the brand past the product into a universe of characters, where Cortex becomes the global graph and memory that all intelligence lives in. Ten minutes of film, plus a 41-page graphic novel. We open-sourced the GenAI Kit we built to make it, so others can start from what we learned. It also turned out to be better marketing than any ad we could have bought.\nOpen source, and what we made with it\nGenAI Kit\nFree and open source. Continuity control for GenAI film and graphic novels.\nLive Open ↗ GitHub ↗\nThe Mirror Protocol, graphic novel\nForty-one pages, read as spreads in the browser, with an act progress bar and a full page index.\nLive Read it ↗\nVideo comics\nAn episodic reader: static pages or motion, one page or a spread, and it will play itself.\nLive Read it ↗" }, { "id": "concept-art", "label": "Concept art", "text": "Key art and keyframes for The Mirror Protocol." }, { "id": "role", "label": "Role", "text": "HangarX builds vertical AI products on shared parts, so the setup cost is paid once and the next venture starts from a running system. Before HangarX, our team worked with the NFL, NBC, Fox Sports and Univision.\nTechnical direction\nCo-founder and CTO. Every engineering project in the lab is mine to run: architecture, direction and a good share of the code.\nCortex\nBuilt the knowledge engine first: graph, retrieval, memory, orchestration. Now in maintenance, running our own work, two portfolio companies and the Obsidian plugin.\nNorthlit\nThe current build: an AI design suite for the design community, and the tool behind all of HangarX's creative.\nDesign & engineering\nDesign and implementation in one pair of hands, so the craft bar holds end to end.\nApplied / agentic AI\nShared platform infrastructure\nVertical SaaS for services\nProduct design\nFull-stack engineering\n0 → 1 product strategy" }, { "id": "what-i-d-tell-you-over-coffee", "label": "What I’d tell you over coffee", "text": "The model is the cheap part.\nWhat costs months is everything around it: getting real context into a form a model can use, retrieval that finds the right thing, memory that lasts, agents that stay honest. Pay that once, give it a name, and every product after starts from a running system. And when a thing does its job, let it be finished; Cortex is, so the effort moved on." } ] }, { "slug": "northlit", "title": "Northlit", "url": "https://iwooten.com/work/northlit", "summary": "Explore distinct directions. Build your favorite. HangarX’s AI design suite.", "signals": [ { "value": "CTO", "label": "Co-Founder & CTO, HangarX" }, { "value": "Suite", "label": "Explore · direct · build" }, { "value": "MCP", "label": "Works inside coding agents" } ], "overview": "Designers, studios and agencies lose hours rebuilding a client’s context for every concept, and most AI tools make it worse: one answer, off brand, and straight to code. Northlit is an AI design suite for designers, creative teams and agencies. It turns a brief into a board of distinct directions that stay on brand, then builds the one you pick into a working prototype, from the app or from any coding agent. I lead it end to end: product direction, design system, front end and the MCP server.", "result": "This site is the proof. Its direction was explored, chosen, prototyped and handed off in Northlit, then built with Claude Code in a day.", "sections": [ { "id": "designing-an-ai-design-tool", "label": "Designing an AI design tool", "text": "Most AI design tools give you one answer and make you prompt your way toward taste.\nA designer doesn’t work that way. You put several directions on the wall, compare them and choose, and you keep the client’s brand in every one. Northlit is built around that moment: the brand DNA is extracted once and locked, a brief becomes a board of distinct directions on brand, you pick one, and it becomes a working prototype with the tokens an engineer or a coding agent needs. It is deliberately not a code generator with a canvas bolted on.\nBefore\nPrompt for one answer\nPrompt again, toward taste\nRebuild the result in code\nWith Northlit\nBring a brief, or a brand\nCompare a board of distinct directions\nPick one and build it\nHand off a prototype, tokens and markup\nYou\nBring the brief and the brand\nChoose the direction\nDirect the edits and approve the build\nNorthlit\nExtract and lock the brand DNA\nGenerate divergent directions on brand\nBuild the chosen one into a prototype\nExport tokens and markup, or run the loop from a coding agent" }, { "id": "how-it-works", "label": "How it works", "text": "Northlit turns a brief into a board of distinct directions, keeps them on brand, and builds the one you pick into a working prototype.\n01. Bring the brief\nStart with an idea, references or a brand. Brand DNA is extracted once and locked, so every generation stays on brand.\n02. Explore directions\nA board of divergent directions instead of one guess. Compare, add more, spin variations.\n03. Build and edit\nBuild the chosen direction into a responsive prototype. Ask for changes in plain language. Every edit is a version you can revert.\n04. Hand off\nExport a design contract, tokens and markup, or run the whole loop from Claude Code or Cursor over MCP." }, { "id": "designed-for-agents-too", "label": "Designed for agents too", "text": "Northlit has two kinds of user: people, and the agents working for them.\nAny MCP client can drive it, from Claude and Claude Code to ChatGPT, Codex and Cursor, so a designer’s brand, references, styles and skills travel into whatever tool they already work in. Every design run is also written out for agents to read as plain markdown: a summary of the run, the moodboard, each direction, the prototype’s version history, the design system and an activity log. And a library of about 150 design skills, each one a discipline, style or pattern, is there for an agent to read before it generates, the way a new designer reads the brand guidelines first." }, { "id": "the-calls-i-made", "label": "The calls I made", "text": "Professionals first\nWhether to build for professional designers or for people who aren’t designers was one of the two hardest calls. We chose designers, studios and agencies first, with founders and builders close behind, because they feel the cost of rebuilding a brand for every concept most.\nA suite and an agent, not one or the other\nNorthlit could have been completely agent-driven. Instead it is both: a suite a person drives, and an MCP server any agent can drive, sharing the same brand, references and design skills, so the work moves between them without starting over." }, { "id": "how-this-site-was-made", "label": "How this site was made", "text": "Every step has an agent doing the work and a person making the call.\nThis portfolio went through the same loop Northlit is built for. The agents explored, built and rendered; I wrote the brief, chose the direction and reviewed every change before it shipped. The brand worlds and project reels across the archive came out of the same loop.\n01 Northlit Extract and lock the brand DNA\nYou Write the brief, pick the references\n02 Northlit Generate a board of distinct directions\nYou Choose one\n03 Northlit Build the direction into a prototype\nYou Direct the edits\n04 Claude Code Build the site from the handoff\nYou Review every change\n05 Northlit + Claude Code Render brand worlds, reels and new pages\nYou Approve what ships" }, { "id": "evidence", "label": "Evidence", "text": "This portfolio is the proof.\n23 Brands extracted and locked for this site\n359 Brand surfaces rendered from them\n~150 Design skills agents read before generating\n7 Image and video models, one brand context" }, { "id": "brand-system", "label": "Brand system", "text": "Logo system, product surfaces, print, packaging and out-of-home for Northlit." }, { "id": "point-it-at-a-brand", "label": "Point it at a brand", "text": "The hardest thing to fake is a brand you do not own. Northlit reads a brand's public surface, extracts its DNA — palette with roles, type stack, voice, layout posture, the anti-defaults — locks it, and then produces a complete brand book against it: nineteen artifacts, from logo construction and a type specimen through app icons, data visualisation, packaging and environmental signage.\nAs a test I pointed it at Google Cloud, a brand with a large, well-documented and entirely public identity, and nothing of mine in it. It came back with the palette, the geometric-sans type stack, the layout posture down to dark full-bleed bands break the white flow , and the anti-defaults that matter — colour stays in the mark, links and accent graphics, never in body text or backgrounds . That last one is the kind of rule a brand guardian would write and a generator usually misses.\nA Northlit-generated interpretation of a public brand, not Google's brand guidance, and not affiliated with Google.\nRead the Google Cloud brand book ↗" }, { "id": "role", "label": "Role", "text": "The prototype carries the direction’s type, color, spacing and motion into real markup, with a design contract and tokens for engineering or a coding agent.\nBuilt at HangarX , where I’m co-founder and CTO. I lead it end to end: product direction, design system, front end and the MCP server that lets coding agents use it. It’s the tool I wanted after twenty-five years between the canvas, the codebase and the company.\nProduct strategy & 0 → 1\nAI product design\nDesign systems & tokens\nFront-end engineering\nAgent tooling (MCP)\nBrand systems" }, { "id": "what-i-d-tell-you-over-coffee", "label": "What I’d tell you over coffee", "text": "Start with divergence.\nA creative director never starts with one answer. They put several directions on the wall and choose, because comparing is where judgement happens. Most AI tools skip that step and make you prompt your way toward taste. Northlit is built around the moment of choosing, so the person keeps the decision and the tool does the rest." } ] }, { "slug": "digital-pool", "title": "Digital Pool", "url": "https://iwooten.com/work/digital-pool", "summary": "The scoreboard for competitive pool. Software, apps, hardware and streaming.", "signals": [ { "value": "CEO", "label": "Founder & CEO" }, { "value": "~19M", "label": "Ad impressions a year" }, { "value": "105,450", "label": "Tournaments run" } ], "overview": "Running a pool tournament used to mean a paper bracket on the wall, matches called by hand and players waiting hours to hear their name. I founded Digital Pool to take the paper away for directors and the waiting away for players: live brackets, table assignments and results on every phone, plus in-venue scoring and broadcast. As founder and CEO I set direction, design the product and build across the stack, with a team of seven.", "result": "From one tournament in 2020 to 105,450. 4.9M matches scored live, with results reported to FargoRate and events like the World Pool Championship on the platform.", "sections": [ { "id": "the-product", "label": "The product", "text": "The tournament platform in a room: live scoring on every table, brackets, streaming and results." }, { "id": "designing-the-tournament-and-what-ai-does-next", "label": "Designing the tournament, and what AI does next", "text": "Running a pool tournament used to mean paper brackets and a lot of waiting.\nDirectors ran events off a bracket on the wall and called every match by hand, and players waited around for hours to hear their name. Digital Pool took the paper away: brackets, table assignments and results live on everyone’s phone, so the event runs smoothly and the player experience gets much better.\nThe next step is using AI to automate more of it, from setting up the tournament to running it: estimating match times to answer the question players ask most, “when am I up next?”, and giving every player stats on how they played and what to work on to improve.\nBefore\nA paper bracket on the wall\nMatches called by hand\nPlayers wait around for hours\nResults typed in afterwards\nWith Digital Pool\nA live bracket on every phone\nTables assigned, players texted\nAn estimated start time for each match\nResults reported automatically, stats for every player\nThe director and players\nChoose the event, the format and the rules\nMake the judgement calls on the day\nPlay, and decide what to work on next\nThe platform\nBuild the bracket and assign tables\nEstimate when each match will start\nReport results to FargoRate\nTurn each player’s matches into stats and pointers\nThe hard part: a predicted time is a promise. If it says a player is up at 3:40, they plan their afternoon around it, so the estimate has to stay honest as the day slips and say so when it changes." }, { "id": "the-calls-i-made", "label": "The calls I made", "text": "Build the audience instead of buying it\nA platform nobody has heard of does not run tournaments. I built the channels alongside the product, so the reach is ours and not rented: 32.5K on Instagram, 18K on Facebook, 5.5K YouTube subscribers and more than 25M lifetime views, with nothing spent on paid acquisition, ever.