My posts on design.

I write about anything and everything that interests me.

designdevgrowthjournal
Hands guide three sequential interface cards from image selection to a completed checkmark.

How Dropbox, DoorDash, Airbnb and Stripe designed their MVPs

Early UI and founder stories from Dropbox, DoorDash, Airbnb, Stripe, Zapier, and Product Hunt. What to design first, reuse, and leave for later.

Illustrated hands frame a floating video player with play button against an abstract purple background.

Adaptive video with FFmpeg, Vite and a custom player

How I turn recordings into cached AV1 and H.264 streams with FFmpeg and Vite, then play them with native HLS or Mattebox behind custom React controls.

Gold coins and a clock spiral into a deep blue vortex.

How to scope a SaaS project you can afford to finish

How I approach SaaS scope and pricing as a former agency owner and current freelancer, and what to ask when budgeting for design and development.

Colorful illustration of a central palm tree icon surrounded by charts, interface controls, and hands.

Optimizing the sh*t out of TanStack Start

A practical TanStack Start performance guide: how cutting downloads and fixing fonts and images took my home page from 73 to 100 on mobile Lighthouse.

Illustration of a woman arranging portrait photographs on a green table, surrounded by plants and paper.

How to hire a freelance designer who can deliver

A founder’s guide to hiring a freelance designer: check real contributions, constraints, working fit, and delivery before committing to the work.

Colorful vintage televisions display abstract symbols and retro website layouts.

Why I moved from Astro to TanStack Start

I moved my portfolio to the React stack I use for client work. Getting Astro's loading behavior and performance back took more work.

Magnifying glass examining highlighted lines on overlapping documents, with pink accents and a yellow lightning bolt.

How I automated internal linking with AI

Find internal link opportunities with embeddings and a reranker, make an LLM justify each link, and place links at build time instead of editing MDX.

Seven colorful app icons float over a pastel sunset and ocean, including home, coffee, book, paper plane, binoculars, and sun.

How to generate animated icons with TypeScript

How I replaced my Lordicon nav icons with seven animated sprite icons drawn in TypeScript, rendered with sharp, and played on a canvas.