I design products and brands for complex industries where every detail matters
My experience in design goes back to the late 1990s, from web design and development, art direction and brand identity in the 2000s to leading design organizations shipping products from DeFi wallets to central bank infrastructure worldwide. I specialize in the space where brand strategy meets product design: building the systems, teams, and visual identities that turn deeply technical platforms into products people understand, trust, and want to use.
Overview
I'm a design leader who works across brand and product, from zero-to-one brand creation through mature design system management. Currently, I serve as CDO at Soramitsu, where I built and lead the design function across a portfolio spanning consumer DeFi wallets, institutional blockchain tools, government financial infrastructure, and telecom fraud intelligence platforms, with products reaching users across the Americas, Europe, Asia-Pacific, the Middle East, and Africa.
My work covers the full range: brand identity and naming, product design and UX strategy, design system architecture, visual communications, and the organizational work of building teams that can operate independently across radically different product contexts. I'm as comfortable defining the strategic direction for a government payment system user interface as I am hands-on crafting a brand identity from scratch.
Design Philosophy
Trust Is Complicated
The hardest design problem I solve isn't a screen or logo, it's trust. When you're designing products that handle people's assets, identity, or sensitive institutional data, every design decision either builds confidence or erodes it. There's no middle ground. A confusing flow, an ambiguous label, a visual identity that doesn't assure quality, and users are gone.
But trust is a double-edged sword, particularly in decentralized, self-custodial products. If you make things too simple, too familiar, too much like the banking apps people already know, you create a dangerous illusion. Users start to believe there's a company holding their funds, a support team who can reverse their transactions, someone to call when things go wrong. In reality, the user holds the keys. They are responsible. No one can help them if their seed phrase leaks.
This taught me something fundamental: trust in design isn't just about making people feel safe. It's about making people feel safe in the right places and appropriately cautious in others. Education has to be woven into the product itself, not as a separate onboarding flow people skip, but as contextual guidance at the exact moments where the consequences of misunderstanding are highest.
Systems Scale, Screens Don't
When you're managing multiple products across multiple markets simultaneously, individual screens don't compound. Systems do. I build design systems and brand architectures that give every product its own identity while sharing a common foundation. Every new product starts at a higher baseline than the last.
Brand Is Strategy, Not Decoration
I've seen firsthand how brand design drives outcomes that no amount of UX optimization alone can achieve. A set of high-fidelity mockups can convince a decentralized community to fund a product's creation. A visual identity can transform a white label tool into a product that large telcos are willing to partner with. Brand isn't separate from product, it's part of the product. The companies that dominate their markets are the ones that understand this.
Knowing When to Hold the Pen
The most important design decision a leader makes isn't about pixels, it's about involvement. A good leader empowers through delegation. But when the team is lean and the creative bar is high, sometimes the right move is to establish the standard yourself, then hand it off and mentor. Building a team that can take it from there, and knowing when they need you to go first, is the work I'm most proud of.
Background
I came to design leadership through craft. I've been working in design since the late 1990s, starting in visual design and web, moving through art direction and creative direction roles, managing projects, people, and client relationships across a range of industries.
My focus narrowed to fintech and blockchain, industries where the technology is complex, the stakes are real, and the users range from first-time mobile payment adopters to institutional compliance officers and crypto degens. Before joining Soramitsu full-time, I co-ran a boutique fintech and crypto advisory firm. That consultancy led to an engagement with Soramitsu that became a five-year tenure as CDO.
At Soramitsu, I built the design organization from scratch into two dedicated teams: a Product Design team (6 senior product designers with fintech/crypto backgrounds) and a Brand Experience team (6 people spanning visual design, social media, marketing, growth, customer support, and content).
The portfolio I've led spans consumer DeFi platforms used by hundreds of thousands worldwide, government financial systems serving millions, enterprise products trusted by global telecoms, and developer tools for the open-source blockchain community.
Beyond Design
Outside of work, I'm deeply interested in health, longevity, wellness, and sports. I've been an ultra marathon trail runner and cyclist for over a decade and prioritize physical fitness and wellbeing. I enjoy getting out in nature to explore our amazing home, planet Earth.
Music has been another constant throughout my life. I produced electronic music and performed as a DJ for over a decade, and will always continue to produce music as a creative outlet when I have free time. My audio production skills have proven useful in my design career, from creating audio for product videos to scoring corporate presentations.
I'm also a keen traveler (26 countries and counting), now living in Asia, previously Europe (and US briefly), and worked with teams across continents. I genuinely believe that decentralized technology will make the world more free, fair, and open.
At a Glance
What Motivates Me
There's a saying: "you're only as good as your last hit." Being creative means constantly learning and reimagining, especially now, when the pace of technological change rivals the 24-hour news cycle.
I follow AI developments closely, keep up with evolving design systems and methodologies, and invest in growing as a leader and people manager. Good design requires understanding the world around us and putting it into context with the work that actually matters: building products that have a positive, lasting effect on people's lives.
If you're building something complex and impactful that needs strategic design leadership, across brand, product, and systems, I'd like to hear about it.