01 · Approach
I take design intent into production myself, at the fidelity the designer drew it.
I was taking hybrid creative and technical roles before the category had a name. Design intent is fragile. Most of it dies in the handoff from design to engineering. My job is to carry it intact all the way into production.
I have reported to CEOs, creative teams, marketing, and engineering on the same project at the same time: a designer who codes at production fidelity, and an engineer who came up through graphic design.
I set the creative direction, then architect and ship it. Today I build my own AI tooling: a spec-driven workflow with multi-agent code review. The agents do the volume; I own the direction and the final review.
The signature is motion and 3D, design-token governance, and WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility, all built to luxury brand standards.
I run Analog Elk, a one-person creative and engineering studio with 15+ production properties live on infrastructure I operate myself.
02 · Selected Work
18-hour global cutover for luxury fashion
Owned the frontend v1-to-v2 cutover for a flagship luxury account on a real-time customer-engagement platform, verifying assets by hand on the regional CDNs serving each market. Shipped around 40 client implementations across fashion, cosmetics, and entertainment, and built a scaffolding tool and in-house CSS framework that turned multi-day project setup into a same-day task.
Sephora.
Frontend implementation lead on the flagship luxury account, under strict brand-standards review.
Powerfront, 2017-2020 · References available on request
A multi-tenant platform I run alone
I designed, built, and still operate a self-hosted multi-tenant stack (Directus, Caddy, Neon, Matomo, S3 on EC2) behind 15+ production properties. On top of it runs a Next.js 16 platform of roughly 230 components with Stripe billing, cost and health dashboards, React Three Fiber backgrounds, and a full accessibility and performance pipeline. The AI tooling behind it is a Claude Code plugin with hybrid full-text and vector RAG over roughly 500 docs (Postgres, Qdrant, Redis), plus a 30-command spec-driven workflow with multi-agent review and automated staging-to-production.
analogelk.com
A Raspberry Pi kiosk that retired a recurring vendor fee
Designed and built a daypart-aware Raspberry Pi kiosk that reads time-of-day (breakfast, lunch, happy hour, late night) and pulls specials from a self-hosted headless CMS, so non-technical staff edit menus, specials, and signage from a browser. Built the restaurant platform around it: dynamic menus, an events calendar, and a password-protected signage player with health-check monitoring. Eliminated the signage vendor's recurring fee with a one-time hardware purchase the client owns.
thestationpdx.com
A reusable WebGL motion system
Built a framework-agnostic animated-background package with gummy spring physics, scroll reactivity, inactivity detection, and a post-processing pipeline. Dual ESM/CJS build, consumed across Analog Elk properties. The canvas on the right and the hero at the top are this system running live in your browser.
03 · Capabilities
I move between these on the same project, not as separate roles.
Design & UX
- Brand identity & logo
- Design systems
- Design-token governance
- Typography & color
- Motion & interaction design
Frontend
- React 19 / Next.js 16
- Vue / Nuxt / Quasar
- TypeScript
- Tailwind v4 / shadcn
- Accessible HTML / WCAG 2.1 AA
Motion, 3D & AI
- Three.js / R3F / WebGL
- Framer Motion
- Shaders & post-processing
- Claude API / RAG
- Multi-agent orchestration
Direction & Leadership
- Cross-functional communication
- Mentorship & team standards
- Design & technical direction
- Architecture & code review
- Client-facing technical lead
04 · Selected Properties (5 of 15+)
05 · Range
The same bar holds outside the creative lane: logistics, healthcare, enterprise events, and AI tooling.
Built the studio's AI developer tooling: a multi-agent orchestration system that runs k-of-n voting to decorrelate model errors across a spec-driven build-and-review pipeline.
Built a caregiver alpha to HIPAA handling requirements: geo-locked shift sessions, access controls, and audit logging.
Joined an eight-person team for Vue / Nuxt depth on a global cloud vendor's flagship annual event, under NDA.
As Senior Full-Stack Engineer at a national logistics carrier, shipped a contract-required real-time freight tracker in about three months, sole frontend owner on a two-person team, live ahead of the deadline an eight-figure retail contract depended on.
Tied offline radio and broadcast spend to online submission events for cross-channel recruiting attribution during the national driver shortage, so the team could see which channels actually drove submissions.
06 · FAQ
What does Michael Walliser specialize in?
Creative technology and UX/design engineering: carrying design intent into production at full fidelity. His core areas are design systems, motion and 3D / WebGL, accessibility, performance, and AI-augmented development.
What is a creative technologist?
A hybrid who works fluently across design and engineering, taking design intent into shipped, production-grade interfaces rather than handing it off between teams. Michael came up through graphic design and then spent over a decade on production frontend.
Where is Michael Walliser based, and what regions does he serve?
He is based in Boulder, Colorado, and serves the Mountain West and Pacific Northwest, including Denver and Portland. He works remote-first and is open to contract or full-time roles.
What kind of work does he take on?
Creative-lead, design-engineering, front-end-lead, and AI-product roles: luxury and brand-critical frontend, design systems, and 3D and motion web experiences. His luxury frontend background includes pixel-precise work for Gucci, YSL, and Sephora.
How does Michael Walliser use AI in his work?
He builds his own AI tooling, including a Claude-powered plugin with hybrid full-text and vector RAG and a multi-agent review pipeline, as a force multiplier so one person can design, build, and operate full production systems.