Work About Contact

I’m a visual thinker whose design solutions address business, brand, and user needs.

My work is driven by a passion for bridging the gap between products and services and the ways humans utilize them, helping brands and individuals connect in more meaningful ways.

Brands & teams I've worked with
SS&C Advent ServiceNow OpenAI Google Intuit BitGo Sui Citrix Movement Labs
SS&C Advent ServiceNow OpenAI Google Intuit BitGo Sui Citrix Movement Labs
Featured Case Study

Standard Model Bio: from one pitch deck to an entire brand.

Hired to design a single deck. Two years later: a complete identity, a living design system, and a fully custom website — designed by hand, scaled with AI.

Read the case study →
Standard Model Bio website
How I Work

Essence → System → Scale

Every engagement follows the same three moves: understand what a company actually is, build the system that expresses it, then extend that system everywhere it needs to go. AI doesn't design for me — it helps me carry the system further, faster.

01

Essence

Understand what a company actually is — stakeholders, story, the language founders use — before deciding what it should look like.

02

System

Design the foundation by hand — palette, type, layout principles — presented and approved before anything gets built.

03

Scale

Extend the system everywhere with AI-assisted build — decks, design systems, shipped websites — without an agency or a handoff.

Selected Work

Visual, brand & graphic design

{{ p.count }}
View project ↗

{{ p.client }}

{{ p.tags }}

Presentation design

Pitch decks, investor and sales presentations in PowerPoint and Google Slides.

{{ p.count }}
View project ↗

{{ p.client }}

{{ p.tags }}

Brand, visual & presentation projects.

{{ p.count }}
View project ↗

{{ p.client }}

{{ p.year }}
{{ p.tags }}
← All work
{{ detail.category }}

{{ detail.client }}

Year
{{ detail.year }}
Role
{{ detail.role }}
Discipline
{{ tg }}

{{ para }}

{{ g.label }}
Case Study / Brand to Build

Standard Model Bio

From one pitch deck to an entire brand — designed by hand, scaled with AI.

Year
2024–2026
Role
Brand, Design System & Web
Discipline
Brand Identity Design Systems Presentation Design Web Design & Build
Standard Model Bio — watercolor human figure

Standard Model Bio hired me to design the look and feel for a single pitch deck. The foundations I established there — palette, typography, layout principles — have since grown into a complete identity: a living design system, a library of investor and partner presentations, and a fully custom website — all built on the same foundation, all maintained by one designer.

01  Situation

A compelling story, no identity to tell it.

Early-stage biotech is a credibility game. Standard Model had a compelling story — a foundation model for human biology, trained on genomic, imaging, and longitudinal patient data — but nothing to make it look real: no palette, no logo, no landing page. They needed a brand from scratch, one that could start as a mini-brand to help the founders meet early investors and mature into a real system: one that could carry a website, docs, and pitch after pitch without losing coherence.

02  Action

Essence, then system — by hand. Then scale, with AI.

Every engagement starts with essence: understanding what a company actually is before deciding what it should look like. From that came a core identity built around a single idea — behind every data point is a human story. A palette that refuses biomedicine's antiseptic white-and-blue, holding cool scientific authority and warm human presence at equal weight. Organic, Matisse-inspired forms that flow into one another the way the company's model connects fragmented biomedical data. A brand mark that encodes the actual thesis. This is the part no tool does for you — presented to stakeholders and approved before a single line of code existed. The CEO's response: extend it to everything.

Then, scale. Using Claude Code, I translated the brand into a coded design system and built the company's website from the ground up — no template, no dev team, no handoff loss between “the design” and “the build,” because the designer was the builder. AI didn't design any of it. It let one designer ship what used to take an agency.

03  Output & Results

One system, carrying the whole company.

Every new pitch starts on-brand, the site evolves at the pace of the science, and the visual language scales as the company grows. I stay on as Standard Model's ongoing design partner — decks, website, social, and each new surface — holding the fidelity of the system so it speaks with one voice wherever it's seen. In practice, that's meant:

Brand identitya complete visual system, built from a standing start
Design systemliving and coded, evolving alongside the company
Presentationsa deep library of decks and templates the team runs itself
Websitefully custom — designed, built, and deployed by one designer
Continuitytwo years of one visual voice across every touchpoint
Why This Work

A mission worth building for.

