I help ambitious companies turn complicated ideas into clear, beautiful and profitable digital products. Strategy, brand and interface — designed as one coherent system, built to survive contact with real users and real markets.
I am Johannes Böhmer — an independent design director working between Berlin and wherever the interesting problems are. I build identities, interfaces and design systems for teams that care about the detail of how things feel, not only how they look.
My work sits at the intersection of brand and product. A brand without a product is a poster; a product without a brand is a utility. The interesting territory is in between — where tone of voice, typography, motion and interaction logic all come from the same underlying idea. That is what I design, and that is what I help teams internalise.
I started out as a self-taught designer building small websites for local studios, then spent several years inside fast-growing technology companies where I learned that good design survives only when it is operational: documented, governed, and understood by the engineers who ship it. Since 2016 I have worked independently, partnering directly with founders, product leads and in-house design teams.
Engagements usually run between six weeks and nine months. Some are pure strategy: naming, positioning, identity, a roadmap for a rebrand. Others are hands-on: I embed with a product team, run the design process end to end, and leave behind a system the team can extend without me. Most of my clients come back — not because I am precious about the work, but because I am honest about what will and will not move a metric.
I care about craft, but I care more about clarity. I would rather ship a simple interface that people understand in three seconds than an award-winning one that takes three minutes. Fortunately, those two things are rarely in conflict when the thinking is done properly at the beginning.
Berlin, Germany — working remotely worldwide
Brand systems, product design, creative direction
Startups, scale-ups, cultural institutions, studios
Selected projects, 2026 calendar open
Six disciplines, one continuous process. Most engagements combine two or three of them; the best ones combine all six.
Positioning, naming, narrative and tone of voice. I find the sentence a company should be able to say about itself, and then build everything else around it.
Logotypes, typography, colour, grid and the rules that hold them together. Identities designed to scale from a favicon to a building façade without breaking.
End-to-end interface design for web and mobile products — research, flows, wireframes, high-fidelity design and the prototypes that get a team aligned.
Component libraries, tokens, documentation and governance. The unglamorous work that makes a brand consistent at the scale of a real organisation.
Micro-interactions, transitions and the choreography of a page. Motion is not decoration; it is how an interface explains itself to a person.
For teams that need a single point of view across photography, film, illustration and copy — and someone who will defend it in the room.
Every project is different, but the shape of good work is consistent. Five phases, each with a clear deliverable and a clear decision to make.
Stakeholder interviews, user research, analytics review and a hard look at the competitive landscape. Nothing is designed until the actual problem is written down in one page.
Positioning statement, brand architecture, messaging hierarchy and success criteria. This is the phase clients remember, because it is where arguments end.
Two or three genuinely different directions — not three shades of the same idea. Each one is presented in context: real screens, real copy, real applications.
The chosen direction is developed into a complete system: type, colour, layout, components, motion, and the documentation that keeps it alive after handover.
Design QA with engineering, launch support, and a follow-up period where I stay available while the real world tells us what we got right.
A short selection from the last few years. Full case studies are available on request — many clients prefer their work to stay quiet, which I respect.
A full rebrand and design system for a European banking platform serving 400,000 customers. Ten months, three product squads, one shared language.
An identity for a design museum that refuses to look like a museum. Flexible typography, a generative poster system and a website that updates itself.
Rebuilding a project management tool's interface from 240 inconsistent components down to 34 documented ones. Adoption went up. Support tickets went down.
Urban mobility app used in eleven cities. The redesign cut the average trip-booking flow from nine taps to four without removing a single feature.
Occasional writing about design, systems and the business of making things that other people have to maintain after you leave.
Tell me what you are working on, what is stuck, and what a good outcome would look like in twelve months' time. I read everything myself and reply within two working days.