
Matt Holloway
Verified Expert in Design
Designer
New York, NY, United States
Toptal member since January 9, 2020
Matt is a product designer with 20+ years of experience, specializing in UI/UX, product strategy, brand systems, eCommerce solutions, and applications. He delivers scalable solutions for startups and established brands, with a keen eye for detail, budgeting, and deadlines. Matt can handle large projects independently but values the power of teamwork and mentoring new designers.
Portfolio
Work Experience
Senior Product Designer
TAPPD
- Designed an AI-powered nightlife concierge experience that guides users through venue discovery, recommendations, reservations, and personalized nightlife planning.
- Defined the product strategy, user flows, and conversational interactions for an AI agent that helps guests discover venues, compare experiences, and make booking decisions.
- Created the end-to-end product strategy, information architecture, and mobile-first UX for a multi-sided nightlife platform serving guests, promoters, and venues.
- Led product discovery workshops to define MVP scope, prioritize features, and align business goals, user needs, and technical requirements across stakeholders.
- Developed a scalable design system and high-fidelity prototype to accelerate stakeholder alignment and future product development.
Lead Brand Designer
Rishi Shah
- Created the brand strategy and visual identity for an AI-powered matchmaking platform, establishing a distinctive market position and personality.
- Developed the brand system, including logo concepts, color palette, typography, visual language, and usage guidelines to support a cohesive customer experience.
- Led naming exploration, messaging development, and brand positioning exercises to align the product vision with target user expectations.
- Designed marketing, web, and presentation assets used to communicate the product concept to stakeholders, partners, and prospective users.
- Produced a comprehensive brand foundation that enabled future product, marketing, and customer-facing experiences to remain visually and strategically aligned.
Head of Product Design
TVR II Inc.
- Designed the end-to-end eCommerce experience for first-time firearm buyers, simplifying product discovery, education, and purchase decision-making.
- Created customer journey maps, user flows, wireframes, and high-fidelity prototypes to reduce friction throughout the shopping experience.
- Developed UX strategies and interface concepts that balanced regulatory considerations, customer education, and conversion-focused design.
- Led product discovery and stakeholder workshops to identify user pain points, prioritize features, and align business and customer goals.
- Produced implementation-ready design assets and detailed interaction specifications to support efficient development and launch planning.
Product Designer
Full Throttle Charities, Inc
- Designed a fully responsive website with custom code within Webflow.
- Coded three email capture forms and made the website visually dynamic with full bleed video backgrounds, custom micro-animations, and photo-edited content.
- Created a custom CMS for easy updating at the client level, which could be reused for future events.
Creative Director
Alan Bernau Jr
- Designed a custom 3D web app that enables potential customers to design their own metal building from the ground up.
- Increased conversion from the top to the bottom of the funnel by A/B testing small UX improvements and measuring those results.
- Redesigned the site's UI by working with engineers and rewriting the CSS and introducing pages with Bootstrap specific components.
Creative Director (via Toptal)
NOWwith Ventures
- Designed UI/UX for a custom player layer that converted normal videos into a shoppable experience using an overlay. It allowed social creators to seamlessly curate affiliate and dropship products into their videos.
- Built an onboard system that accommodated our varied user base. Creators, brands, retailers, and consumers had their path with specific inputs required to efficiently gain access and establish themselves on our platform and admin.
- Created UI/UX for a custom responsive eCommerce flow from end-to-end that adapted to both affiliate and dropship products. The checkout included credit, debit, PayPal, and Apple Pay options.
- Designed UI/UX for a web platform that made any video, including social posts, shoppable. This platform enabled creators to launch marketplaces for their shoppable curated videos, where they could aggregate their followers across all their social.
- Created UI/UX for a curation tool for creators. It empowered our creators to upload their videos and tag them with curated products. They could set the screen time duration and upsell it with a post-launch "You Might Also Like" carousel.
