Sara Gonzalez
Verified Expert in Design
Designer
Edinburg, TX, United States
Toptal member since November 2, 2016
As co-founder and chief creative officer of Create the Bridge, Sara has spent 11 years designing immersive brand experiences, pioneering digital innovation, and building robust design systems. Driven by a passion for the synergy of user experience, design, and technology, she creates engaging and intuitive experiences across diverse platforms. At CTB, Sara leads the digital experience practice, focusing on beautiful, functional design solutions that resonate with users.
Portfolio
Procured.ai
Our Treat: Commissary Management System for Correctional Facilities
Campus Feed
Matt's Cash & Carry
Work Experience
Co-founder | CCO | Designer
Create the Bridge
- Designed an appointment booking platform for a startup out of Boston that included back-end admin roles, management roles, a user-facing application, and a consumer-facing website.
- Planned the design of the user interface, user experience, and workflow of a platform in conjunction with a team at MIT that redefines how machine design is verified and authenticated.
- Worked with a startup designing a curated beauty product platform, eCommerce website, user-facing web application, and custom admin CMS back-end and mobile application.
- Designed a retail energy brokerage platform, user-facing web application, admin back-end, and a marketing website. Worked with a designer providing creative direction on branding and identity.
Senior Product Designer (Contract)
City Furniture
- Led innovative UX and visual design projects for cutting-edge digital products, driving user-centric design and seamless user experiences.
- Implemented robust design systems that streamlined design processes and ensured brand consistency across multiple digital platforms.
- Created intuitive wireframes and interactive prototypes that enhanced user engagement and optimized conversion rates.
- Championed the adoption of agile design methodologies to accelerate time-to-market and deliver exceptional digital products.
Product Designer
CrossFit
- Collaborated with cross-functional teams to design and launch the CrossFit Games website.
- Conducted usability testing to identify pain points and improve the user experience for the main site, CrossFit.com.
- Designed, audited, and implemented visual design systems and user interface components, ensuring consistency and coherence across multiple digital products.
- Worked closely with developers to ensure that designs were implemented accurately and effectively and provided guidance and support throughout development.
- Contributed to the overall design strategy for CrossFit’s digital products, collaborating with the design team and stakeholders to ensure alignment with business goals and user needs.
Design Consultant | Product Designer
Lone Star National Bank
- Conducted UX audit for feature planning and strategy. Managed team of creatives/designers and structured project sprint.
- Managed client communication, set expectations based on goals and deliverables, and communicated blockers. Oversaw high fidelities creation and QA process.
- Designed the style guide and established the art direction following the WCAG compliance design standards. Oversaw high fidelities creation, QA process, and development handoff.
Design Consultant | Product Designer
U.S. Department of Defense
- Partnered with consulting agency RDW Advisors to develop branding and marketing material and work to develop a web application for Cryptographic Product Inventory and Knowledge Management System.
- Collaborated with the team in scoping functionality and the project design needs in developing knowledge management software that allows research on products for cryptographic security-related purposes.
- Planned resource allocations needed to meet the contract's hard deadlines. Executed high-fidelity design. Produced a design system that could be extended to accommodate scaling for additional functionality.
- Coordinated with the product owner and developers to deliver final products.
Product Designer
MIND GRUB
- Led redesign effort in simplifying the litigation workflow of a case in the FSX’s application, a complete litigation solution for electronic filing to courts, process service, secure document exchange among judges, and attorneys alert.
- Designed user flow and high-fidelity mock-ups in Figma to establish the new filing flow experience and improve the UX across the entire application. Worked with stakeholders to develop a refreshed UI art direction.
- Created deliverables like a UIKit, Design System, and documentation for development handoff.
Lead Designer
NIHONGO MASTER
- Worked on Nihongo Master, an online social language learning platform that teaches Japanese in a fun and innovative way.
- Re-designed the website and web app to improve the user experience.
- Set a new art direction and incorporate new gamification features, social competition, and collaboration to engage users so they can effectively self-learn a language quickly.
Adjunct Professor
University of Texas Rio Grande Valley
- Taught upper-level graphic design classes.
- Led groups of students in working with non-profit clients to render creative services for experience that would later be included in the professional portfolios, many of which went on to win Addy awards for the pieces created during our time working together on their projects.
- Organized a Design Week that included a lecture series with speakers from around the state of Texas that held professional positions in various areas of the design and creative industry. Also included a design competition and a lunch-in with the speakers.
Production and Special Editions Coordinator
Texas Student Media
- Edited content for magazine-style publication along with designing elements within the publication.
- Coordinated production schedules of daily publications with the printer.
Graphic Designer
Vielma & Associates
- Created layout and graphics for a bi-weekly publication.
- Worked on branding for new construction companies.
- Created both digital and print ads.
Education
Master of Arts Degree in Advertising
University of Texas at Austin - Austin, TX, USA
Bachelor of Arts Degree in Graphic Design
University of Texas – Pan American - Edinburg, TX, USA
Skills
Tools
Photoshop CC, Sketch, Adobe InDesign, XMind, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Lightroom, Adobe Photoshop, Cinema 4D, Asana, Jira, Slack, Adobe, Illustrator CC, InDesign CC, Adobe Creative Suite, FigJam, Adobe CC
Platforms
Figma
Industry Expertise
Real Estate
Other
Pitch Decks, Web Applications, Websites, eCommerce, SaaS, Prototyping, Mobile Design, Product Design, User Experience (UX), Project Management, Wireframing, Information Architecture (IA), User Interface (UI), Print Design, Brand Identity, Illustration, Mobile Apps, Mobile UI, Content Management Systems (CMS), Photography, Web App Design, Mobile App Design, Website CMS, Web Design, Startups, Apps, High-fidelity Mockups, Dashboards, Reports, Infographics, UX Design, Responsive UI, Icon Design, Style Guides, Creative Direction, Art Direction, Responsive, UI Style Guides, User Roles, Social Media, Higher Education, Social Media Content, Student Engagement, Graphic Design, UI Design, Presentation Design, Local & Municipal Government, Procurement, Enterprise, High-fidelity Prototypes, Marketplaces, Platform Design, Dashboard Design, B2B, Gemini, Claude, Jitter, Competitive Analysis, Style Guide Development, Commissary Management, User Experience Design, Financial Systems, Corrections Industry, Regulatory Compliance, Enterprise Software, Advertising Design, Concepting, Campaigns, Product Management, K-12 Education, Gamification, WebApp, Design Systems, Business to Consumer (B2C), Managed Services, Subscription-based Model, B2C, Design Process End-to-End, Checkout, Front-end Development, Legal Technology (Legaltech), Document Management Systems (DMS), Workflow Automation, Government to Government (G2G), DataViz
Experience
- Product Design - 10 years
- User Experience (UX) - 10 years
- Wireframing - 10 years
- Information Architecture (IA) - 10 years
- User Interface (UI) - 10 years
- Web App Design - 10 years
- Websites - 10 years
- Figma - 7 years
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