Renato Valdés-Olmos

I designed and built Studio to have an integrated system to run processes across some of our companies, specifically a proposal, feedback, and invoicing system. There were no solutions that allowed us to serve customers with an end-to-end integrated experience, so I built it myself. Studio allows consultants or agencies to run a fully branded & interactive proposal, asset feedback, and invoicing system, fully adapted to their processes and brand identity. They can run a simple site frontend on top. A simple structure, flexible enough to adopt but rigorous enough to be user friendly. Studio currently powers a few companies across the Noord portfolio allowing me to iterate quickly.

Studio was designed using a terminal and a browser.

The design system is built on a Swiss grid: a 204px module (184px column, 20px gutter) that underpins this page, the résumé, and renatovaldes.com. Mostly an opinionated choice — a return to an aesthetic that felt familiar and elemental — it also does real work: it’s tuned for information density, so text-heavy proposals, scope tables, and threaded review stay readable at length instead of drowning in padding. And it’s fully responsive: the same content re-flows across 2, 3, and 4 columns from phone to wide desktop, and containers snap to whole modules during a live resize — edges step from grid line to grid line instead of sliding between breakpoints.

One variable family, Messina Sans, carries body, display, and numerals; a system mono handles technical labels. Light and dark resolve from the same CSS variables, so every embedded mockup and figure inherits both themes for free. The grid is what keeps independent surfaces looking like one system.

GrowthX is the growth engine for modern marketing. Forward-deployed experts paired with AI to make a brand the answer wherever buyers search, and wherever AI answers for them. As Head of Design I built early prototypes, supported design across product and brand and helped hire the founding design team. I stay close to the work as a forward-deployed design engineer, shipping code directly to production for our own product and for several of our largest customer accounts.

Co-founded and led design for an iOS activity tracker built on one idea: move for 30 minutes a day. I designed the brand and the product: the daily-progress ring, a live city map of movement (Human Cities), activity detail, and social clubs. Apple “Best of App Store 2014” and a Webby; acquired by Mapbox in 2016. Users tracked 3M+ activities a day across 900 cities.

Built and led the design org, scaling from 5 to ~60 folks on staff and contracting across an AI writing product used by 30M+ people daily across 500,000+ apps and sites, as Grammarly expanded into enterprise (30,000 business teams) and reached a $13B valuation. Our strategy moved Grammarly from a browser extension toward an OS-native AI communication assistant, the foundation of the platform now known as Superhuman, and Grammarly Business—serving the enterprise.

Hired the company’s first senior design leadership team, building and providing structure to core functions like product design, brand & marketing design, user/market research, and design operations.

Developed the brand and designed the first line of care products in-house (the care-scheduling, visit-rating, and wellness experiences shown here), built and led a 20-person team across product design, brand, design ops, and research. I spearheaded a first-hand research program, putting our technologists through caregiver training to validate our early assumptions — it became an official onboarding practice for the product and tech org. Honor’s brand became a real asset in fundraising and recruiting as the company raised $115M (a16z among them), grew to 600+ cities across California, New Mexico, and Texas, tripled care hours delivered in 2018, and won Best New Startup at the 2016 Crunchies. Honor went on to acquire Home Instead in 2021 — combining into the world’s largest home-care company, with $2.1B+ in care services revenue — and reached a $1.25B+ valuation with its $370M Series E.