Studio Approach
An art director pursues a handful of directions by traditional means. Limited perspective, more expensive, time-consuming.
UX Design
Test concept against reality, early and often.
Rapidly generated interactive prototypes turn discovery into design, and design back into discovery.
With genAI, testing is cheap. Our loop mixes research with design iteration: we make a working prototype early, put it in front of real users, and see if the concept survives contact with them. Each round costs less than the last, and teaches us far more than any long-winded research document could.
User experience design establishes hierarchy, navigation flow, and interaction before high-fidelity work.
- Personas
- Journeys
- Sitemaps
- Wireframes
- Prototypes
Find a class
Pottery 101
Saturdays at 10am. Six spots left.
You’re booked.
See you Saturday. The details are in your inbox.
Life drawing
Tuesdays at 6pm. Four spots left.
You’re booked.
See you Tuesday. The details are in your inbox.
Printmaking
Thursdays at 7pm. Two spots left.
You’re booked.
See you Thursday. The details are in your inbox.
Visual Design
Establish point of view before production line.
A human designer translates the brand into art direction worth pursuing.
Exploration is everything. We discover your taste by feeding our agents a bevy of preferences, design guidelines, research, and real-world examples. While what it outputs is never final, all it takes is a single valid idea to inspire an art direction, with a human designer at the helm. AI challenges us to leap outside our box, into a world of expanded possibilities.
Iterative Approach
AI generates directions quickly and an art director iterates on what works. Faster, cheaper, and infused with human insight.
Oswald · Lora
Direction 02
Bold, square, generous
Development
The brief is the product. Prompt responsibly.
We’ve shifted up a layer of abstraction, from writing code to writing architecture.
AI agents are faster, more accurate, and more capable than us when it comes to implementation. But that doesn’t mean we’ve abandoned our posts: we’re writing architectural briefs, creating self-documenting environments, and translating business requirements into agent guidelines to produce systems at scale.
AI makes solutions CMS- and language-agnostic, enabling good system architects (like me) to take on projects that would ordinarily be beyond their ken. Small teams can transform intricate briefs into full-scale implementations. Fewer architects with deeper experience means less cost and faster coordination.
- CMS Systems
- MarCom Analytics
- Business ERP & CRM
Architect’s Direction
Context is everything.
- Human Specialists
- Agent Swarms
- Human Review
Performance targets, at the 75th percentile
- Page load (LCP)
- 2.5s or less
- Response to input (INP)
- 200ms or less
- Layout shift (CLS)
- 0.1 or less
Compliance
Keep systems healthy over time.
Two kinds of compliance: One makes the site usable by everyone. The other handles visitor data lawfully.
Accessibility Remediation
Accessibility requires human judgment, diagnostic review, and testing against real people who can evaluate the experience in context. We bring in a qualified accessibility specialist to lead the remediation and they employ a combination of manual and automated testing to produce a punch list of repairs. These findings establish what needs attention and I direct implementation. The end result: an Accessibility Conformance Report (ACR) that outlines what standard of compliance your website meets.
AI can help fill the gaps in automated testing, investigate problems, and carry out bounded remediation work. But automated checks and accessibility overlays are not valid replacements for a human specialist’s manual evaluation.
Specialist-Led Audit
A human sets the scope of the evaluation, combining automated and manual testing, and documents findings with evidence.
Human-Directed Remediation
We turn the findings into clear implementation tasks. Agents can assist but people confirm the changes.
Periodic Upkeep
At regular intervals, we perform targeted remediation in step with ongoing content and feature development.
The ACR records the evaluated standard we started with, what methods were used to conform, the scope, results, and remaining exceptions. It’s a report of the evaluation, not a blanket certification.
Data Privacy Compliance
We start by inventorying the forms, analytics tags, ecommerce platform, embedded content, and other integrations that collect or transmit visitor information. Then we configure a suitable consent tool and test the accept, decline, and preference-change paths to confirm they respect visitor choices.