Some engagements matter beyond the craft. Standard Model exists to predict the course of a patient's disease — turning genomic, imaging, and clinical data into a model of the whole human — so clinicians and drug developers can move faster from question or diagnosis to treatment, compressing the years between a trial and a therapy that reaches people.

That purpose — extending human life and easing suffering — is exactly the kind of thing I want my work attached to. I believe that this one life is all any of us gets, and what gives it meaning is doing work that leaves other people better off. Building the identity and system that let a company like this be understood and trusted is, to me, a genuinely worthwhile way to spend the effort.

The Deliverables

Seven surfaces · one system
{{ cs.kicker }}

{{ cs.title }}

{{ pp }}

{{ cs.title }}
The Payoff

The brand came from my head. AI is how I made it everywhere.

Every project still begins where it always has — with two decades of design judgment: understanding the company, finding its essence, and building a foundation by hand. That part doesn't get automated.

What's changed is reach. With AI tools in the loop, I work faster and carry a single idea further than one designer could alone — extending the same visual system across every surface a company needs: decks, a coded design system, a production website, social, iconography, publication figures.

One coherent voice, everywhere it shows up, without a handoff or a translation loss. That's AI-accelerated design: human judgment sets the direction, and AI removes the drag between the idea and the thing itself.

All work →

I design for businesses, brands, and people — usually all three at once.

I believe design should be rooted in simplicity, empathy, and trust, and I work those qualities into every pixel. On UX and marketing teams and as an independent designer, I've left a creative mark across education, fintech, blockchain, biopharma, retail, small business, AI, and social media.

My approach starts with understanding — business objectives, user needs, and what customers expect. What I'm known for: a patient, ego-free way of working, clear rationale behind every decision, and a knack for grasping a brand or design system quickly and extending it wherever it's needed.

Lately my practice has grown from designing systems to building them. With AI tools like Claude Code, I take brands from identity to shipped products — websites, living design systems, template libraries — with no handoff. The thinking is unchanged: essence, then system, then scale.

Most of all, I'm a collaborator — I bring stakeholders and executives who aren't designers into the process, so what we ship is something everyone can stand behind.

What colleagues say
Whitney Snyder

At a time when there were big shifts in the company that didn’t always include design, Skott worked to maintain a coherent design system that reflected best practices of brand, scalability, and accessibility — across multiple complex products, some new and some legacy. His influence on the look and feel of the modern Advent experience can’t be overstated.

Whitney Snyder · Senior Product Designer · SS&C Advent
Locke Berkebile

Skott’s work on visual assets for our student communications helped us achieve a near 100% adoption rate among students who own smartphones. He has always been able to quickly understand the messages the product team wanted to convey, and deliver assets that communicated them in an easy, natural way.

Locke Berkebile · Product Owner, Phoenix Mobile · Apollo Group
Clifton Luke, Ph.D.

He was the senior visual designer and lead designer on the product portfolio I managed, and consistently produced attractive, user-friendly, visually sophisticated designs for a wide variety of users. He is a strong collaborator, especially with stakeholders and executives who are not designers.

Clifton Luke, Ph.D. · VP, Learning Products · Apollo Group
Brad Popiolek

His ability to coordinate amongst a group and articulate our goals of the product through the design has played an instrumental role in the success of the product. Regardless of the complexity, Skott is incredibly diligent in his holistic approach to all visual assets.

Brad Popiolek · Product & Strategy Leader
Todd Campopiano

With very little explanation Skott can take an initial concept and run with it. I am always surprised and delighted by the results. In a world where design is often an afterthought, Skott clearly understands its profound effect on the overall user experience.

Todd Campopiano · Product Leader
More on LinkedIn →
Tools and Proficiencies
{{ tp }}

Let's make something.

Introduce yourself and tell me a little about your project or the reason for your inquiry, and I'll get back in touch within 24 hours.

Thank you.

Your note is on its way. I'll reach out to you shortly.

{{ submitError }}

Let's make something.

Get in touch →
© 2026 Skott Reader Visual / Brand / Presentation / Design-to-Build
{{ lb.counter }}
{{ lb.imgEl }}
{{ lb.label }}
{{ lb.label }}  ·  use ← → keys or click arrows