Structure before surface
Nothing gets styled until the hierarchy is right. A beautiful screen built on a wrong model is just an expensive mistake.
Brandon Alvarez
Identity, product and interface design for teams that actually ship.
Three live products. One method:
find the structure, then make it
beautiful enough to be trusted.
§ 01
Statement
Fig. 1.0
Three things of mine are live in the world right now: an events platform for Muslim communities, matrimonial software running inside masjids, and a twenty-year-old barbershop rebuilt from the logo out. Different problems — same method. Find the structure, then make it beautiful enough to be trusted.
§ 02
Selected Work
2025 — 2026
01
Ummah Connect
A mobile app for finding and posting Muslim community events. I designed the brand and every screen — feed, events, communities, settings.
02
Masjid Matrimony
A masjid-run matrimonial service, designed end to end — invitation-only membership, a private application, and the committee console that reviews it.
03
Cannon Pro Cutz
A complete rebuild for a Richmond barbershop with twenty years behind the chair — new mark, full identity system, and the website it now runs on.
§ 03
Capabilities
What I'm hired for
01
Brand Identity
Logotypes and marks, type systems, colour, iconography, and the guidelines that keep it all coherent after I hand it over.
02
Product Design
Turning a fuzzy problem into flows, wireframes and clickable prototypes — then into a component library the build can stand on.
03
Interface & Systems
Tokens, states, spacing scales, responsive behaviour, motion. The unglamorous scaffolding that makes a product feel expensive.
04
Web & Digital
Sites designed end to end — structure, layout, type, responsive behaviour — specced clearly enough that whoever builds it gets it right the first time.
05
Art Direction
Setting the visual argument: photography direction, layout, print and signage, and keeping every touchpoint speaking the same language.
§ 04
Approach
Four rules
Detail is the argument
Trust is built in the last five percent. Spacing, optical alignment, the weight of a rule — that's where people decide whether you're serious.
Their voice, not mine
I have a personal aesthetic. It doesn't belong on every project. The work should look like whoever it belongs to — a barbershop and a masjid don't want the same thing.
Real, or it doesn't count
Every project here is live and used by real people. No speculative rebrands, no concept work — three businesses that needed something and got it.
§ 05
About
Fig. 5.0
Portrait
4:5 · B&W
4:5 · B&W
I take the whole thing — the mark, the system, and the product it lives in.
I'm a designer working across identity, product and interface. Most of what I make starts with a business that has a real problem and no design function — a masjid drowning in paper forms, a barbershop whose sign didn't match the quality of the work inside. Nobody hands me a brief. I write it, then I design against it.
I work best early, when the thing is still soft and the decisions still matter — naming, structure, what the product should even be before anyone draws a screen. Two co-founders, three products, and no one to hide behind has been a fast way to learn that.
RoleDesigner — brand, product, interface
StudioUmmah LLC — ummahllc.com
EducationBFA Communication Arts, VCU — 2025
ToolsFigma · Illustrator · Photoshop · InDesign · After Effects · Blender
StatusOpen to full-time & contract
§ 06
Contact
Reply within 24h
Got something that needs to look like it means it?
alvrz.brandon01@gmail.com