Your dev team's missing design partner.
I set the design direction for small dev agencies and technical founders (oh, and I can build it too). The coverage of a small design team, minus the hiring.
“Brent always goes above and beyond to understand the client's requirements and desires, and working with him feels like we have a team member supporting us through our design journey.” George Georgiades, Tecbot
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Is design debt costing you?
When your software agency doesn't have designers, your developers end up making design calls they never signed up for, mucking around in Figma, or painfully trying to prompt their agent to stick to the design system. In the end, it's your client who pays in wasted dev time and poor user experience.
You don't need to hire a full-time designer. You need a design partner who thinks in code, makes the big design decisions, wrangles your agents, and hands back work that's actually buildable.
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Services
Senior design leadership and the hands to build it. Some different ways to work with me. Or tell me what you're up against and we'll scope it together.
Fractional Design Retainer
Ongoing senior UX/UI design leadership for your dev team, month to month. I set the direction, own the design system, and act as the quality gate on everything UX/UI.
Design Systems
Component libraries, design tokens and Figma foundations your developers can actually build from. Documented, consistent, and dev-ready.
Design Sprints
A focused two-week sprint that takes one feature or product area from a messy problem to dev-ready screens, specs and rationale.
Custom UX/UI Projects
End-to-end product design for web apps, SaaS and mobile: user flows, wireframes, interface design, prototypes and front-end handoff.
UX Audits
A senior read on your product's usability, accessibility and information architecture, with a prioritised list of fixes your team can start on Monday (or Tuesday, we aren't picky...).
Website Build
Design and build, end-to-end, for marketing sites and landing pages: strategy, wireframes and visual design, then a fast, accessible, responsive site shipped and content-managed so your team can keep it current.
CRO Services (Conversion Rate Optimisation)
Conversion rate optimisation for landing pages, signup flows and checkouts. I find where people drop off, then design and test the fix.
GEO Services (Generative Engine Optimisation)
Generative engine optimisation — structuring your site and content so ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and AI search can read it, cite it, and send buyers your way.
Quick-Fire UI Teardown
A 20-minute video walkthrough of your product's UI from a senior eye. Specific, buildable feedback your dev team can action right away.
How Teardowns Work →$300 per teardown
Not sure which one you need? Let's talk it through →
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Selected Work
Interfaces, brands and design systems built to be handed straight to a dev team.
Overture Promoter App
Promoters were chasing booking details through emails, spreadsheets and desktop-only forms. I designed an iOS app that lets them work through every open request for a booking in one view, from their phone.
Read the Case Study →
Happy Day — Mobile App Design
A new entrant in the gifting space needed a look, and something real to put in front of stakeholders. I set the look and feel and designed every screen, delivered as a clickable prototype.
Read the Case Study →
Chairclub Website Redesign
Tecbot was taking a high-end chair business direct to consumer. I led the redesign of the store, and handed their dev team a full set of screens plus a consistent component set to build against.
Read the Case Study →
B.W. Cooper's Website
A specialist iced tea company with barely any web presence. I designed and built the whole thing on custom WordPress, so there was no discrepency between what was designed and what shipped.
Read the Case Study →04
What Clients Say
“Brent always goes above and beyond to understand the client's requirements and desires, and working with him feels like we have a team member supporting us through our design journey.”
George GeorgiadesTecbot
“Nothing was too big a challenge for him, and he thrived in situations where creative and innovative thinking was required.”
Bruce MullerEngage Brandcraft
“Your communication skills are fantastic. Always keeping me in the loop regarding progress of job.”
Gavin GoodmanSemblance Agency
“Your quality of work is stellar and you helped us lay the groundwork for thinking about important aspects of our business like our vision, mission, value proposition etc.”
Louis BarryEducative Tech
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Meet Your Design Partner
I'm Brent, an independent design engineer (UX/UI/Build), fourteen years in, most of it agency-side, and I love code about as much as graphic design.
Many dev agencies hit a point where they need serious design thinking but can't justify a full-time senior hire, or don't have the capacity to nurture a junior. That's the role I take on: setting the visual direction, bringing the taste, owning the design system, and making the design case for what to build and why.
And I don't stop at direction. I can build it too. I carry the production scope a small in-house team would usually cover, so design stops being the thing bottlenecking your build.
I've been doing this since 2012, which means I've already made most of the expensive mistakes, so you don't have to pay for me to learn them.
- 14 years in
- Based in Cape Town
- Working globally
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Let's Talk.
Ready to clear the design debt?
Book an Intro Call →Book 30 minutes. We'll look at what you're building, where design is costing you, and how I'd fix it.
Prefer to type? brent@nygaard.design, or use the form.