It sounds complicated, and it is. The right implementation depends on your risk profile, and where your visitors are located. A local nonprofit and an international retailer need different setups, so we engage with your legal counsel to make sure all your bases are covered.
Switch on a simulation, or pick a region, to test the screens.
What a screen reader hears, in order:
- Skip to content, link
- Navigation, 3 links: Classes, About, Visit
- Heading level 1: Make something this weekend.
- Button: Find a class
- Image: Hands shaping a clay bowl
- List, 3 items: Pottery 101, Saturday. Life drawing, Tuesday. Printmaking, Thursday.
- Search classes, edit text
At 200% zoom the layout reflows instead of scrolling sideways.
Keyboard only: every control reachable in order, with a visible focus ring. Press Tab to step through.
Color vision (deuteranopia): meaning never rides on color alone.
Visitors in EU & UK
Consent before non-essential cookies and tracking: accepting and refusing take the same effort.
Visitors in California
A notice, and a “Do not sell or share my personal information” link.
Visitors in Other US states
A notice, and opt-out rules that vary from state to state.
Visitors in Canada
Meaningful consent under PIPEDA, and Quebec’s Law 25.
We’re web designers, not lawyers, so we can’t provide legal advice or regulatory guarantees. Moreover, any policy we draft needs to undergo legal review.
Investment
I’ll help you choose an approach that’s the best fit for your business.
Each engagement is unique, but these are four patterns that suit most clients. AI supports us in every model, but the scope of work, the ambition of the design, and what materials or third parties we’ll need to pull it off determine the level of effort.
Fixed-fee pricing for an agreed-upon scope. No mystery math.
| Stage | Full Service | Focused Fit | Built to Order | Off-the-Shelf |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Intuit | Full discovery | Full discovery | Technical review only | Help choosing the right tools |
| Design | Custom UX, content strategy, visual design | AI-mediated visual direction, review where it matters | Review of design materials during handoff | Content & brand adaptation to templates |
| Execute | Fully custom implementation | Fully custom implementation | Fully custom implementation | Configuration and staging only |
| Automate | Workflow opportunities scoped together | Only essential workflows included | Only integrations defined in the brief | Activate out-of-box tooling |
| Test | Full battery of tests, accessibility, data compliance | Specialist review where the risk lies | Full battery of tests, accessibility and data compliance if ordered | Pre-launch checks only |
| Evolve | Continuing strategic partnership across multiple domains | Ongoing maintenance and hosting | Ongoing maintenance and hosting | Optional maintenance plan |
Deployment & Maintenance
A smooth handover, and then support on your terms.
We can host your site on our agency infrastructure, or help you choose the right host for the technical stack you’re running.
The first 30 days after launch include bug fixes and general support, as well as monitoring the stability of the experience.
Hosting
Where your platform lives and the features of the vendor who maintains it.
Small Business
Managed WordPress hosting with 24/7 phone and chat support, automated updates and backups, and edge security.
Enterprise
Everything in Small Business, plus a monthly maintenance hour, Git deployment, off-site backups, and a quarterly check-in.
Do-It-Yourself
Choose a platform of your own, or support existing infrastructure. I can help with the setup and then stay on retainer.
Retainers
A retainer is a prepaid pool of development time.
Yearly
Prepaid hours you can tap into that last a year from purchase, with a response time within 48 hours.
Monthly
Hours that expire each month, with a six-month commitment. Response time within 24 hours.
Day Rate
A surgical engagement for an eight-hour day, where you’re my only focus.
How a Retainer Works
Your managed hosting vendor handles the infrastructure, while the retainer is human compute for me to help you manage your platform.
- Send a Request
- Discuss Effort + Hours
- Implement the Work
- Review + Accept
Discuss Your Project
Get a free video consultation.
A continuous loop of ideation for the entirety of the engagement, built for the agentic era.
One accountable lead and a decentralized team of independent specialists, driven by empathy, decades of intuition, and on-the-ground research.
In a quick consultation, we can discuss how I can assemble a team tailored for your work. And it’s free.