\nKeep the free tier free\nThe platform stays free to run events on. An ad network I built on top of our own channels pays for it, serving about 19M impressions a year." }, { "id": "how-i-built-it", "label": "How I built it", "text": "From a scoring app to a company thousands of players rely on every week.\nDigital Pool grew one layer at a time, and I designed and built across every one of them: the app, the platform, the hardware in the room and the broadcast on the stream.\n01 2011 The Scorekeeper app for iPhone\nMe Designed and built it\n02 2020 The first tournament on the platform\nMe Designed the product and built across the stack\n03 In the room All-table scoring displays and live broadcast overlays\nMe Set direction for a team of seven\n04 Next Rebuilt AI-native, with prediction and automation in the core\nMe Lead the rebuild" }, { "id": "evidence", "label": "Evidence", "text": "The job was to take the hand work and the waiting out of running a tournament. These say it worked.\n4.2M Matches reported to FargoRate automatically, no hand entry\n1,000s Tournaments a month, run on a team of seven\n81% Of creators run another event the next month\n42% Still running events at six months\nAnd the scale behind it.\n105,450 Tournaments run\n4.9M Tournament matches\n750K Matches on video\n10min+ Average session\n0 Paid acquisition, ever\n~19M Ad impressions a year\n7 Team, 4 full-time, 3 part-time\n2011 The Scorekeeper app that started it\nOne tournament in 2020. Thousands a month now, across the US, Vietnam, Canada and Taiwan, run by 6,000+ tournament directors and 900+ league operators in 1,300+ rooms with tables." }, { "id": "role", "label": "Role", "text": "Digital Pool is a company, not an app: a tournament platform, native apps, custom hardware and live streaming for competitive billiards.\nAs founder and CEO I set direction, design the product and build across the stack. A team of seven, thousands of events a month, and the scoring platform under events like the US Open and the World Pool Championship. Beyond software: an ad network I built serves ~19M impressions a year, and permanent all-table scoring and streaming hardware is going into pool rooms around the country.\nPlatform & Software\nThe tournament engine: live scoring, brackets, table assignments, FargoRate reporting, payments and predicted match times.\nCore\nApps\nWeb, iOS and Android, kept in sync for players and operators.\nWeb · iOS · Android\nAll-Table System\nIn-venue displays that put live scores on every table.\nHardware\nRead the case study →\nBroadcast & Streaming\nLive overlays, multi-table boards and stat sheets, used on the World Pool Championship and World 10-Ball Championship.\nStreaming" }, { "id": "brand-system", "label": "Brand system", "text": "Logo system, product surfaces, print, packaging and out-of-home for Digital Pool." }, { "id": "in-the-room", "label": "In the room", "text": "The product on the floor: table displays, the room board, broadcast and the operator desk at events like the US Open and the Derby City Classic." }, { "id": "scope", "label": "Scope", "text": "Live scoring & brackets\nReal-time match scoring with brackets that update as results come in.\nTable assignments & alerts\nAutomated table assignments with text notifications so players know exactly when and where they're up.\nAutomatic FargoRate reporting\nResults report straight to FargoRate, no manual entry for operators.\nDigital payments\nEntry fees and payouts handled in-platform.\nAI-predicted match times\nModels estimate when each match will start, so players can plan their day.\nCross-platform\nOne product across web, iOS, and Android, kept in sync.\nWeb · iOS · Android\nReal-time scoring & brackets\nNotifications & messaging\nDigital payments\nFargoRate integration\nAI match-time prediction\nProduct design\nFull-stack engineering" }, { "id": "reach", "label": "Reach", "text": "A platform nobody has heard of does not run tournaments. I built the audience alongside the product, so the channels are ours and the reach is not rented. The ad network that keeps the free tier free runs on top of it.\n32.5K Instagram followers\n18K Facebook followers\n5.5K YouTube subscribers\n25M+\nLifetime views" }, { "id": "on-the-record", "label": "On the record", "text": "Two interviews with the billiards press, talking through how the platform works and how it got built.\nThe Poolin' Around Show\nTalkin' English, episode 2 · Billiard Sports Network" }, { "id": "what-i-d-tell-you-over-coffee", "label": "What I’d tell you over coffee", "text": "Build the audience with the product.\nA platform nobody has heard of does not run tournaments. So the channels grew alongside the software, and Digital Pool has never paid for a user. When your audience is a community, owning the reach is not marketing; it is part of the product, and it is what keeps the free tier free." } ] }, { "slug": "lunarcrush", "title": "LunarCrush", "url": "https://iwooten.com/work/lunarcrush", "summary": "Real-time social and market intelligence for crypto.", "signals": [ { "value": "CDO", "label": "Co-Founder · led a team of 2 designers" }, { "value": "'17–'22", "label": "Tenure" }, { "value": "2", "label": "Galaxy Score™ · AltRank™" } ], "overview": "In late 2016, crypto news and analyst notes arrived after the price had already moved, but social media reacted in real time. We asked whether machine learning could read the market from what people were saying. I built the prototype that showed the correlation, then designed the brand, the web app and the Galaxy Score™ as co-founder, and later led design as Chief Design Officer.", "result": "Built from zero: the brand, the web app and the Galaxy Score™ algorithm. After the v2 launch, users went from 150,000 to 2.5 million in sixty days. LunarCrush is still growing today under the original co-founders.", "sections": [ { "id": "the-product", "label": "The product", "text": "Social intelligence for crypto. The web app dashboard, trending coins and global metrics." }, { "id": "how-it-started", "label": "How it started", "text": "It started as a question, not a company: could machine learning read a crypto market from what people were saying about it?\nIn late 2016 the traditional signals were slow. News, analyst notes and media coverage all arrived after the fact. Social was different. People reacted in real time, and they moved in herds. The premise was that if you could measure the herd you might predict the price, and you might also find out whether attention was driving the market rather than following it.\nI built a prototype to find out. It ingested Twitter, Reddit and a few other sources and plotted social engagement on a chart against price, so the answer would be visible before any model was. It was. Engagement moved, and price moved with it.\nThat chart is what turned an experiment into LunarCrush. We co-founded the company in 2017 and spent a year building the first version of lunarcrush.com, which I designed and built the front end for. Seed funding followed, from prominent blockchain investors with Tim Draper among them, and adoption took off. We built the platform out from there, adding sources until it was ingesting hundreds of millions of data points a day and correlating them with price across every coin, and later traditional stocks. LUNR came next, and I joined full-time in 2021.\nThe premise\nSocial reacts faster than news, and it moves in herds. Measure the herd and you may be ahead of the price.\nThe prototype\nTwitter, Reddit and a few other feeds on one chart against price. The correlation showed up by eye.\nThe platform\nMany more sources, hundreds of millions of data points a day, every coin, and later stocks.\nGalaxy Score™\nCorrelating those metrics needed a new instrument: price performance, social activity over time and a few other signals combined into one number that reads as the health of a coin. Named to fit the world we had built." }, { "id": "designing-a-signal-people-could-read", "label": "Designing a signal people could read", "text": "A market that moves on attention needed an instrument that measures it.\nThe platform ingested hundreds of millions of social and market data points a day, and nobody can read that. The design problem was turning it into something a trader could act on at a glance: Galaxy Score™, one number for a coin’s health built from price performance and social activity over time, and AltRank™, which ranks a coin against the rest of the market.\nBefore\nRead the news after the price has moved\nCheck analyst notes, one coin at a time\nGuess at what the crowd is doing\nWith LunarCrush\nSocial and market data arrive in real time\nModels correlate engagement with price\nOne score per coin: Galaxy Score™\nSee the herd move, then decide\nThe trader\nChoose the coins to watch\nRead the score and the signals behind it\nDecide whether to act\nThe models\nIngest social and market data from many sources\nCorrelate engagement with price\nScore each coin’s health and rank it against the market" }, { "id": "the-calls-i-made", "label": "The calls I made", "text": "Draw the chart before building the model\nBefore any machine learning, I plotted social engagement against price on one chart. The correlation showed up by eye, and that picture, not a model, is what turned an experiment into a company.\nOpen-source the widgets\nWe released an open-source widget framework so anyone could embed LunarCrush’s live data on their own site. It became the company’s first revenue source, in 2018." }, { "id": "evidence", "label": "Evidence", "text": "Did a chart of social data become a product people used? These say it did.\n150K → 2.5M Users in sixty days after the v2 launch\n50M+ Pageviews a month\n$2.5M Seed round the first brand and product helped raise\n15 Full-time staff by 2021" }, { "id": "role", "label": "Role", "text": "LunarCrush turns billions of social data points into market intelligence for crypto. Galaxy Score™ and AltRank™ help investors and traders read a market that moves on attention.\nCo-founded with three partners in 2017, part-time while at Google, to design and build the first brand, website and product. Those helped raise a $2.5M seed round and grow the company to fifteen full-time staff by 2021. An open-source widget framework for embedding live data became the first revenue source in 2018.\nI joined full-time as Chief Design Officer in June 2021, leading UX and UI for web and mobile with a team of two designers. Within six months we shipped a new brand, website and product, iOS and Android apps from scratch, and the LUNR utility token and wallet. After the v2 launch in October 2021, users went from 150,000 to 2.5 million in sixty days and the site passed 50 million pageviews a month. I stepped back from day-to-day in January 2022. LunarCrush keeps growing under the original co-founders.\nBrand & web app\nDesigned the brand and the web app from scratch, then the rebrand, lunarcrush.com and a new design system in 2021.\nGalaxy Score™\nDeveloped the first Galaxy Score™ algorithm, a measure of a coin’s health over time.\nReact front-end\nBuilt the first web app front end in React and supported the engineering team on UI.\nMobile and the token\niOS and Android apps from scratch, and the LUNR token and wallet, inside six months of joining full-time." }, { "id": "scope", "label": "Scope", "text": "Brand & visual identity\nProduct design (web + mobile)\nReact front-end engineering\nData visualization\nAlgorithm design (Galaxy Score™)\nDesign leadership\nProduct direction\n0 → 1 building" }, { "id": "what-i-d-tell-you-over-coffee", "label": "What I’d tell you over coffee", "text": "Make the answer visible before you model it.