Jacques Ramphal
I'm a designer working where design, code, and AI meet.
Featured
How a personal automation experiment became a shared platform for the delivery team, and the three mental model problems that had to be solved to design for agentic AI.
Nov 2025
5 min read
ai
agentic-ai
How I built a unified token architecture, an AI-guarded lint pipeline, and a one-command dev loop that kept Figma, code, and AI tooling in sync across four brands, two themes, and two modalities, for a multi-display, multi-brand product platform.
Feb 2026
6 min read
design-systems
tokens
ai
An isolated Storybook environment powered by AI — one command to start. How I built a design layer on top of an agentic framework, and what I learned about operationalizing change in a service company where the best handoff is still a handoff.
Mar 2026
5 min read
design-engineering
storybook
ai
A strategic planning tool for a Fortune 100 company — making complex organizational data across business units, budgets, and initiatives navigable without flattening it.
Feb 2026
3 min read
dashboard
analytics
OnLogic's customers are IT professionals configuring industrial PCs with specific hardware requirements — where a wrong choice has real consequences. Migrated from a legacy platform to composable commerce, with a configuration flow built around real dependencies.
Feb 2026
4 min read
commerce
configurator
A convenience-store loyalty program that had to reach the fuel pump, not just the phone. Rebuilt on React Native and a composable content stack, so the team ran its own promotions, search, and rewards, and customers prepaid gas and redeemed points at the pump, without a third party in the loop.
Feb 2026
4 min read
loyalty
mobile
When a brand launches a new identity, the website needs to reflect it—without breaking what already works. Redesigned Softchoice's website to reflect their new brand identity, working within their existing CMS structure. Enhanced modules, introduced motion design, and collaborated closely with development to ensure design fidelity.
Feb 2026
3 min read
rebrand
motion-design
UI experiments, design process, and work-in-progress from across projects.
visual-design
explorations
Featured
The story of building Genie — from personal experiment to organizational platform — and what building it changed about how I work, what I'm capable of, and how others engage with me.
Mar 2026
7 min read
ai
agentic-ai
Two years ago I guessed where design was going. Every guess has been answered.
Aug 2026
6 min read
design-systems
agentic-ai
craft
A design-engineering stance: limitations are sequencing problems, not blockers.
Aug 2026
3 min read
craft
design
A bad workman blames his tools—but sometimes the tool is the ceiling. On how Figma labels designers as picture-makers, why every visual builder trades one lock-in for another, and the build workflow that removes the handoff so the thing you design is the thing that ships.
Aug 2026
7 min read
design-tools
front-end
philosophy
When making something is nearly free, the scarce skill becomes knowing what's worth building and being able to say why. A fifteen-year arc from graphic design to agent experience, which turned out to be the same story as vibe coding.
Jul 2026
7 min read
ai
agentic-ai
craft
A project falling apart, fifty-odd UI defects and no source of truth, and what staying in it taught me: friction only sharpens you when there's something steady to work against.
Jun 2026
4 min read
career
mindset
What designing for agentic systems actually looks like — mapping real workflows, defining agent behavior, setting guardrails — and why the skills designers already have are the ones that matter most.
Jan 2026
4 min read
ai
agentic-ai
design
How pressure, curiosity, and transferable skills created a career path no one handed me. On finding your niche, navigating identity shifts, and building relevance by staying grounded in what's true about how you work.
Sep 2024
4 min read
career
growth
leadership
On what leading design as a strategic function actually looks like in practice: building infrastructure that changes what's possible downstream, automating the mechanical parts of delivery, and staying close enough to the work to make decisions that matter.
Oct 2024
2 min read
design
leadership
A future-proof approach to front-end design isn't about specific tools—it's about the principles beneath them. On headless complexity, tech debt, and why interoperability should be the core of your design practice.
Nov 2022
4 min read
design-tools
front-end
philosophy
Speculation on where design is heading. From siloed to integrated, static to dynamic, proprietary to open-source—the future of design is defined by tensions, not destinations.
Mar 2024
5 min read
design
future
philosophy
Shifting from inspectors to system stewards. As tools automate comparison and regression, designers become orchestrators who define baselines, set standards, and protect coherence.
