#Side projects
Passion projects, creative side experiments, and building outside client work, two free geometric typefaces, custom Hi-Fi furniture, a from-scratch portfolio rebuild, and whatever else got built purely for the fun of it.
From instant coffee to a precision Italian espresso machine
A smart plug wakes my espresso machine at 4am, hours before I do. This is the story of how a jar of instant coffee, a mate in Perth, and one life-changing French press turned into a four-shots-a-day habit I still can't shake.
How to advance early on in your UX/UI design career
Relax, this isn't a "buy my course" article, I promise you. No funnel, no upsell waiting at the end, just what's genuinely worked for me across almost 20 years of working as a UX/UI designer. Just what I wish someone had told me earlier on.
Designing a 4m high best album covers art gallery wall
A year and a half in the making: 50 album covers, custom framing, and a four-metre gallery wall built from scratch in my stairwell. Here's how the whole thing actually came together, one frame and one wall bracket at a time.
I know the pieces fit: Designing custom Hi-Fi furniture
How a search for a simple turntable stand turned into a genuine lesson in design thinking, prototyping, and communicating ideas clearly enough for someone else to actually go and build them. A prototype first, the real thing came after.
10-step UX/UI design process to deliver products people love
"What's your design process?" I get asked this constantly, and for years I genuinely didn't have a real answer. This is the exact 10-step process I finally wrote down, from initial brief through to final delivery to a client.
Claude Assist: Product design UX/UI portfolio rebuild
Six weeks of nights and weekends, hundreds of AI prompts, and one very old, PHP-patched website. Here's everything I learned rebuilding my UX/UI portfolio from the ground up, low-code, on WordPress. Every mistake included, nothing glossed.
How to use Discogs to build your vinyl record collection
I just finished adding my entire record collection to Discogs, the largest online music database where collectors buy and sell with each other. A look at the collection itself, my home listening setup, and how it all came together.
Books that reshaped how I think, design & view the world
These books aren't really about the industries they're set in, they're about the people behind them: founders who bootstrapped from nothing, a cartoonist who turned failure into a career. A reading list that genuinely reshaped how I think.
Essentials for home to enhance your work-life balance
Work-life balance sounds like something you fix with one big decision. Mine came together from a stack of much smaller ones, starting with a pair of noise-cancelling headphones I bought almost by accident a few years back.
Muesli recipe with superfoods for surfing trips
Most breakfasts don't fail because they're complicated, they fail because they require thinking when you're not ready to think yet. This baked muesli recipe with superfoods solves that, made once, ready for a week of early surf mornings.
Design process behind creating two geometric typefaces
Two free geometric fonts built 30 minutes at a time. One inspired by modular Lego-like shapes, the other by Herbert Bayer's 1925 universal typeface, both released free to download, use, and adapt for personal or commercial work.
Small collection of logo design & brand identity projects
Logo design isn't my primary service, but it's something I genuinely enjoy doing. Over the years I've taken on the occasional branding project alongside my core UX/UI work, plus a few personal ones just for the fun of it.