Ado Hodzic

With no affiliation, sharing this as I know it will be good. Peter Merholz's ideas have been instrumental in my shaping of design teams. As iF Design point out here - the right environment around the design team is key to producing a successful team. The role of the leader is to create that environment.

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Hey all, Studio Ostendo (design-wise) is now Overmatter. Here are 4 Reasons for the Rebrand (as if my need for parantheses wasn't enough). 1. Growth and the Reality of Creative Partnerships When Becky and I first started, we ran Pen & Lens in Illinois — photographing weddings, families, and building brands for small businesses together. Moving to Idaho meant we were losing our market, and so we looked at it as an opportunity for something new, and Studio Ostendo became that shared identity. But as our paths grew, so did our focus areas. Becky now leads photography and client relationships; I focus on brand strategy and design, each nearly exclusively. We still collaborate (she edits my brand photos, I handle her SEO), but distinct brands will let each of us grow more clearly. Sometimes, the best way to grow together is to separate cleanly. 2. SEO, Clarity, and Technical Growth Our old multi-domain system — ostendo.design, ostendo.photography, ostendo.studio — was fun for us, but made our sites compete with each other. A brand photography article on my site would cannibalize traffic from hers. The split helps clarify audiences, improve visibility, and make it easier for both humans and algorithms to understand who does what. Hopefully she'll start getting recommended by LLMs like I have been. 3. Expanding Services and Offerings Over the years we’ve adapted and launched a lot: The Brand Meter Report, Kindred West, Ostendo Graphics, and more. Each new idea stretched the Studio Ostendo system a little thinner, and continued to water-down specific brand authority. Overmatter gives us a brand architecture that can differentiate and grow experiments and partnerships without collapsing under their own weight. 4. The Name is Sick The word "overmatter" comes from typesetting — it’s the extra text that gets cut off the page. I love that metaphor: the unseen work that shapes what people actually see. It’s also a name that’s easier to spell, say, and remember and is overtly American English in tone (double "R" sounde with a prominent "V". The kind of name that has stuck in my head for months. So that’s the story. Bear with me as I transition this bad boy amongst other initiatives and client work. Thanks for following along, and welcome to Overmatter.

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Product Design fears change. Not incremental change. I mean real innovation — doing things differently, even if it ruffles feathers. For years, designers have built rigid systems, optimized for edge cases, and followed strict accessibility guidelines. That’s important. But in doing so, we've also created a safety net. A formula. A sameness. Look across SaaS products: dashboards blur together, interfaces are interchangeable. Integrations improve utility, but where’s the actual product innovation? Take Apple’s liquid glass interface. Many designers criticised it for accessibility concerns, valid ones. But with modern OS-level accessibility tools, is there also room to explore more expressive, emotional, even unexpected design? We’ve flattened everything. Colours, hierarchies, typography — in pursuit of standards. But maybe it’s time we give users more than usability. Maybe we give them wonder, too. As AI continues to homogenise design outputs, the real opportunity lies in pushing against the grain. Let’s make room for difference. — — — — — — Edited with AI

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Four organizations looking for web design partners right now: → Detroit Community Org - $100K - full rebrand + website with 9 neighborhood sub-brands → Calgary Neighborhood Site - $70K USD - website redesign migrating off legacy Squarespace → LA Community Marketplace - $30K-$80K - Squarespace 7.1 redesign with donation store → Michigan Workforce Agency - $60K - website with AI chatbot, job board, and document portal Link in comments 👇

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One of the big milestones in design maturity is moving from tactical work to strategic influence. That shift requires more than aligning with the business goals; it’s about understanding the business dynamics. And one of the most important dynamics to pay attention to is how decisions get made. Are we optimizing for speed? Managing risk? Prioritizing user satisfaction? Every org is different. But when you understand the decision-making landscape, you can navigate it with purpose, and help your team have greater impact, faster.

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Terminal Fluency: As AI becomes more central to Designer workflows, I’ve been seeing more questions about whether the terminal is still worth learning. I think it is, terminal is core skill that compounds and unlocks next-level control over agents. Make terminal your second brain with this tmux + vim cheatsheet (or just get started) and keep your hands on the keyboard. https://lnkd.in/eV5bAFhF

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A lot of illustration styles look great in isolation, but they start to fall apart when multiple designers have to use them. That’s the problem we were solving while building the illustration guidelines for Yelp. The goal wasn’t just to create a few nice illustrations. It was to build a system that could scale across a large product and multiple teams. Illustration systems tend to break down when:  - designers interpret the style differently  - new use cases appear that weren’t originally considered  - the brand grows faster than the rules So the work became less about drawing and more about defining structure: Stroke weights. Shape language. Character proportions. Color usage. Even defining what not to do. Essentially, we were designing guardrails so the system could hold up long after the original designers stepped away. Earlier in my career, I followed guidelines someone else wrote. On this project, I got to define the rules myself. It taught me that designing systems that hold up over time is harder than designing beautiful illustrations. And it was the moment my approach to illustration, design, and scale really shifted. If you’re curious, check out the case study here: blackmath.com/work/yelp 😊

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🎓 The Ohio State University is one of the world’s leading institutions in education and research. Recently, I had the privilege of creating Motion Design videos for the College of Veterinary Medicine, where clarity and empathy are essential to learning. 🐾 This project showed how Motion Design can turn complex concepts into engaging, easy-to-understand visuals. Beyond aesthetics, it bridges science and storytelling, helping students connect emotionally while retaining information more effectively. #MotionDesign #EducationalDesign #VeterinaryMedicine #TheOhioStateUniversity #Education #Animation #Design

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What do you get when you add UX + UI + AI? All will be revealed in the next installment of AIGA Chicago's Design in the Age of AI series: Gleb Kuznetsov, Chief Design Officer of Brain.ai, will bring Chicago a special sneak peek at the future of interface design—direct from the Bay Area labs where it's being written. Spoiler alert: we're talking new tools and new experiences driven by the same badass human designers at the helm. 📍 – Institute of Design at Illinois Tech 🗓️ – August 26 🎟 – https://buff.ly/XtW1OZ6 #AIGAChicago #DesignInTheAgeofAI #DesignTalk #ChicagoEvents #FutureOfDesign

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The Future of High-Velocity Design Engineers are moving faster than ever. AI can spin up seven different prototypes before we’ve even finished a "Research Plan." If we stay stuck in 3-month linear loops, we become the bottleneck. I recently had a talk with my team on how we’re evolving. Our goal is to eliminate the translation layer between our design intent and the live code. This means: Redistributing our time: Less time pushing pixels, more time "jamming" in the live build. Vibe Coding: Using AI (Claude/Cursor) to build functional realities, not just "clickable" prototypes. Trust through Speed: Shipping Research Previews early to learn from real-world data. I created a quick presentation echoing this shift. Feel free to use it, I hope it help you start the conversation. Design leaders, I would love to hear how you're redefining "craft" in your teams as the gap between design and dev evaporates. Let's discuss. 👇 Thanks Jenny Wen for sharing with us your insights 👊

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