I'm Aaron, a design leader with 15 years of experience, about half of it spent leading teams. I've led UX on Halo, put a soap brand on Shark Tank, and shipped my own apps. Turns out it's all the same job.
My career has run through three worlds: running my own studio, leading teams in games, and founding consumer brands. Each one shaped how I work, and you can jump into any of them below.
I think design is one story, and people feel it when brand and product pull in the same direction, even if they can't say why. I also think leading means still making. The tools change every few months, and it's hard to point a team somewhere if you're not in there with them. Lately that's meant building my own apps with AI (Lost Post hit #7 on Product Hunt), which mostly reminded me that someone still has to figure out what people actually need.
If you're growing a design team, or looking for someone to raise the bar on one, I'd love to hear about it.
Consulting2023 – nowDaydrift, Amsterdam
I run Daydrift, a design studio building brands and digital products for clients, and ship my own apps with AI.
In 2023 I started Daydrift in Amsterdam to work directly with founders again, on brand, motion, web and product, usually all at once for the same client. It's where the “design is one story” idea gets tested for real. A startup doesn't have a brand team and a product team. It has one designer and a deadline.
Lately a good chunk of my time goes to my own apps, built with AI: a worldwide question of the day, a baby feed tracker built for 3am, and a graffiti MMO that moderates itself. It's the most fun I've had designing in years, and a good reminder that the tools change a lot faster than the questions do.
Video Games2018 – 2023Certain Affinity, Zynga, Thought Pennies
I led UX and UI teams on AAA games as a player-coach, owning features and building design systems and a culture of critique.
For five years I led UX and UI teams in games, as a player-coach rather than a manager who only reviews. That meant design systems engineering treated as the source of truth, roadmaps built from how players actually behave, and a lot of weekly critiques.
Games are brutally honest. Players feel a clunky menu in seconds, and they will tell you about it. It's also where I learned that the fastest way to raise the bar on a team is to make it normal to show work before it's ready.
D2C Entrepreneurship2012 – 2017Sparklepop & You Smell, Austin
I co-founded two consumer brands and ran everything from packaging design to the warehouse. One landed on Shark Tank.
Before games, I co-founded two direct-to-consumer brands: Sparklepop, a jewelry shop with hundreds of SKUs, and You Smell, a luxury soap brand that made it onto ABC's Shark Tank. I designed the branding, packaging and websites, then learned everything else the hard way: hiring a team of 10+, building a warehouse, and timing wholesale orders around factories on the other side of the world.
We grew to $1.4M a year, and I spent more time in spreadsheets than I ever expected. It's why I still design with the founder's side of the table in mind.
Agency Work2010 – 2012Design studios
I learned the craft at design studios: branding, print and packaging for startups and brands like Microsoft.
Studio work for startups and big brands, from packaging that ended up on Brand New and The Dieline to the Xbox One media experience (through Markatos Moore). It's where I learned the craft, and where most of my ideas about print, texture and type come from.