James Robinson

James Robinson

Design leadership in New York City, he/him

About

I'm a multidisciplinary design leader who's been building products, brands, teams, and companies from 0 to 1 for over a decade.

Currently, I lead design at Syndicate, a startup leveraging crypto to power new kinds of communities at enterprise scale.

2012 — Now
Freelance design at James Robinson

Working with clients to deliver full-stack design, strategic consulting, and brand creative direction.

2021 — 2023

Decentralized investing protocol and social network backed by Andreessen Horowitz, IDEO CoLab Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, Table Management, Variant, Electric Capital, Delphi Ventures, CoinFund, and 300+ top founders and angels.

2022 — 2023
2020 — 2021

Led design for new products and brand initiatives at Proxy, a series-B startup transforming the way we interact with physical space.

2019 — 2020

As Eight’s founding designer, led interdisciplinary design across the company during critical series-C growth and COVID. Created and led an interdisciplinary design team, integrating digital, brand, print, packaging, growth, industrial, and systems design together.

2016 — 2019
Cofounder + CEO at Fiber

Founded a design-led diversity and inclusion startup, building a research-backed SaaS B2B web and mobile app. Led strategy, research, and product and brand design.

Projects

2021
Core Platform at Syndicate
2021
Brand at Syndicate
2018
Multiplatform Growth at Speechify

Led design of a multiplatform app experience for a high-growth text-to-speech app during a critical point of growth. Reached #1 in its category on the iOS App Store. Since then, Speechify has been featured in numerous publications and has been used to listen to over 17B words.

2016
Platform at Fiber
2015
Smart Lock at Google

Experimental, low-interface interactions for Smart Lock, a better way to handle authentication and identity that relies on presence, not passwords

2015
Identity Consistency at Google

Enhanced user trust for over a billion MAUs across Google products through improved cross-platform design consistency at sign in/up

2014
Brand at Cora

As the first designer, led early exploration to define a brand for Cora, a new vision of women's health centered around organic products and social justice.

2013
Product at Uni+
2013
Core Platform at Quirky
2013
Smart Home Design Research at Wink x GE

Designed initial strategy, creative direction, and interactions for GE's new smart oven and Wink, Quirky's new smart home/IoT platform.

2013
Product at Stealth fashion/lifestyle app

Led a small team in building an ecommerce app offering photo stories that let users instantly buy the fashion & lifestyle items featured.

2010
Design at Bitly
2010
Design Research at Chartbeat

Side Projects

Ongoing

Collecting resources across design, product, and more.

2021

Helped raise more than $47M in under a week to buy a copy of the constitution, mostly from people who had never contributed to a DAO before.

2021

Led design organization partnerships, expanding and accelerating ADPList's mission to build the future of design mentorship, education, and community. Helped drive ADPList's first round of funding.

Speaking

2022
Various Twitter Spaces
2021
Mentor Panelist at InVisible Talks 2021
2020
Judge at UX Result Design Hackathon
2019
Successes and Failures in Building Products at Connecticut College
2019
Becoming a Product Designer

Volunteering

2020 — Now
2020 — 2020
Judge at MDL Designathon
2020 — 2020
Judge at UX Result Design Hackathon
2018 — 2018
MIT Sloan Hack for Inclusion
Cambridge, MA
2018 — 2018
Cambridge, MA
2015 — 2015
Teacher at Railsbridge

Education

Design Dept.

"Emotionally Fluent Leadership"

Business Perspectives for Creative Leaders at Yale School of Management
Art and design at Connecticut College
New London, CT

Contact

LinkedIn
Twitter