- Developed and animated multiple video demos and sizzle reels that showcased our pre-development product with my team. These demos were used internally to set the stage for future rollouts and within pitch decks for investment opportunities.
- Designed many presentation decks, most of which were for investment and partnership initiatives. The decks were built in Keynote, PowerPoint, Google Slides, and PDF. These decks helped lock several rounds of funding.
- Played a pivotal role in raising $18 million with a team of investors consisting of former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo, DAZN Group chairman Kevin Mayer, Honey president Joanne Bradford, Greycroft's Dana Settle, and Rodriguez and Marc Lore.
- Built a front-end team from the ground up, consisting of art directors, senior UX designers, junior, mid, and senior graphic designers, senior editors, mid and senior motion GRX designers, social media managers, copywriters, and React developers.
- Created and managed partnerships with outside agencies to assist our rapid growth needs. These agencies were varied and helped at various times with marketing, social, presentation videos, talent management, and platform design.
Creative Director
WorkWave
- Designed many turn-key landing page templates for franchise owners to use independently.
- Restructured the workflow for a large group of franchise pest control companies to onboard their websites to a new scalable platform without any involvement or interruption to their businesses.
- Led design pitches onsite with current and potential clients.
- Created an eCommerce website subscription model for franchise owners.
Creative Director
The Princeton Review
- Directed a team of 30 across three departments—design, marketing, and development to create a platform, including onboarding flows, eCommerce solutions, native mobile apps, discovery and marketing campaigns, rebranding, and visual language systems.
- Improved student onboard conversion by 15% in grades 8-12.
- Increased sales by 8% within two quarters by using a strict method of A/B testing to make minute incremental updates with user tests to prove the concepts.
- Facilitated buyout merger with South Korean edtech firm ST Unitas. Worked closely with the ST Unitas team to familiarize them with the platform and efficiently incorporate their members into the team.
Creative Director
Tutor.com
- Played an integral role in acquiring media and Internet giant, InterActiveCorp (IAC), enabling Tutor.com to expand its user reach from elementary to graduate school.
- Designed an internal management portal that organized and managed over 3,000 tutors and 6,000 tutoring sessions per night.
- Created a live-cast web application that acted as a digital chalkboard for tutors, including video interaction, commenting, grading, student management, and a live video editor.
Co-founder | Senior Art Director
Thumb App
- Co-founded and designed an opinion-based app with user engagement at an average of over five hours per month. As a point of comparison, Pinterest's average user engagement has been reported at 98 minutes per month.
- Created a shoppable feature built on an interest-based graph generated from over one billion opinions shared by over 1.2 million registered users.
- Gamified the app by including a leaderboard and merit system for positive opinion feedback.
- Partnered with the leading global youth insights and intelligence platform, YPulse, to more closely connect and craft the app for Generation Z and millennial users.
- Assisted in raising 5.7 million in total funding for our rounds.
- Scripted and directed a high-production commercial for the app.
Art Director
Kurani Interactive Agency
- Led a small design team that developed many websites, email campaigns, digital advertisements, animations, web applications, and brand language systems.
- Designed a new brand and eCommerce site for health and nutrition giant Universal Nutrition. The site and new brand increased conversion by 15% on internet sales.
- Restructured the client-agency deliverables to a more agile approach built on in-depth discovery and iterating on those learnings.
- Pitched actively and presented to clients and prospects.
Senior Graphic Designer
The Creative Group
- Created many digital ads and assets for the data management software company called Commvault.
- Designed presentation decks and deck templates for the digital agency Sawtooth.
- Created animated presentations and physical product mockups for the food and beverage company Firmenich. Clients included Coca-Cola and Beefeater Gin.
Senior Graphic Designer
Netcivics
- Designed innovative eCommerce and online marketing solutions for catalog retailers.
- Ideated and pitched solutions for internet companies facing the dot-com crash; this led to Netcivics pivoting focus and assisting it to stay afloat beyond its peers during that time.
