Just perfected my Figma process for large websites. Waiting for that client project.
About
I‘m old-school. A dinosaur. Eighteen years in the making.
Throughout time, I‘ve been a website designer writing code in plain text, a CSS lover fixing browser bugs with awkward hacks, a UX designer trying to convince stakeholders of the importance of customer research, a product designer changing CEOs’ minds to build outcomes instead of features, and a mission-driven startup founder trying to redefine social media by redefining its business model.
But then, one morning, I questioned my entire work foundation. Do I want to keep climbing the career ladder? How can I rearrange my work to fully align with my life aspirations? The answer to the first question was a resounding no and an immediate sense of calm. The answer to the second question is what you see on this website.
I decided to stop walking a thin line between maximum productivity and potential burnout. So, instead, I took a different approach. I no longer felt compelled to pursue executive positions but embraced what I truly enjoyed doing—simplicity in creativity. Such an approach helped me narrow down my creative services while making my work more impactful to clients and more enjoyable to me.
Besides helping clients, you‘ll find me doing fun side projects while paving my way to retirement.
Projects
From a side project in 2020 to a profitable business in three years, Iconduck positioned itself as an industry leader in open-source creative resources. But to scale up further, the founder, Oliver Nassar, realized that Iconduck needed a complete creative revamp.
As one of the most significant projects I‘ve worked on, Iconduck got a new iconic logo and an expanded website, emphasizing the various ways vectors can be searched and filtered. There is a lot to talk about. So, without further ado, let‘s begin.
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Case study
ensage.co/work/iconduck
Always love to work with entrepreneurs who set a strong creative foundation for their business from the get-go. Such was the case with Taylor Gregoire–Wright. We worked on building a coherent brand identity that expands way beyond logo, colors, and typography, and topped it off with a CMS-powered website, built to scale to an ever-growing repository of new courses, training, and articles.
His new brand, Ontologize, is positioned as a trustworthy source of expertise, offering premium-quality courses and training for Palantir‘s Foundry enterprise software ecosystem—software for large companies and governments.
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Case study
ensage.co/work/ontologize
Amidst all the chaos of life and the hustle and bustle of work, the symbol of a pond acts as a sacred place for organisations to find calm and make wise decisions. Founded on that premise, Pond Foundation has grown into a global mission-driven brand, guiding organisations to strong climate action.
But to ensure their brand messaging was delivered properly, Pond Foundation needed a brand new logo and a website redesign. So, Scott and Sam decided to go with me not only because of the quality of work I provide but also because we clicked on a deeper level—our seemingly naive but very much-needed drive for service to others.
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Case study
ensage.co/work/pond-foundation
Stratalis is one of those companies that smoothly rides the waves of economic uncertainty, running a flexible and sustainable business since 2010. The team of only eight web scraping experts consistently serves 200+ customers across multiple industries and has done over 1800 projects.
However, the company lacked brand clarity, and it was high time for a creative refresh. So Maxime (the client) got in touch with me to help him design a new logo and website to clarify the message they communicate to their customers.
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Case study
ensage.co/work/stratalis
Unable Agency requested a wordmark that should better align with their company values and approach to work. As a design and strategic agency rooted in digital experiences, it needed a simple but unique logo to convey a digital outlook while staying minimal to the core.
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Case study
ensage.co/work/unable-agency
Sometimes, the best work happens with clients with similar aspirations as I do with Ensage—build meaningful digital products. In fact, Scott Poynton—the force behind A Different Way—found me through a former startup I experimented with during the pandemic age.
Scott‘s mission is to help businesses create a chain of values by helping social entrepreneurs, change-makers, sustainability professionals, and mediators reach their goal of creating a positive impact for people and the planet at scale.
Why do I talk about the person and not the project, you might ask? Because A Different Way is a personal brand—a branding territory that I‘m passionate about which is why I embarked on a journey to help Scott with a logo and website design.
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Case study
ensage.co/work/a-different-way
Specializing in young audiences, Récibook creates audio experiences to increase customers’ brand awareness by adapting original written work or inventing new stories. All that magic happens by a big bunch of artistic directors, musical engineers, writers, and actors on the remote island of Mauritius.
