SvF

Issue 27 The Builder Issue

Stephan von Falkenstein

Stephan in side profile, in a black suit against a charcoal background.
Fig. 01 — Think first. Then build.

Available now · remote

Creative Director
Product Designer
AI Product Engineer

I design it, build it, and ship it — with my own AI agents doing the work of a team.

  • 27 years in entertainment, media & software
  • 4 products built this year, design to release
  • 1 person to talk to. No agency in between.
Hire me Read my CV

Looking for a senior full-time role. Open to contract work too, and small questions are welcome.

01

What I can build for you

Senior judgement and hands on the keyboard. I can lead the room, then go and build what we agreed.

  1. A

    AI products, end to end

    LLM features, agents, retrieval, local models. Built so they still work when the model has a bad day.

  2. B

    Product & UX design

    Research, flows, interfaces. From a first sketch to the screen people actually tap.

  3. C

    Design systems

    Tokens, components, rules. One source of truth that a whole product, or a whole fleet of them, can share.

  4. D

    Front-end & full-stack

    I write the production code: web apps, a CMS, a Windows desktop app, payment flows, release pipelines.

  5. E

    Creative direction & brand

    Identity, art direction, campaigns. Learned at Red Bull, NowThis and in fashion, in front of the camera and behind it.

  6. F

    Ship it & run it

    Hosting, analytics, store submission, checkout, the boring parts that decide whether a launch survives week one.

02

Shipped this year

Designed, engineered and launched by me, with my agents. Real products, live and running. Click through and try them.

Live · takes payments

EchoBorn

A community platform for Warframe players. Its own engines compute the game's world cycles, so it kept working through a nine-hour outage of the public data feed.

Product · design system · PHP · payments

echoborn.net ↗

Live · takes payments

Mars Deck

An interactive solar system with 6,200 real bodies, a launch-window solver and an AI you can ask questions. Runs in the browser, on canvas, with no framework.

Engine · canvas · AI feature · accounts

marsdeck.net ↗

Live in the Microsoft Store

WREN

Local dictation for Windows. Speech-to-text that runs on your own machine, with no network connection at all. Free to install from the Microsoft Store.

Desktop app · Python · local AI · packaging

Get it in the Microsoft Store ↗

In production

EchoHex

My own content management system: ten modules, an on-page editor and a self-updater. It runs behind several of my live sites.

CMS · PHP · SQLite · release channel

03

Case studies

The problem, the decisions, what broke and what shipped. Five minutes each.

01 · 2015–16 · Senior Product Designer NowThis Designing news for a phone held upright, with the sound off. Read the case study → 02 · 2026 · Product, design & engineering Mars Deck The solar system, computed live in the browser, with an AI that can't make up numbers. Read the case study → 03 · 2026 · Product, design & engineering WREN Private AI dictation for Windows, from prototype to the Microsoft Store. Read the case study →
Stephan smiling at the camera, in a black suit and turtleneck.

04

“Senior doesn’t mean hard to talk to.”

People sometimes see the years and assume I only take big, expensive briefs. I don’t. I like small, clear problems as much as big ones, and I answer my own email.

What I bring is the part that doesn’t show up in a portfolio: I’ve seen a lot of launches go wrong, so I know where to look first.

  • Lead design for your product team
  • Build the AI feature on your roadmap
  • Prototype an idea in a week
  • Give your design system a second opinion

05

How I build: one person, the output of a team

I work with Vonfal AI, an agent system I built for myself. The agents write, test and remember. I decide what gets built and what good looks like.

stephan@vonfal:~$ vonfal --how-i-build

[ok] memory   Every decision is written down. No project starts from zero.

[ok] checks   1,483 automated checks guard one live product alone.

[ok] proof    Each check is broken on purpose before it is trusted.

[ok] honesty  If it can’t be measured, the page doesn’t claim it.

[ok] ship     Design → code → payments → store → live.

stephan@vonfal:~$

06

27 years, selected

New York, Berlin and the Canary Islands. Brands, startups and my own products.

  1. 2025–nowAI Product Engineer, Full-StackVonfal AI: WREN, Mars Deck, EchoBorn, EchoHex CMS, Synth Echoes
  2. 2018–nowCreative DirectorSafehouse Lab: design systems, brand, streaming, VR research
  3. 2015–16Senior Product DesignerNowThis: vertical video systems, playlist system, rebrand
  4. 2015Senior UI DesignerAmerican Express: mobile card ordering, design system
  5. 2014–15Creative DirectorTigerspike NYC: UX and UI practice for enterprise clients
  6. 2014Senior Product DesignerIHS Markit: data-dense engineering software
  7. 2013–17Muse Template DeveloperAdobe Muse: themes and widgets used by designers worldwide
  8. 2012–13Art DirectorRed Bull: Stratos, New York Red Bulls, World Rally Championship
  9. 2012UX / CX E-commerce ConsultantRiedel, the wine glass company: riedel.com redesign
  10. 2011UX Research ScientistSpotify: research for the first iPad app
  11. 2011Senior UX ConsultantHavas Life
  12. 2007–11Art Director, Partner, Strategist20th Street Media · Project 35 · Obama for America
  13. 2002–09Fashion ModelMiami, Hamburg, Tokyo, Milan. Where the eye was trained.

07

Find me elsewhere

Work in progress, behind the scenes, and the code itself.

08

Let’s build something.

Full-time Senior, Staff or Principal. Design, product or AI engineering. Remote. Start a conversation → Contract A fixed-price sprint, a prototype, or a few months on your team. Tell me the project → Just a question Not sure if it’s a fit? Ask anyway. I read every message. Say hello →