Independent designer and front-end developer, Lisbon
I design products
and build them.
For ten years I’ve helped software teams turn rough ideas into products people use: product design, design systems and websites, shipped in production code by the same person, so nothing gets lost in the handover.
Now
Designing and building a booking flow for a clinic group in Porto
Next opening
2 February 2027, for one new project
Selected work
2023–2026. Each went from the first sketch to production with me on both sides, often next to the client’s own engineers.
Design weeks
Build weeks
All on one 20-week scale
Small physio clinics were losing patients halfway through booking. I rebuilt the flow around the first thing patients ask (when can I come in?), then built it as an embeddable widget and a clinic dashboard.
4 min → 70 s
Average time to book an appointment
Design 5
Build 7
12 weeks
Design
Interviews at nine clinics
Booking flow and clinic dashboard
Fernway UI, a small design system
Build
Next.js and TypeScript
Embeddable widget, 14 kB
WCAG 2.2 AA throughout
Three products, built by three teams, looked like three companies. I audited 1,400 screens, designed one shared system and built its React library with the teams, one component at a time.
3 teams, 1 system
In five months, with UI pull requests about 40% smaller
Design 8
Build 12
20 weeks
Design
Audit of 1,400 screens
Tokens, type and colour
86 Figma components
Build
React library on accessible primitives
Docs site with live examples
Tokens exported to iOS and Android
A launch site that explains a network of batteries without a single stock photo: an interactive map of the grid’s day, hour by hour, drawn in code.
41,000 visitors
In launch week, and 600 job applications in the first month
Design 2
Build 4
6 weeks
Design
Story and site structure
Art direction
The interactive grid map
Build
Astro, with the map in canvas
News and careers in a CMS
Lighthouse 98 on mobile
Patchwork sells feature flags to small engineering teams. I designed the dashboard and the CLI output, then built the dashboard with their two engineers: keyboard-first, dark by default, and fast with 20,000 flags.
11 min → 3 min
From sign-up to the first flag in production
Design 4
Build 6
10 weeks
Design
Dashboard and CLI output
Command palette
Docs layout
Build
React, with a virtualised table
Keyboard shortcuts everywhere
Dark and light themes
Brisa is a Lisbon architecture quarterly. I designed its online edition from the print layouts, with type that works from a phone to a wide screen, and built it on a CMS the editors run themselves.
38% of revenue
Now comes from online subscriptions
Design 3
Build 5
8 weeks
Design
Editorial type system
Article templates
Subscription flow
Build
Next.js on a headless CMS
Responsive images in AVIF
Paywall and reader accounts
More work
2026
Little Harbour
Timetables and tickets for a ferry co-op
Design, build
2025
Tarn Analytics
Onboarding for a product-analytics tool
Design
2025
Saltbox Ceramics
Online shop for a ceramics studio
Design, build
2024
Quillon
A writing app for iPad
Design
2024
Mareo Health
Accessibility fixes across a patient portal
Build
2023
Orchard Labs
Marketing site and developer docs
Design, build
2023
Petrichor Coffee
Subscription sign-up
Design, build
2022
Atlas Rail
A rota tool for depot staff
Design
Services
Smaller jobs, fixed prices
Design-system audit
1 week
€4,800
Front-end and accessibility review
3 days
€2,600
Workshop for your team
1 day
€1,900
How every project runs
01
A demo every Friday, on a live URL you can share.
02
You own everything: the Figma files, the code and the docs.
03
One fixed quote, invoiced per milestone.
Questions
Can you only design, or only build?
What do you build with?
Do you work with agencies?
How soon can we start?
About
Jules in the studio, Lisbon
Designer first. Developer since 2016.
I trained as a graphic designer in Porto and learned front-end code to stop losing the details in handovers. After six years in product teams, the last two leading design at a payments start-up, I set up on my own in 2020.
Today I work with two or three clients at a time: founders who need a product designed and shipped, and product teams who need a designer who reads their code. I care most about the parts that are easy to skip: states, edge cases, motion, and the last ten per cent that makes software feel finished.
Tools
Design
Figma, Rive, pen and paper
Build
TypeScript, React, Next.js, Astro, a lot of CSS
Ship
Vercel, Netlify, GitHub Actions
Talks and writing
Design tokens that survive engineering
Design-systems meetup, Lisbon, 2025
Notes from the handover
A newsletter, 2,400 readers
Mentor
A front-end course in Porto, since 2022
Contact
Tell me about your project.
I reply within two working days. If it looks like a fit, we book a 30-minute call, and you get a fixed quote within a week.
Next opening
2 February 2027
Based in
Lisbon, working with teams across Europe