Alexandru Năstase
Verified Expert in Design
Designer
Bucharest, Romania
Toptal member since April 30, 2020
With two decades of expertise, Alex is a seasoned digital designer whose work has spanned a multitude of environments and industries, including collaborations with companies like Fitbit and Google. His comprehensive approach to design encompasses every phase, from conceptual strategy to meticulous research, usability testing, branding, visual design, and innovative typeface creation. Alexandru is committed to harmonizing business objectives with user needs, blending aesthetics and practicality.
Portfolio
Electric Car Dashboard Concept
Work Experience
Visual Designer
- Designed the visual language for an operating system from scratch while keeping the brand in mind and consistent with other products.
- Designed a custom typeface that resides on existing devices.
- Conducted user interviews to consolidate visual design decisions and test out accessibility issues.
- Guided and directed five team members to implement the design system into existing features to ensure quality and consistency.
- Art-directed animation concepts that were implemented on existing devices.
Senior Visual Designer and Webflow Developer
Staya Inc dba Dover
- Collaborated with their in-house product designer to expand the existing design system to encompass new patterns added based on user testing sessions. This helped make actionable items more recognizable and easily discern large data sets.
- Rebuilt the whole brand identity guide with clearer instructions and more strict guidelines for the existing in-house designers but also for their marketing team, an effort that helped produce much faster social and promotional assets.
- Designed new web pages for their website, which increased traffic and trust. Also designed web pages that introduced new functionalities to their site and a new way to present their overall product to the users in a more interactive way.
- Implemented all the web designs inside Webflow's platform while adding custom code to individual pages to extend Webflow's functionality to meet the desired outcome.
- Collaborated with the marketing team to design and ship out an elaborately detailed e-booklet that explained the company's services in detail to potential investors and individual users.
Senior Visual Designer and Type Designer
Fitbit
- Collaborated with both Bucharest and San Francisco design teams to execute designs for their existing digital and physical products.
- Assisted the product design team with assets creation, testing, and implementation.
- Helped extend the company's visual language to support different form factors.
- Designed and developed custom-type figures to accommodate small screens.
- Handled the implementation of design systems by providing oversight and direction to five of my colleagues.
Product and Visual Designer
Redi.
- Helped Redi to design their mobile cross-platform application for food order placing and pick-up.
- Conducted user interviews and complete research to improve overall usability and engagement.
- Refreshed existing branding and helped with brand assets management.
- Designed printing assets and collaborated with their vendors to ensure printing quality and delivery.
- Designed marketing assets to fit into the marketing team guidelines.
Senior Product Designer
PSNGR1
- Collaborated with project managers and developers to create travel software user interface designs in an agile environment.
- Improved overall usability of existing wireframes and translated them to design.
- Designed and maintained cross-platform applications.
- Designed and sustained extensible and responsive designs and layouts for the PSNGR1 web application.
- Designed sales materials and maintain brand assets.
Senior Visual Designer
GovITHub
- Helped a government program called GovITHub to develop a unified style guide for its upcoming web applications and projects.
- Collaborated closely with the development volunteers for proper implementation of the design.
- Cooperated with other lead designers from other departments for alignment and continuous quality.
Head of Design Department | Collaborative Position
Mandarine International SA
- Applied conceptual thinking to generate ideas, visuals, and other design services, such as web, mobile, tablets, infographics, events, mediums, branding, editorials, campaigns, and more, across multiple digital mediums for internal products.
- Produced sketches, drafts for visualizing ideas, and concepts.
- Understood marketing initiatives, strategic positioning, and target audience.
- Cooperated with and led the design team in all digital and media disciplines.
- Took tasks from concepts to final execution inside the deadline while managing responsibilities and delegation towards the designers in my team and other teammates and giving art direction simultaneously.
- Supervised and enhanced the workflow inside the design department.
- Held project presentations towards setting a common visual language on ongoing projects.
Senior Visual Designer
Kalon Global Group, Inc.
- Collaborated with the UX department to design the interface for a large-scale proprietary platform oriented towards large companies and franchises in the US, EU, and Canada, which have 50,000+ subsidiaries (e.g., McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, Arby’s, KFC).
- Designed the interface and functionality for a tool to help connect marketing and supply chains in global food franchise companies with over 170 US markets. It allows local markets to track campaigns and create detailed reports.
- Designed a presentational website and retouched the branding for a nonprofit organization in the US that deals with orphan children, connects and places them into an orphanage.
- Designed and directed a 50+ page user manual for a proprietary platform destined for the McDonalds Franchise while collaborating with a copywriting team.
- Designed the branding and visual communication strategy of an artificial intelligence-powered platform.