A brand such as Récibook should shout joy, creativity, and childish curiosity. While the team behind the company is nothing less than that, their brand identity and website as a critical marketing channel were misaligned with their company culture and service offerings.
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Case study
ensage.co/work/recibook
Tozan is the missing ingredient in the A/B testing world. It helps organizations test and learn by using AI to optimize real-time experiments and intelligently adjust traffic allocations between versions. In addition, unlike static pre-defined A/B testing tools, it offers a continuous optimization process.
While our collaboration with Drew from Tozan began with a quick landing screen design, it grew more profound as we understood his business’s challenges while searching for a product-market fit. We talked about intangibles, such as brand positioning and brand messaging. At the same time, I worked on the tangibles, such as brand identity and a marketing website relying on illustrations to convey technical concepts better.
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Case study
ensage.co/work/tozan
Multiply has been running its business successfully for years. However, the quality of its web presence was not on par with the quality of its offerings. So Julien (the client) connected with me to help him design a website that would better explain what his company can do.
Besides the website refresh, I also revived the old logo to match the simplicity and more modern outlook of the new, responsive website layout.
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Case study
ensage.co/work/multiply
Side Projects
Figarc is a design system built in Figma but for floor plans. It helps you use your Figma superpowers and apply them systematically to visualize home or office spaces.
An online marketplace for all things pixels that I run since 2008 was recently acquired by another cool owner.
Designing an app or a website? UI Copy will help you come up with finer words for your layout‘s content.
Writing
For the fundamental decisions in life, I dare not use logic. If that approach makes you gobsmacked, it‘s because of your mind. But, are you the mind?
I‘ve seen people, near and dear, pushing themselves to a mental dead-end, paralyzed and not able to bring a decision. I‘ve been there, but I‘ve found a way out because I got to the source of it—our mind.
The mind is capable of creating deadlock situations in our heads. And the ingredients to prepare such a bitter decoction are trapped emotions, largely connected to fear, creating voices in our heads that are not even ours in the first place.
We‘ll deal with them in separate writing. But for now, I will only tell you: Those are not you, they do not define you, and it‘s not your fault that you have them.
If we tirelessly struggle to apply logic in every situation, we create a dissonance between us and life. Because logic—no matter how useful—it‘s not fully applicable in life. When it comes to a life-changing decision, there are too many variables and permutations that our logical mind cannot grasp, nor foresee. And thus we come to a perplexing conclusion:
> Life is not logical. Therefore, it‘s not logical to use logic in life.
Take a deep breath and let this paradox sink in. Are you reading the phrase again? I knew it.
Why bother using the mind? Why fake control, when we know the outcomes are out of control?
## Where does magic begin?
It happens right at the moment when you realize everything is outside your control. Digging deeper, you‘ll also realize that there is no decision to be made at all. Like it or not, a future situation is bound to happen. And if you don‘t meddle with your mind into it, you‘ll allow it to unfold in its most magical way that your mind cannot even grasp.
Try to attune yourself to the future scenario that you feel might happen. Use imagination to see yourself there. Be aware of each detail. And feel. How do you feel?
If the feelings you experience are confusing, then that‘s what life will give you—a confusing future experience because that‘s what you subconsciously demanded. And then you‘ll blame God and shout out that life is not fair. But life is the most objective mirror of yourself. It teaches and aligns you.
But if the future scenario gives you feelings that are crystal clear, then you are perfectly aligned. That barely ever happens, thus I‘ll assume you are somewhere in the middle. And that‘s fine. If there is tiny confusion left in your thoughts and feelings, life will create a situation where it‘ll open you an opportunity to sort it out. As for the rest, enjoy the ride.
Remember: There are no mistakes in life.
Work Experience
Designed many web and mobile experiences in verticals such as SaaS, education, entertainment, retail, and media for clients owning tiny startups and Fortune 5000 companies.
Designed a product strategy and a website design with a brand identity overhaul for a profitable website in the icons niche, later acquired by a more prominent brand in this industry.
Created a multi-platform and multi-brand design system for a company struggling to keep up with design inconsistencies. The result was a coherent system and visual language that dramatically impacted product performance and brand trust over time.
Designed websites, web app experiences, and brand identity systems as a contract worker for a San Francisco-based company serving clients primarily in the SaaS and B2B markets.
Contact
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