\nLunarCrush started as one chart: social engagement plotted against price. The correlation showed up by eye before any model did, and a chart anyone can read is what turned an experiment into a company. When you are testing an idea, the fastest proof is usually a picture, not a pipeline." } ] } ], "project_pages": [ { "slug": "wii", "title": "Wii.com", "url": "https://iwooten.com/work/wii", "summary": "Nintendo of America, 2006. The website for a console that wanted everyone to play, and the brand world its design implied.", "signals": [ { "value": "2006", "label": "Launch season, Nintendo of America" }, { "value": "NOA", "label": "Online Publications team" }, { "value": "5 → 19", "label": "Five pages, nineteen brand surfaces" } ], "overview": "", "result": "A new way to play, explained to people who had never held a controller. Wii.com had to sell motion control to families, grandparents and lapsed players in the months around the console’s November 2006 launch. I was an online technical designer and Flash developer on Nintendo of America’s Online Publications team, working on pages like these: the home page, Iwata Asks, the Wii Mall Tour, game pages and the software library. What it taught me: when your audience has never held the product, invite them to try it before you explain it.", "sections": [ { "id": "the-brief", "label": "The brief", "text": "A console for everyone needs a website anyone can read.\nThe Wii was a bet that games could reach people who didn’t play them. The site had to carry that: glossy white, sky-blue rules and generous space, with a Try Wii invitation front and centre and the games grouped so a parent could find Wii Sports as easily as a fan could find Metroid Prime 3. Around it sat the launch programme: Iwata Asks, where Nintendo’s president interviewed his own developers; a mall tour that put Wii Sports in front of shoppers across the country; and a software library that grew every week.\nWhite and sky blue\nThe hardware’s gloss carried into the page: white panels, cyan rules and tabs, grey type with an orange call to action.\nTry Wii first\nThe home page led with a Remote in hand and an invitation to try it, not with specs.\nIwata Asks\nLong-form interviews with the people who made the console, set for reading, volume by volume.\nGames for everyone\nA software library that put Wii Sports, Zelda and Excite Truck side by side, sorted so anyone could browse it." }, { "id": "the-site", "label": "The site", "text": "The home page: Try Wii, and the games that made the case.\nThe software library.\nThe Wii Mall Tour, November to January.\nIwata Asks: the president interviews his developers.\nA game page: Metroid Prime 3: Corruption." }, { "id": "brand-system", "label": "Brand system", "text": "The Wii identity is Nintendo’s; what interested me was how much of it the website carried. I started from these pages and the wordmark, locked their DNA (glossy white and silver, Wii blue with a splash of orange, a rounded geometric face, bright family photography) and rendered the rest of the brand from it, from the logo system to a storefront.\nThe Wii name, logo and games belong to Nintendo. The pages above are the site I worked on; the brand world is a 2026 study made with my own tool from them, not work for Nintendo." }, { "id": "role", "label": "Role", "text": "Nintendo of America for the site. A 2026 study for the brand world.\nOnline Publications\nOnline technical designer and Flash developer at Nintendo of America, 2005 to 2007, on Nintendo.com, Wii.com and NintendoWifi.com.\nProduction\nMicro-sites, games and page production for the launch-era site, with the Online Publications group.\nBrand DNA\nExtracted from the site and locked: palette with roles, display and body type, imagery rules, anti-defaults.\nNineteen surfaces\nPalette, type, icons, logo system, cards, stationery, packaging, merch, social kit, data visualisation, a presentation, web, app and app icon, guidelines, billboard and storefront.\nWeb design\nFlash\nFront-end production\nConsole launch\nBrand DNA extraction\nBrand systems" } ] }, { "slug": "game-boy-micro", "title": "Game Boy Micro", "url": "https://iwooten.com/work/game-boy-micro", "summary": "Nintendo of America, 2005. A product site for the smallest Game Boy, built around one idea: show how small it is, and the brand world that idea implied.", "signals": [ { "value": "2005", "label": "Launch year, Nintendo of America" }, { "value": "NOA", "label": "Online Publications team" }, { "value": "4 → 19", "label": "Four screens, nineteen brand surfaces" } ], "overview": "", "result": "A product you had to see to believe, shown at actual size. The Game Boy Micro was a Game Boy Advance shrunk to four inches wide. I designed its product site, which went live for the launch, as an online technical designer on Nintendo of America’s Online Publications team: the device in brushed silver on a faint grid, skins you cycle with arrows, front and back, specifications, and a comparison panel that sets it beside a quarter and a fly. These screens were captured before launch, while it still said Coming Soon. What it taught me: if the product’s point is a number, show the number next to something people already know.", "sections": [ { "id": "the-brief", "label": "The brief", "text": "When the product is the smallest thing on the page, make size the story.\nPhotographs flatter a small device; they can’t tell you it fits in a coin pocket. So the page is a precise stage rather than a lifestyle shot: the Micro rendered large and clean at the centre, an instrument-panel frame of dotted crop marks around it, specifications on one side and a comparison on the other, where it sits next to a quarter or a housefly. A dotted scale along the bottom steps through the comparisons, and arrows cycle the faceplates, silver to graphite to a red floral skin, because the swappable face was the product’s personality.\nSize as the story\nA quarter, a fly and exact dimensions do what adjectives can’t: 4 inches wide, 2 tall, 2.8 ounces.\nSkins you cycle\nArrows swap the faceplate in place, so the device’s expressive surface is the interaction.\nFront and back\nA toggle turns the Micro over to show the cartridge slot and the Nintendo mark on the brushed rear.\nBlueprint clarity\nPlatinum and slate, an indigo wordmark, graph-paper grids and crop marks: catalogue-grade, nothing extra." }, { "id": "the-site", "label": "The site", "text": "The front, next to a fly.\nTurned over: the back.\nDimensions, and a quarter for scale.\nCycling the skins: the red floral faceplate." }, { "id": "brand-system", "label": "Brand system", "text": "Nintendo owns the identity, but the site had a look of its own: platinum and indigo, studio renders on a faint grid, and a quarter for scale. I locked that as brand DNA and let it run into packaging, merch, an app and a billboard.\nThe Game Boy Micro name, logo and product belong to Nintendo. The site above is my design work; the brand world is a 2026 study made with my own tool from them, not work for Nintendo." }, { "id": "role", "label": "Role", "text": "Nintendo of America for the site. A 2026 study for the brand world.\nOnline Publications\nOnline technical designer and Flash developer at Nintendo of America, 2005 to 2007, on Nintendo.com, Wii.com and NintendoWifi.com.\nProduct-site design\nThe layout, the scale comparisons, the skin cycler and the front and back views, designed for the launch and taken live.\nBrand DNA\nExtracted from the site and locked: palette with roles, type, imagery rules, anti-defaults.\nNineteen surfaces\nPalette, type, icons, logo system, cards, stationery, packaging, merch, social kit, data visualisation, a presentation, web, app and app icon, guidelines, billboard and storefront.\nWeb design\nInteraction design\nFlash\nProduct launch\nBrand DNA extraction\nBrand systems" } ] }, { "slug": "red", "title": "RED Digital Cinema", "url": "https://iwooten.com/work/red", "summary": "RED Digital Cinema, 2008. A new direction for red.com, a camera configurator and the first look of the 2009 cameras, and the brand world they implied.", "signals": [ { "value": "2008", "label": "Senior Web Designer and Developer" }, { "value": "2.0", "label": "The framework behind red.com 2.0" }, { "value": "6 → 18", "label": "Six pieces, eighteen brand surfaces" } ], "overview": "", "result": "A camera company that talked like a film crew. RED was taking on 35mm film with digital cameras, and red.com was where filmmakers came for the news, the specs and the order button. In 2008 I joined as a senior web designer and developer: I kicked off the new direction for red.com, built the PHP framework behind version 2.0, and did concept and brand work for the 2009 cameras, Scarlet and EPIC, including a configurator where you build a camera by dragging parts onto it. What it taught me: an audience of experts can tell when you’re faking their language, so design and write like one of them.", "sections": [ { "id": "the-brief", "label": "The brief", "text": "Make the product feel machined, and let the people who use it feel at home.\nRED’s audience was cinematographers, and its voice was theirs: blunt, technical and a little defiant, down to the footer that reserved the right to refuse service to anyone with a bad attitude. The site had to hold four cameras, a firmware stream, a founder’s forum posts and a community, without losing the weight of the hardware. The answer was matte black and signal red, grunge and machined-metal texture, the camera always the hero, and type as heavy as the product. For the 2009 line, the same language went modular: Scarlet as five cameras under one name, EPIC as 5K, and a configurator that turned a spec sheet into something you put together.\nBlack and red\nMatte black, gunmetal and one signal red, with the badge’s red lens as the only bright thing on the page.\nMachined texture\nBrushed metal, concrete and torn edges, so the page feels like the camera body.\nBuild a camera\nThe configurator puts the EPIC on a stage and lets you drag lenses, media, power and rails onto it, with the cart adding up beside it.\nA new framework\nThe PHP framework behind red.com 2.0, so the new direction had something to stand on." }, { "id": "the-work", "label": "The work", "text": "red.com in 2008: four cameras, four tall panels.\nThe new direction: EPIC is coming.\nThe configurator: drag parts onto the camera.\nScarlet: five cameras, one name.\nUpgradeable everything, infinitely interchangeable.\nEPIC: 5K, early 2009." }, { "id": "brand-system", "label": "Brand system", "text": "RED’s identity is RED’s. The site and the camera collateral already behaved like a system, so I started there and with the Shot on RED badge: signal red on ink black, gunmetal and brushed silver, heavy industrial type, cameras spotlit against concrete and smoke. From that DNA came the logo system, print, packaging, product screens, editorial, a trade-show booth and the street.\nThe RED name, logo and cameras belong to RED Digital Cinema. The site and collateral above are my design work; the brand world is a 2026 study made with my own tool, not work for RED." }, { "id": "role", "label": "Role", "text": "RED in 2008 for the site and the cameras. A 2026 study for the brand world.\nSenior web designer and developer\nAugust to December 2008, on red.com and the 2009 camera launches.\nDesign and engineering\nThe new direction for red.com, the PHP framework behind version 2.0, and the camera configurator.\nConcept and brand\nConcept and brand work for Scarlet and EPIC: brochure spreads, feature callouts and launch pieces.\nEighteen surfaces\nLogo system, colour, type, cards, stationery, guidelines, packaging, merch, web, app and app icon, social kit, an editorial spread, billboard, storefront and a trade-show booth.\nWeb design\nPHP\nInteraction design\nPrint collateral\nBrand DNA extraction\nBrand systems" } ] }, { "slug": "gaikai", "title": "Gaikai", "url": "https://iwooten.com/work/gaikai", "summary": "Cloud gaming, 2011 to 2012. The operations tools behind a service that streamed console games to browsers and TVs, and the brand world rendered from it.", "signals": [ { "value": "2011–12", "label": "Early employee, Senior Web Developer" }, { "value": "Sony", "label": "Acquired by Sony in 2012" }, { "value": "4 → 33", "label": "Four screens, thirty-three brand surfaces" } ], "overview": "", "result": "The console in the cloud needed a control room. Gaikai streamed high-end games to a web browser or a smart TV with nothing to download, which meant fleets of game servers in network operations centres around the world, all of them visible to the people keeping them running. I joined early, as a senior web developer, and was the lead designer and front-end engineer on the system that managed them: Shogun for stream statistics and host inventory, and Toukai for zones, clusters and server states. Sony acquired Gaikai in 2012. What it taught me: in an operations tool, colour is information, and the screen should tell you what’s wrong before you read a word.", "sections": [ { "id": "the-brief", "label": "The brief", "text": "Millions of servers, one screen that tells you what’s wrong.