Work  /  Instart Logic
Instart Logic logo
Web Performance Platform · Founding Design

Instart Logic

As one of the first employees at a web-performance startup, I was the design team of one. I built the brand, the product interface, and the design system that a complex, invisible technology needed to be understood, trusted, and sold.

Role
Founding / Lead In-House Designer
Scope
Brand · Product UI · Design system · Marketing
Team
Design of one, with PM, eng & founders
Focus
0 to 1 enterprise product
The problem
A powerful but invisible web-performance platform, with no brand, no product interface, and no design language. Technical buyers had to understand and trust something they could not see.
My role
The founding designer. I built the identity, designed the product UI end to end, created the design system, and produced the marketing that explained the technology to enterprise buyers.
What shipped
A cohesive brand, a full analytics, security, and delivery dashboard, a reusable UI kit, and a library of white papers and case studies for enterprise clients.
The challenge

Giving an invisible technology a face

Instart Logic invented web application streaming: like video streaming, but for websites, it sent the most important fragments of a page first so users could start using a site after only a partial download. The technology was powerful and almost entirely invisible. My job was to give that invisible value a face, in a product technical teams could operate, a brand enterprises would trust, and materials that made a complex platform legible to non-engineers.

Scope 01

Brand identity

The logo, visual language, and how the company looked everywhere from screen to signage.

Scope 02

Product UI

The customer dashboard: information architecture, flows, and the analytics, security, and delivery surfaces.

Scope 03

Design system

A custom UI kit so the product stayed consistent as it scaled and I stayed a team of one.

Scope 04

Marketing & story

White papers, datasheets, and case studies that explained the platform to enterprise buyers.

Global scale

A product that ran on five continents

The platform streamed content from edge locations across the world. Part of the design job was making that scale feel simple, both in the product and in the story around it.

Instart Logic global streaming network map
The application-streaming network, one of the brand pieces I produced to make global scale legible.
Designing the product

The surfaces that made performance visible

I designed the customer dashboard end to end: the same information architecture and flows I built for the platform, shown here refreshed in a current visual language. Each surface answered one question for a technical team: where is my traffic, is my site under attack, and how much am I saving?

Who is using your site, and from where
Analytics
Who is using your site, and from where
Traffic by region, device mix, and OS and browser breakdowns, filterable by time and device.
Is your site under attack
Security · WAF
Is your site under attack
A web-application-firewall event log: severity, attack vector, source, and how each threat was handled.
How much you are saving
Delivery
How much you are saving
Actual versus original bandwidth over time, making the value of streaming visible at a glance.
Information architecture

Architecting the whole product

Before any screen, I designed the structure, working first with the founder and CEO to shape the architecture, then with the VP of Product to refine it. Every section, page, and control the dashboard needed, analytics, delivery, security, account, and configuration, organized so a technical user always knew where they were and what they could do.

The product map
Information architecture
The product map
Every section and page of the customer dashboard, mapped before a single screen was designed.
A design system from scratch

One kit, so the product could scale past one designer

With engineering shipping quickly, consistency could not depend on me touching every screen. I built a reusable UI kit: type, color, controls, data tables, and data visualization. Accessibility is built in, the palette is validated so status and categories stay legible for red-green color-blind users, not just checked at the end.

The Instart Logic UI kit
Design system
The Instart Logic UI kit
Foundations, controls, an advanced data table, data-viz, and a contrast-checked color system in one reference.
Brand & story

From the product to the office wall to the enterprise pitch

The same identity I built for the product carried into the space and the sales story. I produced the environmental brand, plus the white papers, datasheets, and case studies that explained an invisible technology to enterprise buyers.

The brand, off-screen
Environmental
The brand, off-screen
The wordmark applied to office signage across two headquarters moves.
Explaining the invisible
Collateral
Explaining the invisible
White papers and datasheets that translated performance technology for non-engineers.

I designed case studies and collateral for the enterprise customers who ran on the platform, including:

The Washington PostDollar Shave ClubOne Kings LaneIFTTTKongregate
Reflection

What building 0 to 1 taught me

Founding design is systems design

Building the brand, product, and collateral from one hand forced every piece to connect. The product looked like the pitch, and the pitch looked like the company.

Constraints made me systematic

A team of one shipping for enterprise meant documenting flows and building a reusable kit. Rigor was the only way to scale myself.

Make the invisible legible

The core job was turning complex, unseen technology into something people could understand and trust. It is the same job I take on with AI products now.

Accessibility as a default

Building the data views to work for color-blind users taught me to treat accessibility as a starting constraint, not a final check.