I'm Justus ✌️ a web and digital designer and creativity connoisseur in Chicago. I find inspiration in stories told in any medium, from books to games to an obscure movie's title sequence. I love taking a problem with no obvious answer and simplifying it into a design that carries a feeling while solving a problem intuitively.

I go where the work needs me, and I'm happiest with a brief nobody has solved yet. Wireframes one week, then the interactive prototype that shows a software function well enough to get the build approved, then page variants spun straight out of a design system Claude can work in. I came to this from a background in interactive media and concept art, then taught myself to build what I'd been drawing. A design isn't finished when it looks right; it's finished eight months later, when someone changes the headline and nothing else moves.

Three years at Tribune first, several client projects going live every day. Then Walgreens, and their first 3D product library, where being correct mattered more than anything I could do to make it look good. Then three years running Canto's marketing site, in English and German.

I spend a lot of time offline, too. Mostly looking for the strangest shapes I can find in the wild, people and buildings and the odd bit of signage, and drawing them into a notebook I keep for exactly that. I also volunteer at Forever Felines, which I started doing for my cat Bloo, and keep doing because he's still the reason I notice things.

Web systems and digital design

Illustration Graphic design Typography Visual identity

The design systems, the page templates, and the components that make up those templates. Since it's usually the hierarchy and not the styling that causes a page to fail in converting, I would remove a section before making any changes to the styling.

3D and Motion
Graphics

3D modeling Motion design Animation Rendering

I use Blender for work involving products and environments, as well as After Effects and Anime.js for motion on the web. Motion should be included only when it explains something that the static version cannot do; in all other cases the page is better off remaining still.

Art and Brand
Direction

Art direction Brand strategy Product visualization Emerging technology

The brief should cover aspects relating to art direction, the hierarchy of messaging, and the debate concerning what the page is really for. It's worthwhile having that debate early on since it's inexpensive to carry out on a whiteboard but becomes costly once the page has been built.

My expertise

Download CV

UI/UX design

/ 01

Hi-end websites

/ 02

HubSpot

/ 03

Claude Code

/ 04

3d art

/ 05

Motion graphics

/ 06

Experience

Web & Digital Designer

at Canto

For Canto I designed and constructed web experiences for use in product marketing, events, campaigns and the promotion of new features on canto.com; this included standalone orphan pages, event landing pages and product showcase pages, using Nuxt v4 with HTML, CSS and JavaScript.

I was in charge of and looked after the canto.com design system, settling any exceptions on a weekly basis and promoting a pattern into a component the second time it was used.
I co-led the move from Gridsome to Nuxt v4, as a result of which full-site rebuilds were no longer carried out whenever a customer story was published.
I created the tooling that was required: the Claude Code skill files for the design system, a Python crawler which checked the blog images for WebP, and an infographic pipeline that was rendered using Playwright.

Sep 2023 - Jul 2026

Senior 3D Designer

at Walgreens

At Walgreens I was in charge of the artistic direction and carried out the 3D and web projects, which included product visualization, experiential content for virtual environments and events, and the design of proof-of-concept proposals for initiatives that no one had yet built. I played a role in setting up the company's first 3D product library, comprising thousands of assets on which all subsequent work depended upon accuracy.

Designed proof-of-concept schemes for various technology initiatives even before it had been decided whether to grant them funding.
Turned product and innovation ideas into visual representations that a room could really respond to by using the actual product models rather than substitutes.
I managed a number of design workstreams simultaneously in the areas of digital, web, and 3D, mainly because I knew which one could wait until the following day.

2022 - 2023

Digital Designer

at Tribune Publishing Company

While I was at Tribune Publishing I was in charge of designing and producing digital advertising for a number of different markets, including those projects that were completed each day. This involved rich media, animated ads, landing pages, admails and the complete IAB size matrix, as well as the discussions between clients and sales staff that determined what any of these things was meant to do.

I produced thousands of tickets over a period of three years, with several client projects running on any given day.
Carried out direct work with advertisers, sales teams and external vendors so that the loose direction could be turned into a version that was ready to ship that week.
I carried out the accuracy check before anything went live, since if a banner had the wrong price it would result in a call from the client not a design note.

2019 - 2022