\nCloud gaming lives or dies on latency and capacity, and both change by the minute. The tools had to make a global fleet legible at a glance: streams started and dropped, instances running, bandwidth, ping and loss, every host’s CPU, GPU, memory and services, and which zones and clusters were active, disabled or assignable. The answer was density with a hierarchy: big numbers first, charts under them, tables under those, and status in colour so a problem shows before you read a word.\nBig numbers first\nCurrent instances, visitors and stream outcomes lead each view; the detail waits underneath.\nEvery host, specified\nInventory down to a machine’s CPU, GPU, memory, disks and running services, on one page.\nState in colour\nActive, disabling, disabled, locked, assignable: each state has its colour and its ring, across zones and clusters.\nDesigned and built\nLead designer and front-end engineer, so the dashboards were drawn and shipped by the same hands." }, { "id": "the-tools", "label": "The tools", "text": "Shogun: stream statistics at a glance.\nShogun inventory: one host, fully specified.\nToukai: zones, clusters and server states.\nWhat it all served: Gaikai streaming to an LG smart TV." }, { "id": "brand-system", "label": "Brand system", "text": "The Gaikai identity isn’t mine; the tools I built lived inside it. Working back from the dashboards, the TV demo and the four-tile mark, I locked the brand’s DNA (Gaikai blue on cloud white, a rounded geometric wordmark, game art floating over bright skies and server halls) and rendered thirty-three surfaces from it, from motion principles to a trade-show booth.\nThe Gaikai name and logo belong to Sony. The dashboards above are my design and front-end work; the brand world is a 2026 study made with my own tool, not work for Gaikai or Sony." }, { "id": "role", "label": "Role", "text": "Gaikai for the tools. A 2026 study for the brand world.\nEarly employee\nSenior web developer, January 2011 to September 2012, through the acquisition by Sony.\nDesign and front end\nLead designer and front-end engineer on the system managing game servers across operations centres worldwide.\nBrand DNA\nExtracted and locked: palette with roles, type, voice, imagery rules, anti-defaults.\nThirty-three surfaces\nIdentity, colour, type, icons, accessibility, voice, patterns, motion, photography, illustration, print, packaging, merch, events, digital, advertising, editorial, a presentation and out of home.\nDashboard design\nData visualisation\nFront-end engineering\nCloud gaming\nBrand DNA extraction\nBrand systems" } ] }, { "slug": "akta", "title": "ÄKTA", "url": "https://iwooten.com/work/akta", "summary": "A web studio in downtown Chicago, later acquired by Salesforce. Its site and cards from my years there, 2010 to 2012, and the brand world they implied.", "signals": [ { "value": "2010–12", "label": "Design Director, ÄKTA Web Studio" }, { "value": "Salesforce", "label": "Acquired by Salesforce" }, { "value": "5 → 15", "label": "Five pieces, fifteen brand surfaces" } ], "overview": "", "result": "Äkta is Swedish for genuine. ÄKTA was a team of web artists in downtown Chicago: interfaces, websites and media, fierce applications in PHP and MODX, cloud software and mobile apps. As design director from 2010 to 2012 I led design on akta.com and the studio’s client and product work, among them Magento’s mobile commerce for iOS, MODX, TopGolf kiosks, Vosges Chocolate and Traklabs. Salesforce later acquired the studio. What it taught me: a studio’s own site is its first pitch, so say what you do in the time it takes to read one line.", "sections": [ { "id": "the-brief", "label": "The brief", "text": "A studio that says it builds fierce products has to look like it.\nThe mark is a red lattice of four overlapping arcs, and the wordmark a thin, lowercase äkta, so the identity carries both halves of the pitch: bold craft and quiet precision. The site said what the studio did in five coloured bands over glossy 3D ribbons on black, one line each, no scrolling needed to understand it. The cards did the same in miniature: a calm light set on a diamond pattern, a dark set, and one that set AKTA vertically beside a face-painted portrait for the people you wanted to remember you.\nA red lattice\nFour arcs woven into one mark, crimson on black or on paper, strong at any size.\nFive bands, five services\nThe home page as a list you read in seconds: interfaces, applications, cloud software, mobile.\nChiaroscuro\nDeep black, one saturated red and subjects that emerge from the dark.\nGenuine\nThe name is the value: real, honest and a little unapologetic." }, { "id": "the-work", "label": "The work", "text": "akta.com: what the studio does, one band at a time.\nHello! we are äkta.\nThe cards, light.\nThe loud one.\nThe cards, dark." }, { "id": "brand-system", "label": "Brand system", "text": "Seen again years later, the site and cards were already most of a brand. I locked what they shared (ÄKTA red and deep crimson on black and paper, a thin geometric wordmark, portraits and glossy forms emerging from the dark) and followed it into print, product, a campaign, an editorial spread and a storefront.\nThe site and cards are the design. The brand world is a 2026 study made with my own tool from them, not work for ÄKTA or Salesforce." }, { "id": "role", "label": "Role", "text": "Design director at ÄKTA, 2010 to 2012. A 2026 study for the brand world.\nDesign director\nDesign across the studio’s site, clients and products, through to the acquisition by Salesforce.\nThe work\nakta.com, Magento mobile commerce for iOS, MODX, TopGolf kiosks, Vosges Chocolate and Traklabs.\nBrand DNA\nExtracted and locked: palette with roles, display, body and mono type, voice, imagery rules.\nFifteen surfaces\nLogo system, guidelines, cards, stationery, packaging, merch, photography, web, app, a campaign, an editorial spread, billboard and storefront.\nDesign direction\nWeb design\nIdentity\nStudio leadership\nBrand DNA extraction\nBrand systems" } ] }, { "slug": "column-five", "title": "Column Five", "url": "https://iwooten.com/work/column-five", "summary": "The visual agency behind a generation of infographics. I built its 2013 site and the admin behind it on Rails and Angular, and led UI on Visage, its real-time data platform. The site, the admin and the brand world they implied.", "signals": [ { "value": "2013–14", "label": "Senior Software Developer, Column Five Media" }, { "value": "Inc. 500", "label": "One of America’s fastest-growing private companies" }, { "value": "6 → 15", "label": "Six screens, fifteen brand surfaces" } ], "overview": "", "result": "Column Five turned numbers into stories. Founded in Orange County in 2009 by Ross Crooks, Josh Ritchie and Jason Lankow, it helped make the infographic a medium, for the NFL, Microsoft, DonorsChoose.org, McKesson, A&E and AARP among hundreds more, and wrote the book on it: Infographics: The Power of Visual Storytelling (Wiley, 2012). I joined in June 2013 as a senior software developer. I built the agency’s site on Rails and Angular, with an admin that let the studio publish its projects, case studies and clients itself, and led UI design and front end on Visage, its real-time data visualisation and reporting platform. What it taught me: when the work is the product, the site’s job is to get out of its way.", "sections": [ { "id": "the-brief", "label": "The brief", "text": "An agency that makes information beautiful has to make its own site the clearest thing it ships.\nThe 2013 site ran on Swiss discipline. Every section opens the same way: a short black rule, a red label in tracked capitals, then one large black statement. The home leads with a single piece of work and the studio’s approach; the work index filters twenty-one pages of projects by type, industry and search; capabilities is a list of thirteen; the clients page sorts the roster into sixteen industries. Behind it, the admin keeps every project, case study, asset and client in one place, and opens on the health of the site.\nFive stripes\nFive parallel red strokes folding into a C: a column of five, literally.\nRule, label, statement\nOne opening for every section, so hundreds of projects still read as one voice.\nThe work is the hero\nBooklets, explainers and charts get the room photographs usually get.\nHigh five\nTestimonials signed off with a hand-drawn high five: rigorous, never cold." }, { "id": "the-work", "label": "The work", "text": "The home page: one piece of work, the approach, a high five.\nCapabilities: rule, label, statement, list.\nThe work, filtered by type and industry.\nThe roster, by industry.\nThe admin opens on the health of the site.\nClients, with every project they commissioned." }, { "id": "brand-system", "label": "Brand system", "text": "Seen again years later, the site was already most of a brand. I locked what it held (signal red, black and white, a heavy grotesk with tracked red labels, the five-stripe mark and the Visual Agency badge, data as the hero image) and followed it into print, product, a data-visualisation system, a campaign, an editorial spread and a storefront.\nThe site and admin are the work. The brand world is a 2026 study made with my own tool from them, not work for Column Five." }, { "id": "role", "label": "Role", "text": "Senior software developer at Column Five, 2013 to 2014. A 2026 study for the brand world.\nThe site\ncolumnfivemedia.com on Rails and Angular: home, work, capabilities, clients, about, blog and jobs.\nThe admin\nProjects, case studies, assets, clients and site content in one place, with the site’s server and browser metrics on its first screen.\nVisage\nLead UI designer and front-end developer on the studio’s real-time data visualisation and reporting platform.\nFifteen surfaces\nFrom the locked brand DNA: logo system, guidelines, cards, stationery, packaging, merch, a data-viz system, web, app, a campaign, an editorial spread, billboard and storefront.\nFront-end engineering\nRails & Angular\nUI design\nData visualisation\nBrand DNA extraction\nBrand systems" } ] }, { "slug": "cuescore", "title": "CueScore", "url": "https://iwooten.com/work/cuescore", "summary": "An iPhone scorekeeper for pool leagues, and the seed of Digital Pool. Its screens, scoring system and signed scoresheets from 2010 and 2011, and the brand world they implied.", "signals": [ { "value": "2010–11", "label": "Designed and built at Levid Media" }, { "value": "Digital Pool", "label": "The idea that became the company" }, { "value": "10 → 15", "label": "Ten screens, fifteen brand surfaces" } ], "overview": "", "result": "CueScore kept score so league players could keep shooting. An iPhone scorekeeper for league nights that I designed and built at Levid Media in 2010 and 2011: rack-by-rack scoring for 8-ball and 9-ball, safeties, dead balls and timeouts, match points against handicaps, and a scoresheet both captains sign on the phone, which then comes out as the league’s own form, filled in. In 2013 cuescoreapp.com still said it was coming soon; the idea came back in 2018 as Digital Pool, now the scoring platform under events like the US Open and the World Pool Championship. What it taught me: in a pool room, the interface has to read from across the table.", "sections": [ { "id": "the-brief", "label": "The brief", "text": "In a loud pool room, the score has to read from across the table.\nThe table is the interface. The racked balls sit on full-screen felt, each player’s score in a big white ring at either side, safeties and timeouts along the bottom, and a black rail of chrome above and below for the match and the actions. Tap a ball and an overlay asks one question (Score It, Dead Ball or Cancel). Games end on a gold winner and a green Continue Match; matches end on a ledger of totals, then a signature from each captain. Behind it sits a flowchart of every branch a rack can take, drawn before a screen was.\nThe table is the interface\nFelt, balls and two score rings: the game on the phone looks like the game on the table.\nOne question at a time\nScore It, Dead Ball, Cancel. Green to go on, red to undo, gold for the winner.\nSigned on the phone\nCaptains sign and rate the other team; the league’s scoresheet comes out filled in.\nMapped first\nBreak, safety, dead ball, game and match: every branch charted before it was built." }, { "id": "the-work", "label": "The work", "text": "A match, a shot, a game won.\nCueScore, League Edition.\nThe dashboard.\n8-ball, Match 2, Game 8.\nScore It, Dead Ball, Cancel.\nA game won.\nThe match in numbers.\nCaptains sign on the phone.