Karl Koch

@kejk
Product Design | Design Systems | UI Engineering
London
He/Him

Product Design

Design Systems

DesignOps

Figma Wizard

SwiftUI

Indie Dev

Visual Design

Software Engineering

Musician

Open Source

Advisor

Mentor

Design Strategy

Web Developer

Product Strategy

Documentation

Designer

I learnt to design by creating album art for bands in cracked Photoshop. I learnt to code by hacking my MySpace page. AMA.

Currently working at DuckDuckGo and Cosmic, and building plugins.run

I'm open to

giving portfolio feedback,

mentoring,

writing,

advising companies,

speaking on podcasts,

speaking at events,

beta testing new products,

giving resume feedback,

and open source contributions.

Contact Me

Resume

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Feb 2023 - Present

Senior Product Designer, DuckDuckGo

Feb 2021 - Present

Design Lead, Cosmic

Jul 2022 - Feb 2023

Product Design Lead, Moneybox

Jul 2021 - Jul 2022

Product Designer (Payments) and Design Systems Lead, Moneybox

Portfolio

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So long and thanks for the memories

Released Cosmic 2.0

Updated Default››export

Updated Hand››over

My 2021 Highlights

This still blows my mind. Close to 1,000 installs of my various plugins each week. Mental.

Became an official member of the Cosmic team complete with substantial equity. Super exciting to be able to grow this together with the team!

Music

Released Bad Dream with Slowdance https://album.link/pgt8hw82kwsdx

Release Cornerstone with Echoes https://album.link/tqh6ggrq7kcc9

Released The Pursuit with Echoes https://album.link/0vncq8mwtrcxd

Apps and Plugins

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Worked on some logic improvements and some updates using SwiftUI 3.0 for Hand››over. Also built out a version of my Perfect››radius Figma plugin inside of the app that updates in realtime to reflec...

Released a big update to Hand››over that brings the macOS app up to feature parity with iOS, including widget support, and adds a new tailwind unit conversion calculator. https://apps.apple.com/gb/...

Launched Better Logos on Figma after a few months of work. https://www.figma.com/community/plugin/984840399144699277/Better-Logos

Built out a Drafts Action to get your blog post into your Cosmic bucket like magic. https://actions.getdrafts.com/a/1fP

Writing

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The Struggle between Urgency and Importance: Getting Your Priorities Right

I recently wrote about an approach to successful critiques and how to influence team mates through quiet action.

Wrote about the idea of having a handshake with a developer instead of a handoff. https://www.kejk.tech/thoughts/design-for-handshakes-not-handovers

Recently wrote about the process of using creativity as a form of catharsis when dealing with tragic life events. This is a very personal post with less to gain educationally, but an important one ...

Features

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Had a chat about constraints with my buddy @thorms11 asynchronously for his Async Chats newsletter. Thanks for having me!

I'll be giving a talk on January 10th around how the Moneybox team handled the switch from Sketch to Figma alongside some key lessons you can learn if your organisation is gearing up to switch. Com...

Two of my plugins (Get››all and Text››helper) were featured by Figma in their FigJam plugins section on the community!

Bit of a surprise seeing my Plausible stats spike today only to then realise my article on Spatial Design was featured in the @HeyDesigner newsletter!