- Designed the entire brand language system and website for Netcivics.
Graphic Designer
IBS Interactive
- Developed animated Macromedia Flash websites, presentations, advertisements, and proof-of-concept mockups.
- Designed an entire site for the balances and scales manufacturer Ohaus.
- Redesigned the eCommerce site for the women's clothing and apparel retailer Chicos.
Prepress Technician
American Press
- Processed jobs, developed film, and monitored the two Heidelberg presses at night.
- Ensured that the proper format, appearance, and layout of text and images were set before the entire print run.
- Made color, text, and digital image corrections as needed.
- Developed photographic film for Heidelberg press plates.
Certifications
Certificate of Completion of a Year-long Course in Computer Science
Brick Computer Science Institute
Skills
Tools
Adobe Creative Suite, Flash, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe InDesign, Adobe Lightroom, Sketch, InVision, Basecamp, Microsoft PowerPoint, Adobe CC, Slack, Jira, Flinto, QuarkXpress, Flinto Prototyping, Asana
Industry Expertise
Health & Wellness, Education, Entertainment & Leisure, Travel & Leisure, Events, Consumer Products
Platforms
Android, Webflow, Figma, iOS, UserZoom, Web
Languages
HTML, CSS
Other
Design, Interface Design, eCommerce, UX Flows, Wireframing, Concept Sketching, Responsive Design, Websites, Icon Design, Direct to Consumer (D2C), Infographics, Presentation Design, Print Media, Mobile Apps, iPhone, Sketching, Writing & Editing, Ideation, Prototyping, Logo Design, Relationship Building, Dating Apps, Photography, Apps, Infographs, Checkout, Onboarding, Educational Platform Design, UI Design Standards & Best Practices, Mobile UI, Mobile UX, Strategy, Utilities, Unbounce, Monday.com, Adobe Acrobat Pro, Squarespace, Illustration, Branding, Web UX, Web UI, App UX, App UI, User Flows, eCommerce Design, UX Design, UI Design, Web Design, Project Management, Leadership, UX Research, Web Shops, Dashboards, Web App UI, Web App UX, Landing Page Design, Interaction Design (IxD), Web App Design, User Experience (UX), User Interface (UI), Product Design, Visual Design, B2C, Responsive Web Design (RWD), Web UI Design, Web UX Design, Mobile Design, Mobile App Design, Social Media Apps, User Journeys, Art Direction, Design Strategy, Marketing Design, Mobile UX Design, Mobile UI Design, iOS UX Design, Marketplace Design, Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO), Brand Design, Line Icons, Mockups, Color Schemes, Mood Boards, Graphic Design, High-fidelity Prototypes, iOS UI Design, iOS App Design, User Research, Cross-platform, Best Practices in Design, UX Pattern Design, UX Documentation, UX Audits, App Design, Responsive Web Apps, Brand Guidelines, Brand Books, Color Palettes, Typography, Visual Brand Guidelines, Marketplaces, Multi-sided Marketplaces, Product discovery & validation, Booking Systems, Mobile-first Design, Social Networks, Interactive Prototypes, MVP Design, Creative Direction, Creative Strategy, Performance Management, Design Systems, Enterprise SaaS, Personas, SaaS, Dashboard Design, Data Visualization, AI Chatbots, AI-enabled Applications, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Chatbots, Web Applications, Web Dashboards, Layout Design, CRM, Redesign, Subscription Box Service, Personal Care, Organic, Online Dating, Live Chat, Videos, Package Design, Packaging, Social, eCommerce UX, eCommerce UI, Journey Mapping, eCommerce Web Design, A/B Testing, UX Prototyping, UI Prototyping, Customer Journey, Creative Direction, Naming
Experience
- Prototyping - 20 years
- Branding - 20 years
- UX Design - 20 years
- UI Design - 20 years
- eCommerce Design - 15 years
- Strategy - 15 years
- Webflow - 4 years
- Figma - 3 years
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