\nAnd the league’s scoresheet comes out filled in.\nEvery branch of a match, mapped before it was built." }, { "id": "brand-system", "label": "Brand system", "text": "Seen again years later, the app was already most of a brand. I locked what it held (felt green and rail black, nine-ball gold for the winner and stripe red for undo, a light small-caps wordmark with a script League Edition, glossy balls under a pendant light) and followed it into print, product, an app icon, photography, data, a campaign and a pool room.\nThe app and its screens are the work. The wordmark is rebuilt from the 2010 splash screen, and the brand world is a 2026 study made with my own tool from them. It is not the CueScore tournament service founded in 2015." }, { "id": "role", "label": "Role", "text": "Designer and developer at Levid Media, 2010 to 2011. A 2026 study for the brand world.\nProduct design\nScoring for 8-ball and 9-ball, the overlays, game and match results, and the signing flow.\nScoring system\nThe rules of a league match as a flowchart, then as code.\nScoresheets\nFilled in, signed and printed in the league’s own format.\nFifteen surfaces\nFrom the locked brand DNA: logo system, guidelines, cards, packaging, merch, an app icon, photography, data, web, app, a campaign, billboard and storefront.\nProduct design\niOS\nScoring systems\nUI design\nBrand DNA extraction\nBrand systems" } ] }, { "slug": "socialcrunch", "title": "SocialCrunch", "url": "https://iwooten.com/work/socialcrunch", "summary": "An anonymous question game from Chicago. Its identity, concepts and prototype, designed at ÄKTA in 2010 and 2011, and the brand world they implied.", "signals": [ { "value": "2010–11", "label": "Design Director, ÄKTA Web Studio" }, { "value": "TechStars", "label": "TechStars Chicago, 2013" }, { "value": "11 → 15", "label": "Eleven screens, fifteen brand surfaces" } ], "overview": "", "result": "SocialCrunch asked what nobody would say out loud. A Chicago start-up built around one question, where do you stand? You connected with Facebook, swapped your identity for an anonymous one, and answered what you never would in public (money, sex, religion, politics, pop culture), then saw how your friends and everyone else answered. Mashups crossed two questions to find what neither shows alone. At ÄKTA, where I was design director, we designed it in 2010 and 2011: the identity system, light and dark concepts and the prototype. The company went on to TechStars Chicago in 2013. What it taught me: anonymity is a design problem before it is a technical one. People answer honestly only when the interface makes them feel unseen.", "sections": [ { "id": "the-brief", "label": "The brief", "text": "A game about the questions people won’t answer out loud has to feel private before it can feel fun.\nThe mood board set the system: crunch red and night navy with blues, teal and cream, a squared techno sans for the interface and a slab for the questions, glossy pill buttons and a set of flat icons. The prototype puts it on a night-out photograph and asks for nothing until you are anonymous: Start, then Connect via Facebook, Anonymize and a new identity. Questions sit in a masonry feed of photo cards with two pill answers; mashups unlock as you answer, and a result lands as one big question, one line about your friends and a pie chart.\nWhere do you stand?\nThe whole product in four words, and the last line on every screen.\nAnonymous by design\nYour identity swapped for a hash before the first question; silhouettes, never names.\nMashups\nTwo answers crossed into a third question nobody would ask outright.\nA crowd of dots\nThe mark: many coloured answers resolving into one arrow." }, { "id": "the-work", "label": "The work", "text": "A result: one question, one line about your friends, one chart.\nStart.\nAnonymize before the first question.\nMashups: two questions crossed, unlocked by answering.\nConcept, dark: the feed.\nConcept, light.\nA denser feed.\nAnd in light.\nThe mood board: the system before the screens.\nsocialcrunch.com, dark.\nAnd light." }, { "id": "brand-system", "label": "Brand system", "text": "Seen again years later, the mood board was already most of a brand. I locked what it held (crunch red and night navy, answer blue, teal and cream, a squared techno sans with a slab for the questions, the dot-cluster mark and the SC monogram, night photography under a dark interface) and followed it into print, product, photography, a social kit, data, a campaign and a storefront.\nThe concepts and prototype are the work. The brand world is a 2026 study made with my own tool from them, not work for SocialCrunch." }, { "id": "role", "label": "Role", "text": "Design director at ÄKTA, 2010 to 2011. A 2026 study for the brand world.\nIdentity system\nPalette, type, buttons and icons on one mood board, the wordmark’s dot mark and the SC monogram.\nConcepts\nLight and dark feeds of question cards, categories down the side, anonymity first.\nPrototype\nStart, anonymize, the mashups list and the result, over night photography.\nFifteen surfaces\nFrom the locked brand DNA: logo system, guidelines, cards, packaging, merch, photography, a social kit, data, web, app, a campaign, billboard and storefront.\nProduct design\nIdentity\nDesign direction\nUI design\nBrand DNA extraction\nBrand systems" } ] }, { "slug": "gigspark", "title": "GigSpark", "url": "https://iwooten.com/work/gigspark", "summary": "A map-based gig finder for bands and venues, 2010. Every stage on the map, a tour you can draw along it, and the brand world it implied.", "signals": [ { "value": "2010", "label": "Web app for bands and venues" }, { "value": "Map", "label": "Spark Maps, the tour builder and venue search" }, { "value": "5 → 17", "label": "Five pieces, seventeen brand surfaces" } ], "overview": "", "result": "It only takes one gig. GigSpark matched bands with venues on a map. A band set a radius, a genre and a date range and saw every venue that fit; a venue posted open gigs and found acts nearby. I designed the identity, a wordmark with a burst of electric blue and the line It Only Takes One, and the app around the map: Spark Maps with a tour builder, a list view for the same search, a gig board and a dashboard. What it taught me: find the shape of the problem first. Booking is geography, so the map had to be the product.", "sections": [ { "id": "the-brief", "label": "The brief", "text": "Booking is geography. Put it on a map.\nA band on the road thinks in routes, and a venue thinks in who’s close enough to play on Friday. So the map is the product: a search radius drawn on satellite imagery, gig pins along the coast, and a tour builder beside it that filters by genre and ranking and turns the pins into a route. When a map is the wrong tool, the list view runs the same search as a table, with filters for venue type, genre, rating, capacity, compensation and open listings. Around it, night-mode chrome with an amber spark: the feeling of a club before the set.\nThe map first\nPins, a radius and a route, so a tour is something you draw rather than a spreadsheet you fill in.\nSame search, as a list\nOne query, two views: switch to a filterable table when you need to compare venues side by side.\nAmber and electric blue\nWarm amber for GIG, a blue burst for the spark, on deep blue-black: stage light on a dark room.\nIt only takes one\nThe line under the mark, and the promise of the product: one good booking can start a career." }, { "id": "the-work", "label": "The work", "text": "Spark Maps: plan a tour along the pins.\nThe list view: every venue, filtered.\nReady, set, gig.\nThe mark, on dark.\nAnd on light." }, { "id": "brand-system", "label": "Brand system", "text": "An app and a logo only hint at a brand, so I followed the hint: ink blue-black with spark amber and electric blue, wide squared type, dark stages lit by a single warm light. Locked as brand DNA, it carried into print, packaging, a campaign and the street.\nThe screens and the logo are the design. The brand world is a 2026 study made with my own tool from them, not work for GigSpark." }, { "id": "role", "label": "Role", "text": "The identity and the app in 2010. A 2026 study for the brand world.\nIdentity\nThe wordmark, the burst and the line It Only Takes One, on dark and light.\nProduct design\nSpark Maps, the tour builder, the list view and its filters, the gig board, the dashboard and sign-in.\nBrand DNA\nExtracted and locked: palette with roles, display, body and mono type, voice, imagery rules.\nSeventeen surfaces\nLogo system, colour, type, cards, stationery, guidelines, packaging, merch, web, app and app icon, social kit, a campaign, billboard and storefront.\nProduct design\nMap interfaces\nLogo design\nWeb apps\nBrand DNA extraction\nBrand systems" } ] }, { "slug": "levid", "title": "Levid Media", "url": "https://iwooten.com/work/levid", "summary": "The design agency I started in 1999. Fifteen years of work for other people, and the brand that carried it.", "signals": [ { "value": "1999", "label": "Founded in Seattle, run for fifteen years" }, { "value": "Founder", "label": "Founder and creative director" }, { "value": "20", "label": "Brand surfaces rendered from its DNA" } ], "overview": "", "result": "The agency that paid for college and then became the job. I started Levid Media in 1999, ran it through art school and full time after, and kept it going for fifteen years: sites, identities and campaigns for Nintendo of America, Microsoft, RED, Coca-Cola and dozens of smaller clients, many of them in this archive. The brand was mine to design, and it changed as often as the work did. What it taught me: you’ll redesign your own brand more than any client’s, and the one thing worth keeping steady is the mark.", "sections": [ { "id": "the-brief", "label": "The brief", "text": "You imagine it. We make it reality. An agency’s own brand has to prove that line before anyone reads it.\nThe mark is an aperture: three white blades turning inside a red square, a camera iris and a pinwheel at once, so it reads as vision and as motion. The wordmark is set wide and quiet underneath, so the red does the talking. The studio’s own site became the lab for everything else. It was rebuilt at least six times, from cool blue in the early 2000s to red portfolios, a dark web-work version, a flower close-up and finally a single framed image, and the mark stayed the one constant.\nA mark that moves\nThree blades, one turn. The aperture suggests a lens opening and a wheel spinning, vision and momentum in one shape.\nOne red square\nLevid red on white, with black for type. The square works as a favicon, a stamp and a sign.\nThe site as a lab\nSix versions of the studio’s own site, each one a test of what the next client might want.\nPrint that matches\nCards and folders in black, red and white, so a pitch looked like the studio before the work was shown." }, { "id": "the-studio", "label": "The studio", "text": "The splash, 2010: the tagline, the clients, and a new site coming soon.\nThe mark: three aperture blades, always turning.\nThe card: one red square and a lot of white.\nAn early version, in blue.\nThe red years: portfolio front and centre.\nA later version, the red turned organic.\nA dark version, for the web work.\nThe last version: one image, framed in white.\nFolders: the same mark on every ground." }, { "id": "brand-system", "label": "Brand system", "text": "Fifteen years of a brand nobody wrote down, so I finally wrote it down: Levid red on white and black, heavy headlines, cinematic red light and a sense of rotation, locked as brand DNA. Then I let it run into everything the studio never had time to make, from packaging to a storefront.\nThe mark, print and sites are the design. The brand world is a 2026 study made with my own tool from them." }, { "id": "role", "label": "Role", "text": "Founder, creative director, and the studio’s own designer, 1999 to 2014. A 2026 study for the brand world.\nFounder\nStarted it in 1999, ran it through art school and full time after, fifteen years in all. It still takes the occasional project.\nClients\nNintendo of America, Microsoft, RED, Coca-Cola, Speakeasy, Renovacom and Dell University, among many.\nThe brand\nThe aperture mark, cards, folders and at least six versions of the studio site, designed and built end to end.\nTwenty surfaces\nExtracted into brand DNA and rendered: palette, type, icons, rules, logo system, print, packaging, merch, social, data, a presentation, web, app, billboard and signage.