i’ve spent years designing websites with whatever tools were available

now i’m slowly getting used to the fact that i can also make the tool

for this project i wanted to explore more directions for the brand

collecting references or creating each direction from scratch would already become a project of its own

so i built a small generator and started playing with it

each output gives me something to react to

keep this change that try one more

and then one combination suddenly feels like a direction worth following

it’s still rough and i keep finding small things to fix

but honestly this is the part i’m enjoying most

doing the design and building the tool that helps me explore different visual languages at the same time

Making the tool instead of just using it is such an underrated superpower for designers. Once you can generate directions to react to, exploration stops feeling precious and starts being fun. This is the good kind of lazy.

Title: Scalable Headless E-commerce API Layer

Explanation: Architected a secure API gateway layer for a headless commerce startup. This custom middleware (deployed on Vercel Edge with Next.js) orchestrates data between the Shopify GraphQL API, Stripe Payments, and a Supabase DB. Optimized a critical database query that reduced product page load times by 40%. The result is a secure, extremely fast checkout experience that handles high traffic spikes without latency, directly impacting customer conversion metrics.