Bormuth "Estate"

Head of Design, Alisa

Multimodal + multimedia AI.
An a16z company acquired by HeyGen. Full-stack product wizardry: naming, branding, UX, interaction, product design, eng.

Head of Design, Alisa, multimodal
AI acquired by HeyGen.

Full-stack product wizardry: naming, branding, UX, interaction, product design, engineering.

Epilogue

It’s easy to make an LLM stack feel effortless when the team is world-class. Their backend already generated across every medium—scripts, animations, interiors, architecture. Pure future. Product interfaces and branding for this stuff are still early and unsolved. Here’s to HeyGen taking our core vision of Alisa and pushing it forward. Shoutout Bin, Andrew and the team.

Founder, Clakka

A product built to create living archives. An ongoing thing.

Founder, Clakka

A product
built to create
living archives.
An ongoing thing.

Interlude

There is a real, human drive to archive and attach memories and facts to the things you keep. Because of this, Clakka has always seemed to me to be such a self-evident product. Why hasn't this existed yet? It is a project and platform that I look forward to working on forever.

Co-founder, Joii.

An on-chain tool to post everyday things. Playful inputs and access gates make it fun.

Epilogue

The regulatory drag of 2023 shaped how we designed Joii—and ultimately why we stopped. I’m still inspired by what we built: a creator-access marketplace, a tradable user “joiistick,” and a cascading interface for modular creation. Player-token holders unlocked the Beta, and every work was titled using non-repeating BIP39 words—like “PRISM ZEPHYR SOUL.” as seen here, here, and here.They hinted at a world blending AI, blockchain, and a meta-human aesthetic. But the risk of being lumped into speculative NFT culture was enough to shelve it. Shout out Yanis and Yash.

Senior Global Creative Director, Digital Product at Nike.

SNKRS Nike App Nike Web, Shanghai Digital Studio,
Membership, and more. Invented new experiences;
built, managed, and directed
teams globally.

Sr Global Creative Director, Digital Product at Nike.

SNKRS Nike App Nike Web, Shanghai Digital Studio, Membership, and more. Invented new experiences; built, managed,
and directed
teams globally.

Epilogue

A zealous executive deployment into the glowing salt mines of a global Nike. I learned and worked with some of the best of the best. Nike for me was a rebirth into the craft and culture of design after years of mastering the Silicon skills of using design for data. Looking back, living in deck upon deck to drive product and brand wasn't cool, but I did like evolving and ripping the seams of their global design and identity. Nike was striving to adapt to an emerging direct-to-consumer world. When they reached out, it was an ideal moment of my career to say, yes. “Swoosh.”

Foundational product design and creative lead at Pinterest

Launched many experiences, built and directed lots of design teams; jumpstarted Pinterest international in Japan.

Foundational product
design and creative
lead at Pinterest

Launched many experiences, built and directed lots of teams; jumpstarted Pinterest Japan.

Epilogue

When I left Pinterest, I felt like I was closing a very meaningful chapter. The cultural evolution and politics of a startup as it transforms into a public business is something endured only in the field, and how design and creative is tied to it all is a tricky riddle. I was very into the new effects from online grids of images and text, a new expression of life through the screen, ephemera smushed together daily into personal currency. My outlook on the free production and curation of content on social networks changed. Altogether, the core vision of Pinterest did a good job helping one uphold self-dignity by focusing on the nuance of personal interests, less on social connection.

Creative Advisor. Alta, Chroma, Enkasa, others.

Product, design, and creative strategy; how to build and nourish early to mature design teams, and how to find your go-to-market soul.

I like working with founders and teams trying to figure it all out. Resonant experiences and brands take time. Often, founders don't know what it is re: “design” that they need to focus on. Or they want a thorough product/strategy gut-punch, a check against business objectives ... or they need help establishing creative reviews and growing teams, or just want to vent. The wild west of entrepreneurial risk has fascinating blind spots and monsters. Required reading.

Head of Design for NFT exchange, MakersPlace.

Revamped product, design, branding, and built the design team; Launched many experiences at the height of the collectible wildfire.

Epilogue

The startup, MakersPlace, was the first time I dove head-first into a small (~10) team and its proof-of-concept product iteration. It was cathartic after running constant cross-enterprise alignment for years at Nike. I was and still am very interested in how blockchain will commingle with the creative capacity of culture: design, art, writing, music. A few sputtering starts have occurred within the industry, and the 2021 NFT market sits comfortably within the second attempt to give life to this technology.