\nAgency founder\nBrand identity\nWeb design\nCreative direction\nBrand DNA extraction\nBrand systems" } ] }, { "slug": "cbd", "title": "CBD Marketing", "url": "https://iwooten.com/work/cbd", "summary": "Colman Brohan Davis, a Chicago marketing agency, in its twentieth year. A leaping dog, a folded-paper family, and one small dog who walks the footer.", "signals": [ { "value": "2009", "label": "The agency’s twentieth year, Chicago" }, { "value": "Levid", "label": "Creative Director, Levid Media" }, { "value": "6 → 11", "label": "Six pieces, eleven brand surfaces" } ], "overview": "", "result": "A serious agency with a dog in the footer. Colman Brohan Davis was a Chicago creative marketing and brand strategy agency: integrated marketing, brand development, public relations and interactive. For its twentieth year, at Levid Media, I designed the mark, three homepage directions and a small cartoon dog who peeked over the footer. What it taught me: an established brand can afford one small, human surprise, and the surprise is what people remember.", "sections": [ { "id": "the-brief", "label": "The brief", "text": "Twenty years in, the agency wanted to look established without looking tired.\nThe mark started as a page of origami dogs, a boxer, a terrier, a corgi, a resting dog, and settled on one in mid-leap, built from overlapping folded planes in lavender so it reads as motion and as paper. The name sits beneath in a quiet serif. For the site I designed three directions, from a light editorial homepage to a dark one and a cracked-paint interactive page with giant ghosted type, and drew a brown cartoon dog, frame by frame, to peek over the footer: the one surprise on an otherwise composed page.\nA dog in mid-leap\nLoyal, agile, going somewhere. Folded planes keep it crafted rather than cute.\nLavender and one spark\nA soft purple palette with orange held back for links, the active tab and one pair of ears.\nThree directions\nLight and editorial, dark and confident, and a textured interactive page, so the client could choose a temperature.\nOne surprise\nA hand-drawn dog in the footer. Keep scrolling and he is still here." }, { "id": "the-work", "label": "The work", "text": "The mark: a dog in mid-leap, cut from folded planes.\nOrigami dog ideas, the sketches behind the mark.\nThe walk cycle: seventeen frames, pencil then colour.\nThe homepage, 2009, with the dog peeking over the footer.\nA second direction: dark header, the twentieth year.\nThe interactive page: cracked paint and ghosted type." }, { "id": "brand-system", "label": "Brand system", "text": "A mark, three homepages and a dog make a pitch; I wanted to see the system behind it. Lavender, purple and one orange spark, a serif wordmark, folded-paper geometry and bright editorial light became the brand DNA, and the brand world grew from there.\nThe mark, the homepage concepts and the dog are the design. The brand world is a 2026 study made with my own tool from them, not work delivered to the client." }, { "id": "role", "label": "Role", "text": "Levid Media in 2009 for the mark, the site and the dog. A 2026 study for the brand world.\nCreative direction\nFounder and creative director at Levid Media, the agency that took the brief.\nMark and site\nOrigami sketches, the leaping-dog mark and lockups, and three homepage directions, designed end to end.\nIllustration\nThe cartoon dog, drawn in pencil and coloured frame by frame into a seventeen-frame walk.\nEleven surfaces\nBrand DNA extracted, then logo system, cards, packaging, merch, web, app, guidelines, billboard and signage.\nLogo design\nWeb design\nIllustration\nAnimation\nBrand DNA extraction\nBrand systems" } ] }, { "slug": "omatik", "title": "Omatik", "url": "https://iwooten.com/work/omatik", "summary": "Strategy, experience, technology. A ribbon-shield mark for a consultancy, and the brand world it implied.", "signals": [ { "value": "3", "label": "Strategy, experience, technology" }, { "value": "Levid", "label": "Creative Director, Levid Media" }, { "value": "5 → 20", "label": "Five pieces, twenty brand surfaces" } ], "overview": "", "result": "Three disciplines, one continuous shape. Omatik was a consultancy working across strategy, experience and technology. At Levid Media I designed its identity: a rounded shield drawn as a single ribbon that turns from blue to green to yellow, a wide geometric wordmark with the three disciplines tracked beneath, and business cards in light and slate. What it taught me: when a mark has to hold several ideas, draw them as one continuous shape, not parts bolted together.", "sections": [ { "id": "the-brief", "label": "The brief", "text": "A consultancy that sells three things has to look like it sells one.\nThe concept sheets show the search: rings, shields and interlocking forms, each trying to hold strategy, experience and technology together. The answer was a shield made of one ribbon that folds back on itself, so the three colours read as a single continuous surface rather than three parts bolted together. The wordmark is set wide and open, its rounded O and A echoing the shield, with the three disciplines spelled out underneath so nobody has to guess what the company does.\nOne ribbon\nThe shield is a single folded band, not three shapes. The idea of the business, drawn once.\nA gradient with a job\nBlue, green and yellow sweep across the ribbon, one colour for each discipline, on a calm slate and paper ground.\nOpen geometry\nWide, rounded capitals that match the shield’s curves, friendly without going soft.\nLight and slate\nCards in pale grey and in ink slate, the mark debossed on the dark back, so it works on both grounds." }, { "id": "the-identity", "label": "The identity", "text": "The lockup: one ribbon, three colours, three words.\nConcepts: shields and rings on the way to the mark.\nRefinement: the shield wins, the wordmark settles.\nThe card, light.\nThe card, dark." }, { "id": "brand-system", "label": "Brand system", "text": "A mark and a card are where a brand starts. From the concepts, the lockup and the cards I locked Omatik’s DNA (ink slate and paper with a blue-green-yellow sweep, geometric type, bright architecture and ribbon-like light) and rendered the rest: stationery, packaging, product screens and signage.\nThe mark, concepts and cards are the design. The brand world is a 2026 study made with my own tool from them, not work delivered to the client." }, { "id": "role", "label": "Role", "text": "Levid Media for the identity. A 2026 study for the brand world.\nCreative direction\nFounder and creative director at Levid Media, the agency that took the brief.\nIdentity\nMark exploration, the ribbon shield, the wordmark and lockup, and cards in light and dark, designed end to end.\nBrand DNA\nExtracted from the identity and locked: palette with roles, display and body type, imagery rules, anti-defaults.\nTwenty surfaces\nPalette, type, icons, rules, logo system, cards, stationery, packaging, merch, social kit, data visualisation, a presentation, web, app and app icon, guidelines, billboard and signage.\nLogo design\nBrand identity\nPrint\nConsultancy branding\nBrand DNA extraction\nBrand systems" } ] }, { "slug": "destrukt", "title": "Destrukt Studios", "url": "https://iwooten.com/work/destrukt", "summary": "My own design studio. A winged V, a wordmark with room to breathe, and the brand world they implied.", "signals": [ { "value": "Studio", "label": "A personal design studio" }, { "value": "Mine", "label": "Founder and visual designer" }, { "value": "5 → 18", "label": "Five pieces, eighteen brand surfaces" } ], "overview": "", "result": "A studio of one, dressed like a film title. Destrukt Studios was my own design studio, a place for personal work outside the agency. I designed the identity for myself: a crimson V with a wing on each side, a wide, tracked-out wordmark, and business cards in smoke-black and white with a world map ghosted behind. What it taught me: with no client to push back, restraint has to be a rule you set yourself.", "sections": [ { "id": "the-brief", "label": "The brief", "text": "No client, so no compromise. The only brief was restraint until the moment of impact.\nDesigning for yourself is the hardest brief, because nobody stops you. The mark is a V made of two blades that read as wings, the only colour in the system. DESTRUKT is set in wide geometric capitals with extreme letterspacing, so the name reads slowly, like a title card, with STUDIOS tracked out underneath. The cards carry my name as visual designer, a faint world map and nothing else, in a dark and a light version.\nOne red, one mark\nSignal crimson for the V and nothing else. Everything around it is black, white and smoke.\nSpace as the material\nWide caps and heavy tracking make the wordmark feel expensive and slow, the opposite of the name.\nTechnical ghosts\nA world map at low opacity on the cards, a hint of coordinates and scale without saying anything.\nDark and light\nEvery piece exists on black and on white, so the identity never depends on the ground." }, { "id": "the-identity", "label": "The identity", "text": "The lockup: a winged V and a wordmark with room to breathe.\nThe cards, dark: smoke, a faint world map, one red mark.\nThe cards, light: the same system inverted.\nFront and back, dark.\nFront and back, light." }, { "id": "brand-system", "label": "Brand system", "text": "A mark and a card for a studio of one. I carried their mood forward (void black, smoke grey and a single crimson, wide geometric type, cinematic smoke and one red light), locked it as brand DNA and rendered the studio it never became, down to packaging and a storefront.\nThe mark and cards are the design. The brand world is a 2026 study made with my own tool from them." }, { "id": "role", "label": "Role", "text": "Designer and client at once. A 2026 study for the brand world.\nFounder\nMy own studio, for personal and exploratory work outside the agency.\nIdentity\nThe winged V, the wordmark and lockup, and business cards in dark and light, designed end to end.\nBrand DNA\nExtracted from the identity and locked: palette with roles, display and body type, imagery rules, anti-defaults.\nEighteen surfaces\nPalette, type specimen, logo system, cards, stationery, packaging, merch, social kit, data visualisation, a presentation, web, app and app icon, guidelines, billboard and signage.\nLogo design\nBrand identity\nPrint\nPersonal work\nBrand DNA extraction\nBrand systems" } ] }, { "slug": "blank-vision", "title": "Blank Vision Multimedia", "url": "https://iwooten.com/work/blank-vision", "summary": "A multimedia design agency. A red arrowhead, a condensed wordmark, and the brand world they implied.", "signals": [ { "value": "Agency", "label": "A multimedia design studio" }, { "value": "Levid", "label": "Creative Director, Levid Media" }, { "value": "4 → 19", "label": "Four pieces, nineteen brand surfaces" } ], "overview": "", "result": "An identity for a studio that makes other people’s identities. Blank Vision was a multimedia design agency. At Levid Media I designed its mark and the kit around it: a red arrowhead cut from two strokes, a tall condensed wordmark, business cards in three colourways and a shirt, so the studio looked as sharp as the work it sold. What it taught me: an agency’s own mark is judged harder than any client’s, so it has to work at the size of a favicon and the size of a shirt.", "sections": [ { "id": "the-brief", "label": "The brief", "text": "A design agency’s own brand is its first portfolio piece. It had to be sharp, fast and unmistakable at any size.\nThe mark is an arrowhead, two red strokes folded into a point, so it reads as forward motion and as a cursor at once. The wordmark sets BLANK in heavy condensed caps and VISION with its letters stencil-cut, with MULTIMEDIA tracked beneath: one word that says both design and screen. The cards run the same pieces in black, red and white, and the shirt adds a barcode, the studio’s nod to media and print at once.\nA mark that points\nTwo strokes, one direction. The arrowhead works as a logo, a cursor and a bullet.\nMonochrome plus red\nBlack, white and a cool mist grey, with a single signal red that does all the talking.\nCondensed caps\nTall, squared-off letterforms that fit a lot of word into a narrow space, like a title card.\nOne kit, three colourways\nCards in black, red and white from the same parts, so the brand flexes without changing." }, { "id": "the-identity", "label": "The identity", "text": "The lockups: arrowhead and wordmark, and the wordmark alone.\nThe stacked lockup with the address.\nThe shirt: mark, wordmark and a barcode.