J a m e s Ger lach
Kill “Design
System”
Design
Kill “Design
System”
Design
Pastel prisons. Boho squiggles.
That one sans-serif whispering “you’re safe here, just like every other startup you’ve already forgotten.”
Design elements placed with mechanical grace...not to move people, but to satisfy the architecture of a Figma project. Zzzzz.
It's SaaS sameness. Quirky insincerity.
It’s branding as sedation.
The word “delight” has become a hollow cheer. Pistachio boxes here, apricot blobs there. Just ornamentation…the equivalent of an algorithmically generated lo-fi playlist.
Strategic Beige. Inadvertent camouflage.
We need conviction, not style guides in sheep’s clothing. In texture and tension. Made of weird, real, contradictory, breathing things.
We need design contoured by the product ∔ the people behind it...the arguments, the obsessions, and the sparks that make it real.
A little more rough around the edges.
Clarity.
Give the world marks that M E A N S O M E T H I N G...not vibes or “visual interest.” Interrogate everything.
Soon, anything will be buildable. Products even cheaper and more forgettable. Are we there yet?
What'll matter most is taste and judgment. Winning ideas will proudly carry the fingerprints of their creators, cutting through with something human and real (human).
Burn the Figma templates and summon expressions deeply rooted in how products help and who they're from. Declarations, not decorations.
Kill “design system” design. Do it.
Kill Artisanal Experience Design Hell
Not every product needs a soul.
Artisanal design worships originality over clarity. It forgets that being human often times means being understood.
We don’t always need a voice. Sometimes we need silence and predictability. Peace.
Design systems let creativity scale.
Not every interface should carry the "fingerprints of its creator.” Sometimes universality IS the virtue.
The best systems aren’t devoid of humanity, they’re full of invisible choices that quietly serve it. They let teams move fast AND stay aligned. They make room for MORE voices.
The pastel boxes, the soft corners, the friendly typography...maybe they’re not hollow. Maybe they’re welcoming.
Strategic Beige? Neutrality can be a useful tool.
As the market is flooded with fast and cheap ideas, maybe the winning ones won’t be the most expressive. Maybe they’ll be the ones that most easily adapt in real-time, quietly grafting into someone else’s life.
Design that knows when to get out of the way is good, actually.
Kill Artisanal Experience Design hell.
Who I've Built With
Current
OutStart, Inc.
Design Lead
I lead design efforts at an early-stage startup building a product that sparks purpose, connection, and joy for people 50 and up. My work spans:
-
Behavioral insight
-
Adaptive UX systems
-
AI-informed personalization
-
Brand and product creative
-
Investor storytelling and fundraising design
I help shape everything from early-stage concept strategy to resonant user journeys. Our design meets people where they are, identifies their areas of focus, then helps move them forward.
Past
→ aquired by
Director
User Experience
↓ aquired by
→ aquired by
Director
Product Design
↓ aquired by
→ aquired by
Design Lead
↓ aquired by
lol
What Energizes Me
Building Business
Scaling with Intent
Getting knee-deep into the details with founders to turn fogginess into focused product momentum.
Cross-Functional Glue
Keeping teams aligned when things get fast or tense. Tradeoffs, sequencing, and traction.
Narratives That Move
Crafting stories that close the gap between “what we believe” and “what we’re building." Pitches, roadmaps, user stories, all the good stuff.
Designing Product
Designs That Pull Their Weight
Creating experiences that do the real work: earning engagement, loyalty, and love. IA, interaction design, visual design, prototyping, branding, writing.
Process That Gets Out of the Way
Lightweight systems that keep teams aligned, shipping, and sane.
Coaching Designers and Researchers Into Operators
Autonomy, accountability, and curiosity + taste and judgement.
Putting on Listening Ears (this is the AI one)
Pattern Hunting
Using tools and techniques to go deep with users and stakeholders...how can we surface the right signal that changes what we build?
Psychological Readiness and Motivation
Designing systems that tune into where people are emotionally and cognitively, then respond with the right tone, timing, and level of challenge.
Behavioral Feedback Loops
Building journeys that learn over time by using heuristic triggers with adaptive, temporal vector-based models.
Things I've Help Invent
A selection of patents exploring adaptive UX, intelligent content delivery, and anticipatory design systems.
A dynamic system for generating personalized magazine-style covers that spotlight the most relevant content in real time. Think adaptive content previews...like editorial AI for your digital reading stack.
Hardware-based, context-aware nudges that surface at just the right moment. Based on location, timing, and user behavior. Designed to feel helpful, not interruptive.
A method for packaging and distributing editorial content in rich, visual formats across multiple platforms (different devices, content types, styles).
A system for organizing and displaying polymorphic notes, which are modular entries that can include structured content like dates, locations, people, and tasks. Notes are sorted by situational relevance and surfaced dynamically in the interface at high-utility moments.
A system that lets users explore relationships between notes. When a user selects a polymorphic note, the system identifies and displays related notes, based on shared people, places, tags, or timeline connections, to reveal deeper context and meaning across the note graph.
A system for creating notes with flexible, evolving structure. Each polymorphic note can hold a variety of elements (dates, people, locations, tasks, and more), which can be added, removed, or updated over time as the context changes.