Jun 2024
1 min read
ai
design
Why a shared design language is the most resilient investment teams can make as tools, roles, and workflows keep evolving. In a time when everything else in tech feels like shifting sand, design tokens are the bedrock—tiny pieces of your design's DNA that become a shared language everyone can speak, ensuring consistency and adaptability even as the design tools around them evolve.
External ↗
design-systems
tokens
As agentic AI raises customer expectations for responsive, intelligent service, the gap between what companies promise and what they reliably deliver becomes their actual brand identity.
External ↗
ai
agentic-ai
Designing agentic systems forces you to rethink how work gets done. Not in the abstract, but in the day-to-day reality of delivery: shifting requirements, scattered context, rising risk, and teams stretched thin. This article explores how we built Genie—an agentic orchestration layer that consolidates context, generates requirements, surfaces risks, and automates workflows—and the three mental model problems we solved in designing for agentic AI.
External ↗
ai
agentic-ai
Strong baselines. Early DQA. Less testing later. When quality is built into the baseline from the start, QA shifts from discovery to confirmation — and the best QA process is one that doesn't have to happen.
Aug 2023
4 min read
quality
process
qa
Maintaining authority through validation. When designers act as the final checkpoint before release, they protect the integrity of interaction, communication, accessibility, and system coherence.
Sep 2023
1 min read
design
qa
The complementary role of human and machine intelligence. Automation is acceleration, not intelligence. The future of quality is machines for detection, humans for discernment.
Jan 2024
2 min read
quality
automation
True velocity through completion, not volume. It's better to deliver fewer tickets that are truly done than more tickets that will be reopened. Rework is invisible drag.
Nov 2023
1 min read
velocity
strategy
AI makes design fast. Dangerously fast. On why code friction is the discipline the process needs, and how to build constraints that let you run.
Apr 2026
2 min read
design-process
ai-tools
design-systems
On the difference between the discomfort that makes you better and the kind that follows you home — and how to tell which one you're feeding.
Mar 2026
2 min read
career
mindset
growth
Finding joy in enterprise design when the craft has moved from pixels to systems, and why the human part of the work matters more as tools get better.
Mar 2026
2 min read
career
enterprise-ux
design-systems
On showing up prepared without knowing the right answer, learning to sit with that discomfort, and being kind enough to yourself to build the support before you need it.
Mar 2026
2 min read
career
mindset
growth
A living collection of wisdom from opinionated mentors, teachers, and personal design observations. From foundational principles to leadership lessons, this is a journal of continuous learning in design, code, and craft.
Jun 2023
4 min read
design
leadership
Six short sessions for when you are good at what you do and it has stopped feeling like enough. Each time, you arrive somewhere quiet, notice one true thing about where you actually are, and write down one line. The six lines are the page, and every line on it is yours.
career
mindset
growth
A layered token architecture for personal projects and design systems — multi-brand, theme-aware, and Figma Token Studio ready. Two files to import, zero classes required.
Mar 2026
5 min read
design-systems
tokens
open-source
A script that fills the enclosed counter spaces inside letterforms — the holes in o, e, a, g — with any colour or gradient. Generative, font-agnostic, and built on real DOM text so it stays accessible.
Mar 2026
9 min read
experiment
canvas
typography
open-source
A lightweight design guard that scans staged files for hardcoded lengths (px/rem/%/etc.) and colors, nudging code toward design tokens.
Jan 2026
2 min read
cli
design-systems
A safe script that converts straight quotes to smart quotes in rendered content without touching code, bindings, or attribute delimiters.
Jan 2026
3 min read
cli
npm
Live demo of counter-fill — filling the enclosed counter spaces inside letterforms with colour or gradients, built on real DOM text.
External ↗
experiment
canvas
typography
CSS, SVG, and canvas photo filters built with zero dependencies. Duotone, cyanotype, infrared, halftone, chromatic aberration, and more.
External ↗
experiment
css-filters
svg
A little writing tool that counts how many distinct words you've used — paste or type, and watch your vocabulary tally live. A tiny game of saying more with fewer repeats.
External ↗
experiment
game
writing