\nThe cards: three colourways, one system." }, { "id": "brand-system", "label": "Brand system", "text": "Cards and a shirt were the whole kit. From them I locked Blank Vision’s DNA (signal red on black and white, condensed display type, hard-edged composition with media motifs) and built out what an agency would need next: stationery, packaging, product screens and out of home.\nThe mark, cards and shirt are the design. The brand world is a 2026 study made with my own tool from them, not work delivered to the client." }, { "id": "role", "label": "Role", "text": "Levid Media for the identity. A 2026 study for the brand world.\nCreative direction\nFounder and creative director at Levid Media, the agency that took the brief.\nIdentity kit\nThe arrowhead, the wordmark and lockups, three card colourways and a shirt, designed end to end.\nBrand DNA\nExtracted from the identity and locked: palette with roles, display and body type, imagery rules, anti-defaults.\nNineteen surfaces\nPalette, type specimen, iconography, logo system, cards, stationery, packaging, merch, social kit, data visualisation, a presentation, web, app and app icon, guidelines, billboard and signage.\nLogo design\nBrand identity\nPrint\nAgency branding\nBrand DNA extraction\nBrand systems" } ] }, { "slug": "deathjazz", "title": "DeathJazz", "url": "https://iwooten.com/work/deathjazz", "summary": "Death metal meets jazz. A chrome wordmark, four CD covers, and the brand world they implied.", "signals": [ { "value": "2010", "label": "A death-metal and jazz band, San Francisco" }, { "value": "Levid", "label": "Creative Director, Levid Media" }, { "value": "5 → 15", "label": "Five pieces, fifteen brand surfaces" } ], "overview": "", "result": "An identity for a band that refuses to pick a genre. DeathJazz played death metal and jazz at once, out of San Francisco. At Levid Media in 2010 I designed the wordmark and four CD covers: one mark, cut like chrome, that could sit in a storm, a prismatic burst or on plain white and still read as the same band. What it taught me: a mark that has to live on wildly different covers needs one fixed shape and total freedom around it.", "sections": [ { "id": "the-brief", "label": "The brief", "text": "Brutality and virtuosity in one mark. Heavy enough for a metal crowd, precise enough for people who know their scales.\nMetal logos are usually illegible on purpose, and jazz identities are usually polite. The wordmark splits the difference: faceted, angular letterforms with a chrome bevel, aggressive in shape but set on a clean baseline you can read from the back of a room, with a single spike dropping below the line. The covers then do the atmosphere, so the mark never has to.\nChrome, not gore\nBeveled steel letterforms instead of the dripping, tangled marks of the genre. The aggression is in the angles.\nMonochrome first\nBlack, bone white and steel grey carry everything. Colour arrives only as light, violet, cyan and ember bursting from behind.\nWeather as texture\nStorm cloud, lightning and cracked stone behind the mark, so each cover feels like a place rather than a pattern.\nOne mark, four moods\nThe same wordmark in a storm, a prism, a stencil and on white. The covers change; the band does not." }, { "id": "the-work", "label": "The work", "text": "The wordmark: faceted chrome, one spike below the line.\nCover one: the name as a stencil, broken on the diagonal.\nCover two: the wordmark in prismatic light.\nCover three: the wordmark in a storm.\nCover four: the same mark, inverted onto white." }, { "id": "brand-system", "label": "Brand system", "text": "Four covers are a record sleeve; I wanted to see the tour. Void black, bone white and chrome, prismatic light as the only colour, lightning and stone for imagery: locked as brand DNA, it carried into merch, print, social and the street.\nThe wordmark and covers are the design. The brand world is a 2026 study made with my own tool from that work, not work delivered to the band." }, { "id": "role", "label": "Role", "text": "Levid Media in 2010 for the wordmark and covers. A 2026 study for the brand world.\nCreative direction\nFounder and creative director at Levid Media, the agency that took the brief.\nWordmark and covers\nThe chrome wordmark and four CD covers, designed end to end.\nBrand DNA\nExtracted from the covers and locked: palette with roles, display and body type, imagery rules, anti-defaults.\nFifteen surfaces\nLogo system, cards, stationery, packaging, merch, social kit, a presentation, web, app and app icon, billboard and venue signage, rendered from the locked DNA.\nLogo design\nAlbum art\nArt direction\nMusic identity\nBrand DNA extraction\nBrand systems" } ] }, { "slug": "raging-systems", "title": "Raging Systems", "url": "https://iwooten.com/work/raging-systems", "summary": "Custom gaming computers. A charging-bull mark, and the brand world it implied.", "signals": [ { "value": "Rigs", "label": "High-end gaming PCs, built to order" }, { "value": "Levid", "label": "Creative Director, Levid Media" }, { "value": "3 → 15", "label": "Three marks, fifteen brand surfaces" } ], "overview": "", "result": "A mark that looks like it would rather be charging. Raging Systems built high-end gaming computers to each customer’s specification. At Levid Media I designed the identity: a red bull with its head down and its horns forward, over a wide, squared-off wordmark, so the brand read as fast and physical rather than as another beige box. What it taught me: in a category of beige boxes, the fastest way to stand out is to give the brand a pulse.", "sections": [ { "id": "the-brief", "label": "The brief", "text": "Every rig is built for one person. The brand had to feel like a weapon, not a spec sheet.\nGaming hardware brands tend to shout in rainbow LEDs and chrome. The answer here was one colour and one animal. The bull is drawn as a silhouette in mid-charge, red body and black horns, so it holds up at favicon size and on a case badge. The wordmark underneath is wide and mechanical, like lettering machined into a panel, with CUSTOM GAMING COMPUTERS spaced out beneath it to say exactly what the company does.\nSilhouette over detail\nThe bull reads from its outline alone, head down, horns forward, mane up. No gradients, no fur.\nRed on charcoal\nOne red and a charcoal slate, with black and white for contrast. The machines supply any other light.\nMachined type\nA wide, squared-off wordmark that feels engineered, set over a tracked-out descriptor.\nTwo grounds\nThe mark works on charcoal for the product and on white for print, packaging and paperwork." }, { "id": "the-mark", "label": "The mark", "text": "The lockup: the bull over a wide, squared-off wordmark.\nThe mark on charcoal, where it lives.\nThe same mark on white, for print and packaging." }, { "id": "brand-system", "label": "Brand system", "text": "One mark, one wordmark and a lot of attitude. I locked that attitude as brand DNA (raging red on charcoal, a wide mechanical face, dramatic light on dark rigs) and rendered where it would go: packaging, merch, product screens and a storefront.\nThe marks are the design. The brand world is a 2026 study made with my own tool from them, not work delivered to the client." }, { "id": "role", "label": "Role", "text": "Levid Media for the mark and wordmark. A 2026 study for the brand world.\nCreative direction\nFounder and creative director at Levid Media, the agency that took the brief.\nMark and wordmark\nThe charging bull, the wordmark and the lockup, on dark and light grounds, designed end to end.\nBrand DNA\nExtracted from the marks and locked: palette with roles, display and body type, imagery rules, anti-defaults.\nFifteen surfaces\nLogo system, cards, stationery, packaging, merch, social kit, a presentation, web, app and app icon, billboard and storefront, rendered from the locked DNA.\nLogo design\nBrand identity\nConsumer hardware\nGaming\nBrand DNA extraction\nBrand systems" } ] }, { "slug": "ice-society", "title": "The I.C.E. Society", "url": "https://iwooten.com/work/ice-society", "summary": "A photography school on the web. Inspire, challenge, educate: a public home and a members’ hub, 2011.", "signals": [ { "value": "2011", "label": "Home and hub, for Jerry Ghionis" }, { "value": "Levid", "label": "Creative Director, Levid Media" }, { "value": "2 → 12", "label": "Two templates, twelve brand surfaces" } ], "overview": "", "result": "A site that had to sell a photographer’s teaching without upstaging his photographs. The I.C.E. Society was Jerry Ghionis’s photography school: video chapters, monthly competitions, critiques and workshops for professionals and enthusiasts, built around inspire, challenge, educate. In 2011, at Levid Media, I designed the public home and the members’ hub. What it taught me: when the product is someone else’s work, the best design is the one you barely notice.", "sections": [ { "id": "the-brief", "label": "The brief", "text": "The product was the photographs. Everything else had to stay out of their way and still close the sale.\nGhionis shoots high-drama portraiture: backlit rain, smoke, red bamboo wallpaper, brides in chiaroscuro. The public home lets one of those images fill the screen and puts the pitch in a translucent panel over it, with the three words of the mission in a small-caps serif underneath and a carousel of the work below that. The members’ hub is the opposite problem, a dashboard of chapters, competitions and critiques that has to stay legible after a hundred logins, so it goes to paper and collapsible panels, with the drama kept to the thumbnails.\nBlackletter, once\nThe gothic wordmark carries inspire, challenge and educate inside its S. It is the only blackletter on the site; everything else is a quiet serif and a sans.\nInk and teal\nNear-black and a slate teal for the chrome, one ice-blue for links and buttons, and the warmth left to the photographs.\nTwo temperatures\nThe home is dark and cinematic; the hub is pale paper with dark bars. Same brand, two jobs.\nPanels that collapse\nWhat’s up, this month’s competition, critiques, favourite chapters: each a panel a member can close, so the hub is theirs to arrange." }, { "id": "the-templates", "label": "The templates", "text": "The public home, 2011: one photograph, one panel, three words.\nThe home with a second hero, to prove the panel holds over any image.\nMy Hub, light: collapsible panels on paper.\nMy Hub, dark chrome: the same panels under the home’s header." }, { "id": "brand-system", "label": "Brand system", "text": "The templates set a mood more than a system. I kept the mood (ink and teal with one ice-blue accent, blackletter kept for the wordmark, serif small caps, chiaroscuro photography), locked it as brand DNA and rendered the rest: print, packaging, product screens and out of home.\nThe 2011 templates are the design. The brand world is a 2026 study made with my own tool from those templates, not work delivered to the client. The photographs in the templates are Jerry Ghionis’s." }, { "id": "role", "label": "Role", "text": "Levid Media in 2011 for the site. A 2026 study for the brand world.\nCreative direction\nFounder and creative director at Levid Media, the agency that took the brief.\nHome and hub\nThe public home and the members’ dashboard, two temperatures on one brand, designed end to end.\nBrand DNA\nExtracted from the templates and locked: palette with roles, blackletter and serif type, imagery rules, anti-defaults.\nTwelve surfaces\nLogo system, stationery, packaging, merch, web, app, billboard and storefront, rendered from the locked DNA.\nWeb design\nEditorial design\nArt direction\nMembership products\nBrand DNA extraction\nBrand systems" } ] }, { "slug": "konneckt", "title": "Konneckt", "url": "https://iwooten.com/work/konneckt", "summary": "Lead-conversion software for real-estate agents. A 2006 comp, and the brand it implied.", "signals": [ { "value": "2006", "label": "The comp, for inMotion Real Estate Media" }, { "value": "Levid", "label": "Creative Director, Levid Media" }, { "value": "1 → 11", "label": "One comp, eleven brand surfaces" } ], "overview": "", "result": "One 2006 comp, reread twenty years later as a brand. Konneckt was lead-conversion software for residential and commercial real-estate agents: turn the database you already own into the listings you have not won yet. The comp set the identity in a single screen. What it taught me: one well-made screen can hold a whole identity, if every choice on it is deliberate.", "sections": [ { "id": "the-brief", "label": "The brief", "text": "An agent owns thousands of contacts and wins a fraction of the listings hiding among them.