The intent brief
A free, copyable design brief template for SaaS and AI founders: five questions to answer before briefing a design studio, with a filled-in example.
Insights
Notes from the work. Ideas earned by making
On writing
Essays and guides on product, brand and website design, how we use AI in the work, and a few notes on running a studio for more than a decade. The guides are the practical ones, like how we write a brief.
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Choosing a design partner when AI can make anything
Questions to ask before hiring a design agency, freelancer or partner for a SaaS or AI product, the red flags to watch for, and what it costs.
Beginning again
Reinvention is not throwing away experience. It is compounding it into a smaller, sharper bet.
What a brand identity actually costs
What a SaaS or AI startup brand identity costs in 2026, what the price pays for, and why a logo on its own costs more later. Ours starts at US$6k.
Form follows intent
"Form follows function" is half a sentence. The other half is the one that lasts.
In-house, agency, or AI: who should design your product
Build, buy, or generate is not a budget question. It is a question about where judgment has to live.
Naming is a strategy problem
How to name a SaaS or AI product: start from positioning, pick one of four kinds of name, generate wide, then filter on distinctiveness, domains and trademarks.
The maker who became a manager
I spent a decade moving away from the work I loved. Here is why I came back.
Where AI belongs in a design workflow
A map of our workflow: what we generate, what we judge, and where the last ten percent lives.
How to make your work legible to AI
Search is becoming answer engines. Being citable by machines is now a design discipline.
Taste is not it
Why we think "taste" is overrated as an explanation in design, and what we check options against instead, especially with AI tools.
The return of the generalist
For a decade we were told to specialize. AI just changed the math.
Why most redesigns fail
Most SaaS product and website redesigns restyle the surface and keep the old problem. A short checklist for deciding what to change before you redesign.
Going remote before we had to
We went fully distributed before the world had to. Vagueness, not distance, breaks teams.
Burnout is a real thing
Rest is not the opposite of ambition. It is the maintenance ambition runs on.
A creative playground
Backed by nothing but expertise. Scarcity was not the obstacle. It was the method.
One-time clients, long-term partners
We did not count new logos. We counted the ones that stayed. The relationship is the moat.
The last ten percent
The difference between good and lasting lives in the finish. It is where humans still win.
Systems outlive logos
A logo is a snapshot. A system is a grammar. Design the rules, not the artifact.
Strategy is a design material
Strategy and aesthetics are not separate departments. The best work holds both at once.
Rebranding a live SaaS: identity, website and keeping your traffic
How to rebrand a live SaaS or AI product: what changes in the identity, website and product UI, the order to do it in, and how to keep your search traffic.
Is a branding studio worth it for a startup?
When a startup should spend on brand, and when it shouldn’t: what you need at pre-seed, seed and Series A, and the minimum brand that’s enough for now.
Custom code, Framer, Webflow or WordPress: which one for your SaaS site?
How to choose a stack for your SaaS marketing site: custom code, Framer, Webflow or WordPress, by who edits it, how often, and what it costs to run.
What a SaaS or AI marketing site needs at launch
The pages, homepage message and proof a SaaS or AI marketing site needs at launch, what to skip, and how to make it readable for AI assistants.
Designing a SaaS website that AI answers can quote
How to structure a SaaS site so ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews can understand and quote it: page per question, answer first, prices in text.
When should a startup hire its first product designer?
When a startup should hire its first product designer, what to have in place before that hire, and how a design partner can bridge the gap until then.
Making a B2B SaaS look enterprise-ready
What enterprise buyers judge in your product, brand and website before they trust you, and whether you need a full redesign or a focused polish first.
Brand guidelines your AI coding tools can follow
How to give Cursor, Claude Code, Lovable or v0 brand rules they can follow: design tokens for values, a DESIGN.md for intent, and what each one does.
Design for technical founders: work your engineers can build
How technical founders can judge design work, and how design should reach engineering without a translation step: tokens, components and code.
Why every AI startup looks the same, and how to brand one that doesn’t
Purple gradients, sparkles and a chat box: why AI startup brands converge, and how to build an AI brand people can tell apart and actually trust.
Designing a health tech SaaS: patient side, clinician side, consent and accessibility
How designing a health product differs from other SaaS: separate patient and clinician experiences, consent on screen, accessibility and trust.
Designing AI product UX: trust, waiting, errors and handoff
UX patterns for AI features and agents: progress while it thinks, uncertainty, errors that aren’t the user’s fault, and handing off to a human.
Design systems for early-stage SaaS: when, how much, how small
Does your startup need a design system? When to start one, how small it can be, and what to build first so your team and AI tools stay consistent.
SaaS pricing page design: what makes buyers pick a plan
How to lay out a SaaS pricing page: how many plans, what goes in the comparison table, where the FAQ goes, and how to make prices readable for AI answers.
SaaS onboarding and activation: designing the first session
Why trial users don’t activate, and how to design a SaaS first session that gets new users to real value fast: sign-up, empty states, first task, follow-up.
What is a design partner?
A design partner is a senior designer or small studio working with a company over time on product, brand and website. Not a design partner program.
Generative identity for SaaS and AI brands
What a generative brand identity is, when a SaaS or AI brand should use one, and how to keep it consistent across product, website and social.
Design partner, agency, freelancer or subscription: which one for your startup?
Agency, freelancer, design subscription or design partner? A decision table for SaaS and AI founders covering product, brand and website design, with prices.
Design subscription vs design partner: when “unlimited requests” is the wrong fit
Unlimited design subscriptions are great for small, repeat tasks. For product UX they often aren’t. When a subscription fits, and when a partner does.
SaaS dashboard design: what the first screen of a B2B product should show
What a B2B SaaS dashboard should show first, how many KPIs belong on it, how to keep a data-dense screen readable, and when a redesign is worth it.
Product-led vs sales-led SaaS website: how the homepage, pricing and CTAs should differ
Should a SaaS website push a free trial or a demo? How product-led and sales-led sites differ page by page, how hybrids work, and what changes upmarket.