For Design Leaders & UX Directors
Design Leaders Who Write Get the Calls That Portfolios Never Bring.
Your portfolio shows what you shipped. It doesn’t show how you think about design leadership, research synthesis, or the north star decisions that shaped the product. The design leader who publishes their process becomes the one search firms and founders call when they need someone who gets product — not just craft.
The Problem
Portfolios show polish. They don’t show how you think.
You own some of the most visible output in your company. The design system, the research synthesis, the product redesign that improved core metrics — your fingerprints are on the things people see every day. And yet your professional profile is invisible. The portfolio site has work from two roles ago. The LinkedIn hasn’t been updated in months. The Figma files that represent thousands of hours of design thinking are locked in a workspace only your team can access.
Design leaders face a specific visibility problem. The craft work is confidential or outdated by the time it can be shared; the leadership work — the product thinking, the organisational design decisions, the research frameworks, the debates about what the north star metric should be — has no natural publishing venue. A portfolio shows polish. It doesn’t show whether you understand product strategy, can lead a design organisation through ambiguity, or have the kind of design leadership perspective that makes a startup’s board ask for you by name.
The design advisory role for a pre-revenue startup — the one that pays in equity and becomes a career credential — goes to the design leader who has a visible, consistent perspective on product thinking, design systems, and the relationship between design and business outcomes. So does the Head of Design role at the company currently hiring. The VP Design position at the well-funded startup. The Config panel. The Leading Design keynote. These go to designers who write — not necessarily the most talented designers in the room.
What you actually think about — how research synthesis drives product decisions, why design systems fail at a certain scale, what distinguishes a great design leader from a great designer — is exactly what makes you distinctive. One conversation a month is enough to surface it.
The Process
How it works
Record one 45-minute conversation per month.
You talk through what you're working on: a design leadership challenge, a perspective on design systems, a view on how design relates to product strategy. No portfolio preparation, no writing — just your thinking.
AI extracts your insights and distinct perspective.
The conversation is analysed for your specific positions on design leadership, product thinking, and the research and synthesis frameworks that make your approach distinctive — not generic UX advice, but your actual perspective.
Published weekly across every channel.
LinkedIn posts three times a week. X/Twitter threads twice a week. Short-form video clips. A newsletter. A blog article. A consistent design leadership presence — built entirely from your own thinking.
What You Get
Everything you need to build authority as a design leader
LinkedIn posts, 3x per week
Substantive design leadership content that builds your profile beyond portfolio work and into the product thinking territory that senior roles require.
X/Twitter threads, 2x per week
Precise, perspective-driven content that travels in the design leadership, product, and startup community.
Short-form video clips
Drawn from your conversation, formatted for LinkedIn and YouTube Shorts.
The advisory credibility that opens equity conversations
Early-stage founders looking for design advisors want a design leader with a visible product perspective, not just impressive case studies.
A public body of design thinking that works as a living portfolio
One that shows how you think, not just what you shipped, and that travels independently of every NDA you've signed.
Newsletter and blog article each month
Long-form content that builds authority with the Config, Leading Design, and UX London audiences — the communities that drive speaking and senior hiring.
“I was Head of Design at a Series B and had built work I was genuinely proud of — none of which I could share publicly under NDA. My external profile was a portfolio site with a project from three years ago. Seven months after publishing through BrandForge — mostly about design leadership, research synthesis, and how I think about design systems — two things happened in the same week: a Config organiser reached out about a panel, and a seed-stage founder asked if I'd consider an advisory role. The advisory stake is already vesting.”
Chiara Romano
Head of Design, Milan
“I was a senior product designer trying to make the move into design leadership. Publishing about product thinking — the why behind design decisions, not just the outcome — completely changed how I was perceived in hiring conversations. Within nine months I was invited to speak at a UX London side event. The VP Design role I moved into six months later, the hiring manager referenced a post I'd written about design systems governance in the final interview.”
Yuki Tanaka
Senior Product Designer (now Design Lead), Tokyo
Pricing
Most popular for Design Leads and Heads of Design
One advisory equity stake from a seed-stage founder who found you through your published thinking can cover Growth at €999/month for years. Growth gives you the full content stack: LinkedIn, X/Twitter threads, video clips, newsletter, and blog — the complete design leadership presence.
LinkedIn posts · X/Twitter threads · Video clips · Newsletter · Blog · Full AI production
Not sure? Start with Starter at €299/month