\nKonneckt was built to close that gap: organise the database, keep the relationships warm, and surface the contacts most likely to list. The comp came through inMotion Real Estate Media, a production company making interactive media for the real-estate industry, in the Levid Media years. The brief was a brand and a site that felt like a bank, not a brochure: calm, structural, expensive.\nNavy and a hatch\nA corporate navy base with a diagonal-hatch texture in the chrome, so the surface reads as material rather than flat colour.\nFramed, not bled\nPhotography sits as an inset panel inside the hatched border. Property and place over people; an alpine valley, not a handshake.\nOne accent\nMonochrome with one signal blue for the active state and the links. Everything else earns its place in tone.\nMono for the record\nDates and metadata in a monospace, so the news column reads like a ledger." }, { "id": "the-comp", "label": "The comp", "text": "The 2006 comp: hatched navy, one framed landscape, three solutions, recent news in mono.\nThe knot mark, two loops locked through each other, is the whole idea in one shape: the contacts you have and the listings you want, joined. It sits in its own hatched panel beside the photograph, and it is the element everything in 2026 was built back from." }, { "id": "brand-system", "label": "Brand system", "text": "The comp is a single screen. I read it as a brand (its palette, type, voice and the things it deliberately never does), locked that as brand DNA and rendered what the company would have needed: identity, print, packaging, product screens and out of home.\nThe 2006 comp is the design. The brand world is a 2026 study made with my own tool from that comp, not work delivered to the client." }, { "id": "role", "label": "Role", "text": "Levid Media in 2006 for the brand and the comp. A 2026 study for the brand world.\nCreative direction\nFounder and creative director at Levid Media, the agency that took the brief.\nIdentity and site\nThe knot mark, the wordmark, the navy-and-hatch system, and the site comp, designed end to end.\nBrand DNA\nExtracted from the comp and locked: palette, type, voice, layout posture, anti-defaults.\nEleven surfaces\nLogo system, stationery, packaging, merch, web, app, billboard and storefront, rendered from the locked DNA.\nBrand identity\nWeb design\nArt direction\nBrand DNA extraction\nBrand systems\nAgency work, 2006" } ] }, { "slug": "loma-linda", "title": "Loma Linda University", "url": "https://iwooten.com/work/loma-linda", "summary": "A health-sciences university on the web. Three 2011 templates, and the brand world behind them.", "signals": [ { "value": "2011", "label": "Three templates, one system" }, { "value": "Levid", "label": "Creative Director, Levid Media" }, { "value": "3 → 11", "label": "Three templates, eleven brand surfaces" } ], "overview": "", "result": "Three templates for a university that is also a hospital. Loma Linda University is a Seventh-day Adventist health-sciences university in Southern California. In 2011, at Levid Media, I designed its web system: the university home, a school home and a section page, one chrome and one set of modules that had to hold eight schools and a medical centre. What it taught me: when one site serves students, patients and donors, the system matters more than any single page.", "sections": [ { "id": "the-brief", "label": "The brief", "text": "One university, eight schools, a medical centre, and a site that had to speak to a prospective student, a patient and a donor on the same page.\nThe answer was a system rather than a homepage. A persona selector at the very top, \"I am a…\", routes each visitor before the navigation does. Under it, the crest and the university's tabbed navigation stay fixed at every level, while the schools get their own name in a serif and their own crimson band. Events, news, social and popular destinations are modules that repeat on the university home, the School of Dentistry home and the Faculty and Staff page, so a school could run its own site without redesigning anything.\nCrest and crimson\nThe heraldic crest leads every page, and the mission statement sits in a translucent crimson panel over the photograph, the one place the brand raises its voice.\nPhotography first\nFull-bleed campus photography, students in scrubs, real buildings, warm light. No illustration, no stock handshakes.\nTeal for utility\nThe top bar, the tabs, the footer and every button are teal, so the working parts of the page read apart from the crimson of the message.\nModules, not pages\nEvents, news, social and a directory search as repeatable blocks, in the same positions at every level of the site." }, { "id": "the-templates", "label": "The templates", "text": "The university home, 2011: persona selector, crest, mission panel, and the modules.\nA school home: the School of Dentistry, on the same chrome.\nA section page: Faculty and Staff, with the directory search." }, { "id": "brand-system", "label": "Brand system", "text": "The templates set a palette, a type stack and a posture but never wrote them down. I wrote them down (crest, crimson and teal, serif headlines over a condensed sans, photography framed in bands of white) and rendered the rest of the brand from that DNA: print, packaging, product screens and signage.\nThe 2011 templates are the design. The brand world is a 2026 study made with my own tool from those templates, not work delivered to the university, and the crest and name are Loma Linda University's." }, { "id": "role", "label": "Role", "text": "Levid Media in 2011 for the web system. A 2026 study for the brand world.\nCreative direction\nFounder and creative director at Levid Media, the agency that took the brief.\nThe web system\nThree templates, one chrome, a set of repeatable modules and a persona selector, designed end to end.\nBrand DNA\nExtracted from the templates and locked: palette with roles, serif and condensed type, layout posture, anti-defaults.\nEleven surfaces\nLogo system, stationery, packaging, merch, web, app, billboard and campus signage, rendered from the locked DNA.\nWeb design\nDesign systems\nArt direction\nHigher education\nBrand DNA extraction\nBrand systems" } ] } ], "archive": [ { "slug": "socialcrunch", "name": "SocialCrunch", "kind": "Web app", "note": "Mashups prototype, and a brand world", "year": null, "images": 37, "url": "https://iwooten.com/work/socialcrunch" }, { "slug": "flingo", "name": "Flingo", "kind": "Website", "note": "Smart-TV apps", "year": null, "images": 8, "url": "https://iwooten.com/work/archive#flingo" }, { "slug": "dub-leds", "name": "DUB LEDs", "kind": "Website", "note": "Product site", "year": null, "images": 14, "url": "https://iwooten.com/work/archive#dub-leds" }, { "slug": "gaikai", "name": "Gaikai", "kind": "Dashboard", "note": "Shogun stats & inventory — acquired by Sony, and a brand world", "year": null, "images": 40, "url": "https://iwooten.com/work/gaikai" }, { "slug": "gigspark", "name": "GigSpark", "kind": "Web app", "note": "Map-based gig finder, and a brand world", "year": null, "images": 25, "url": "https://iwooten.com/work/gigspark" }, { "slug": "red", "name": "RED Digital Cinema", "kind": "Website", "note": "red.com, configurator & Scarlet and Epic collateral, and a brand world", "year": null, "images": 30, "url": "https://iwooten.com/work/red" }, { "slug": "gamesphere", "name": "GameSphere", "kind": "Website", "note": "Gaming community", "year": null, "images": 14, "url": "https://iwooten.com/work/archive#gamesphere" }, { "slug": "gameserv", "name": "GameServ", "kind": "Website", "note": "Game server hosting", "year": null, "images": 9, "url": "https://iwooten.com/work/archive#gameserv" }, { "slug": "levid", "name": "Levid Media", "kind": "Brand", "note": "The studio’s own mark, print and sites, and a brand world", "year": null, "images": 42, "url": "https://iwooten.com/work/levid" }, { "slug": "myspace-music", "name": "MySpace Music", "kind": "Concept", "note": "Redesign pitch", "year": null, "images": 8, "url": "https://iwooten.com/work/archive#myspace-music" }, { "slug": "vosges-chocolate", "name": "Vosges Chocolate", "kind": "E-commerce", "note": "Valentine's campaign", "year": null, "images": 6, "url": "https://iwooten.com/work/archive#vosges-chocolate" }, { "slug": "coca-cola-happy-place", "name": "Coca-Cola Happy Place", "kind": "Campaign", "note": "Illustrated microsite", "year": null, "images": 14, "url": "https://iwooten.com/work/archive#coca-cola-happy-place" }, { "slug": "redshift-interactive", "name": "Redshift Interactive", "kind": "Website", "note": "CPA advertising, cards & collateral", "year": null, "images": 7, "url": "https://iwooten.com/work/archive#redshift-interactive" }, { "slug": "blank-vision", "name": "Blank Vision", "kind": "Brand", "note": "Identity & business cards, and a brand world", "year": null, "images": 26, "url": "https://iwooten.com/work/blank-vision" }, { "slug": "bull", "name": "Raging Systems", "kind": "Brand", "note": "Custom gaming computers, logo mark, and a brand world", "year": null, "images": 27, "url": "https://iwooten.com/work/raging-systems" }, { "slug": "renovacom", "name": "Renovacom", "kind": "Brand", "note": "Gaming entertainment — identity & site", "year": null, "images": 8, "url": "https://iwooten.com/work/archive#renovacom" }, { "slug": "mislabeled", "name": "Mislabeled", "kind": "Website", "note": "Creative direction, site & collateral", "year": null, "images": 9, "url": "https://iwooten.com/work/archive#mislabeled" }, { "slug": "akta", "name": "AKTA", "kind": "Website", 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Grew the team to seven .", "Live scoring, streaming overlays and stat tracking used on the US Open 8-Ball, 9-Ball and 10-Ball Championships, the International 9-Ball Open, the Texas Open and the World Pool Championship.", "More than ten partnerships across the industry: Diamond Billiard Products, Accu-Stats, OSPN, Felt Cam, the National Billiards League, FargoRate and fifty-plus tournament directors.", "Built the audience alongside the product: 32.5K followers on Instagram, 18K on Facebook, 5.5K YouTube subscribers and 25M+ lifetime views." ] }, { "org": "LunarCrush", "title": "Co-Founder and Chief Design Officer", "dates": "Aug 2017 to Jan 2022", "points": [ "Co-founded with three partners, part-time while at Google, to design and build the first brand, website and product. Those helped raise a $2.5M seed round and grow the company to fifteen full-time staff by 2021 .", "Joined full-time as Chief Design Officer in June 2021, leading UX and UI for web and mobile and a small design team.", "Within six months: a new brand, website and product, iOS and Android apps from scratch, and the LUNR utility token and wallet.", "After the v2 launch in October 2021, users went from 150,000 to 2.5 million in sixty days and the site passed 50 million pageviews a month . LUNR saw 373,237 transactions and 38,531 holders in the same period.", "Built the first web app front end in React and the first Galaxy Score™ algorithm. An open-source widget framework for embedding live data became the first revenue source in 2018." ] }, { "org": "Levid Media", "title": "Founder and Creative Director", "dates": "1999 to 2014", "points": [ "A design agency in Seattle. Fifteen years of sites, identities and campaigns for Nintendo of America, Microsoft, RED, Coca-Cola, Speakeasy, Renovacom and Dell University." ] }, { "org": "Column Five Media", "title": "Senior Software Developer", "dates": "Jun 2013 to Mar 2014", "points": [] }, { "org": "Kaleo Software", "title": "Principal Product Designer", "dates": "Sep 2012 to Mar 2013", "points": [] }, { "org": "Gaikai", "title": "Senior Web Developer", "dates": "Jan 2011 to Sep 2012", "points": [] }, { "org": "AKTA Web Studio", "title": "Design Director", "dates": "2010 to 2012", "points": [] }, { "org": "Metagenics", "title": "Senior Web Developer", "dates": "Aug 2009 to Jan 2011", "points": [] }, { "org": "RED Digital Cinema", "title": "Senior Web Designer and Developer", "dates": "Aug to Dec 2008", "points": [] }, { "org": "Dropout Inc., Mislabeled.com", "title": "Creative Director", "dates": "Mar 2007 to Jul 2008", "points": [] }, { "org": "Nintendo of America", "title": "Online Technical Designer and Flash Developer", "dates": "Jan 2005 to Mar 2007", "points": [] }, { "org": "RiverSharpe Interactive", "title": "Project Designer and Flash Developer", "dates": "May 2000 to Jan 2001", "points": [] }, { "org": "The Great Alaskan Shirt Company", "title": "Art Director", "dates": "May 1999 to May 2001", "points": [] }, { "org": "Art Institute of Seattle", "title": "Associate of Applied Arts, Multimedia and Web Design", "dates": "2001 to 2003", "points": [] } ] } }