Art Director
F# (efsharp)
- Art directed and supervised web application interfaces for marketing purposes within platforms such as Spotify, Deezer, Soundcloud, and Mixcloud.
- Supervised the design process for publishing materials for large vendors to be used in marketing campaigns.
- Designed applications when schedules stretched thin and time was not on the team's side.
- Overviewed my team's growth cycles and offered mentorship sessions.
- Constantly collaborated with the development leads to map out functionalities and discuss feature feasibility.
- Coordinated with the QA department to ensure the fidelity of the designs, interactions, and animations upon delivery.
Visual Designer
Catur Agency
- Designed the identity for a social networking web application destined for the Indian marketplace.
- Designed all the printed materials to market and advertise the platform.
- Assisted clients in planning out their design needs for their project through meetings, Jira, and Trello.
- Art directed and executed supervision for other graphical materials done by contractors.
- Collaborated with the development team to ensure the quality of the design implementation and also conducted testing sessions.
Education
Master's Degree in Foreign Languages
Ovidius University - Constanta, RO
Skills
Tools
Adobe Creative Suite, Zeplin, Adobe Experience Design (XD), Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, RealtimeBoard, Glyphs, Adobe, Jira, Trello, GitHub, InVision, Avocode, Adobe InDesign, Adobe Dimension, Sketch, Adobe After Effects, Bubble, Blender
Platforms
Figma, iOS, Web, Mobile, Shopify, WordPress, Windows, Webflow, MacOS, Axure, Android
Industry Expertise
Health & Wellness, Advertising, Marketing, Healthcare, Media, Creative Tech, Sales & Marketing, Food & Beverage, Transportation & Shipping, Banking & Finance, Food
Languages
HTML, CSS, Visual Design Language, SCSS, JavaScript
Other
Visual Identity, Mobile Design, Web App UX, Web App UI, Illustration, Design Consultation, User Flows, Responsive Web Apps, User Interface (UI), Design Systems, Typography, Product Design, UI Design, UX Design, Branding, Identity Design, Graphic Design, Print Design, Visual Design, Responsive Web Design (RWD), Responsive Design, iOS UI Design, Android UI Design, Type Design, Typefaces, Typesettings, Book Typesetting, Rapid Prototyping, Mobile App Design, Digital Product Design, Logo Design, Web Design, Design, Brand Books, Brand Guidelines, Iconography, Icon Design, App Icon Design, Mobile UI, Mobile App UI, Web App Design, High-fidelity Mockups, Wireframing, Android Design Guidelines, Web UI, Presentation Design, Pitch Decks, System Design, Brand Design, Dashboard Design, Data Visualization, User Experience (UX), Websites, Style Guides, Email Design, Collateral Design, Web Illustration, Collateral, Landing Page Design, Web UI Design, Web UX Design, Creative Direction, Corporate Branding, Mockups, Mobile Apps, B2B, Wearables, User Journeys, Layout Design, eCommerce, SaaS Design, Prototyping, User Personas, PDF Design, PowerPoint Design, Readability, UX Audits, Presentations, User Testing, Heuristic Analysis, UI Branding, Mobile First, 3D Design, Packaging, Image Manipulation, MVP Design, Mobile Applications, UX Prototyping, UX Wireframes, User Experience Design, iOS App Design, Android App Design, Identity, Logotype, User Research, UX Research, Enterprise Application Design, Information Architecture (IA), User Interviews, FontLab, Mobile UX, Art Direction, Email Template Design, Social Media Design, Brand Strategy, Advertising Design, Banner Ads, Fintech, Social Media Marketing (SMM), Marketing Design, Android Wearables, Design Leadership, User Stories, Infographics, Motion Graphics, Animation, Sales Presentations, 3D, 3D Modeling, 3D Character Modeling, 3D Rendering, Abstracts, Brand Identity, Print Marketing Design, Mobile UI Design, Mobile UX Design, Food Ordering, Food Ordering Platforms, Online Ordering, Interface Design, Cars, Driving, Finance, Financing, Financial Data, Web UX, Version Control, Documentation, Data Flows, Process Flows, Information Design, Management, Supervisory Control & Data Acquisition (SCADA), Comparable Company Analysis, Mind Maps, A/B Testing, Reports, Reporting System Design, Languages, Print, Web Marketing, Blockchain, Blockchain Platforms, Trading
Experience
- Visual Design - 20 years
- Product Design - 12 years
- Responsive Web Design (RWD) - 10 years
- Digital Product Design - 7 years
- Identity Design - 7 years
- Mobile App Design - 7 years
- Rapid Prototyping - 7 years
- Type Design - 3 years
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