# Raft Design

Last updated: 2026-10-18

Raft Design is an AI-native brand and product design studio based in Los Angeles, working in English and Japanese. It was founded by Lance Shields, a designer with 25+ years of experience who previously led design at Adobe and Walmart. Raft helps startups and established companies turn new technology into brands and products people trust. The core offer is the Design Foundation Sprint, a four-week fixed-price engagement for funded startups that delivers a brand system, core product screens, and a documented design system.

## At a glance

- Type: AI-native brand and product design studio
- Location: Los Angeles, CA 90068 (Hollywood)
- Founder: Lance Shields, Founder and Head of Design
- Experience: 25+ years, including design leadership at Adobe and Walmart and a decade leading a design team in Tokyo
- Languages: English and Japanese
- Best fit: funded startups with an engineering team already shipping and a brand or product that has not caught up
- Engagement model: fixed-price sprints, fractional design leadership, project work, and consulting for teams making their design practice AI-native. Lance leads every engagement directly.
- Team: Raft is founder-led and brings in specialist collaborators for engineering and other disciplines as each project needs.
- Contact: hello@raftdesign.studio, (415) 361-9584
- Booking: https://calendly.com/raftdesignstudio/30min (30-minute call)
- Website: https://raftdesign.studio

## Who we work with

Fit:

- Recently funded startups, at Series A and Series B+, whose product and team are growing faster than the decisions holding them together. The Design Foundation Sprint page lists the signs: the product needs someone to explain it, each release adds another version of the same pattern, design decisions are scattered across founders, PMs, and engineers, the website, deck, demo, and product tell different stories, and the team needs senior judgment before it needs a design department.
- Established companies rethinking their brands, products, and experiences, as described on the About page.
- Teams entering or expanding in the Japanese market, or building one brand across the U.S. and Japan. Raft's globalization work covers global brand platforms, localization, market entry, and bilingual design systems.
- Venture capital firms referring portfolio companies. The Design Foundation page has a referral form.
- Teams that want their design system to work for both people and AI tools.

Not a fit:

- Teams that want hourly billing or open-ended scope. Sprints are fixed price.
- Teams that want a junior handoff or a large staffed design team. Lance leads every engagement directly, and the stated fit for the sprint is a company that needs senior judgment before a design department.
- Companies without an engineering team already shipping. The Design Foundation page names that as part of the best fit.
- Fixed-price sprints that need more than 10 product screens. Larger scopes are quoted separately after the fit assessment call.

## Offerings

### Design Foundation Sprint

Tagline: Your product outgrew your brand. Fix both in four weeks.

A four-week, fixed-price engagement for funded startups. It covers brand first, then the product that expresses it. Most sprints pick one lane, and this one does both, in that order.

Timeline:

1. Week 1, Define: positioning, audience, and the design foundation.
2. Week 2, Brand: identity system (typography, color architecture, voice) and an investor-ready deck template.
3. Week 3, Product: 5 to 10 high-fidelity screens, an interactive prototype, and mapped edge cases, built on the Week 2 system.
4. Week 4, Systemize: a tokenized component library, documented handoff, and a recorded engineering walkthrough.

Pricing, with 50% due to start and 50% at delivery:

- Core, $28,000. For teams with some existing design foundation. Includes positioning, audience, and experience principles; a core brand identity system; key sales and marketing templates; up to 5 core product screens in high fidelity; an interactive prototype; core states and edge cases; a component library and design tokens; documentation and engineering handoff; and an AI-ready design system (DESIGN.md). Everything is built and delivered in Figma.
- Full System, $34,000. For teams starting closer to zero. Includes everything in Core, plus an expanded brand system (icon and illustration style, deck, social, and email templates), a full messaging framework, 8 to 10 high-fidelity product screens, deeper edge-case mapping, and an expanded component library.
- Land & Expand, $10,000 per month. Ongoing fractional design leadership, roughly 15 hours a week, for teams that want to keep brand and product work running after the sprint without a full-time hire.

Raft is currently taking a limited number of sprint engagements in exchange for case-study rights. Sprints typically start within four weeks of booking a fit assessment call. A scoping note and timeline come back within 48 hours of a brief. An NDA can be signed before detailed discussion.

Link: https://raftdesign.studio/design-foundation/

### AI-Ready Design Systems

Tagline: Build a design system your team and AI can work from.

Raft builds brand and product systems that give a team and its AI tools the same source of truth. A system includes brand foundations (strategy, positioning, visual identity), voice and content, design tokens, a component library, templates (decks, marketing, proposals, pages), a DESIGN.md file with structured context for AI tools, AI workflow setup and usage guidance, and implementation support such as handoff documents.

It is for teams that use AI tools and want consistent, on-brand output across marketing, sales, product and design, and engineering. Raft is tool-agnostic. One current workflow loads the full design system, brand rules, and DESIGN.md into Claude Design as context. The page also lists ChatGPT, Figma Make, Cursor, Lovable, and Canva AI.

Pricing and timeline are not published. Every Design Foundation Sprint includes an AI-ready design system. Raft's own brand system is built the same way and is published as the [Raft Design & Brand System deck](https://raftdesign.studio/design-system-deck/) (English only).

Link: https://raftdesign.studio/design-system/

### Design Intelligence Engine

A site scanner that scores how well a site is designed and built, including how readable it is to LLMs and search. It runs from the "Scan your site" button on the home page. Pricing is not stated on the site.

Link: https://design-intelligence-engine.lovable.app/?lang=en

### Studio services

The Services page groups project work into five areas:

- Branding: brand strategy, identity systems, visual identity, voice and messaging, guidelines, and brand experiences.
- Digital products: product design, UX research and strategy, interaction design, motion design, mobile and web apps, and design systems.
- Websites: content strategy, web design, interactive experiences, content production, frontend and backend development, and CMS implementation.
- AI interfaces and agents: AI product design, agentic workflows, conversational UI, model behavior, multimodal interaction, and AI-ready design systems.
- Globalization: global brand platforms, localization, global research and strategy, market entry, bilingual design systems, and global websites.

Pricing for project work is not published. Consulting for teams that want to make their own design practice AI-native is also offered.

Link: https://raftdesign.studio/services/

## Raft projects

**LegalOn** (https://raftdesign.studio/work/legalon/). LegalOn built Japan's leading legal AI and expanded into a suite of seven AI products. The platform needed one coherent global identity and room for each product to stand on its own. We built the "ON" concept, a shared lockup carried by every product with its own palette and identity. The work spanned brand guidelines, website, product screens, pitch decks, motion, 3D, photo art direction, and bilingual Japanese and English typography, in partnership with the Chief Design Officer and teams in Tokyo and the U.S. The page states 7 products in one brand system and 2 markets under one design direction. LegalOn is also listed as a current project on the Design Foundation page.

**AI Design LA** (https://raftdesign.studio/work/ai-design-la/). A Los Angeles community for designers, engineers, creative technologists, and founders exploring AI, co-founded by our founder. We created the visual identity (logo, iconography, typography, color) and designed and built the website. The site was built with Claude Code and converted to WordPress with AI-assisted development so the community can manage content. The page describes it as a community initiative and founding partnership. No outcome metrics are stated.

**Keel (pre-release)** (https://designwithkeel.com/). A product we are building that turns a company's website into a brand guide and design foundations that both people and AI tools can follow. Keel drafts the brand story, voice, color and type, plus the tokens and core components it finds in the live product, and every suggested change waits for the team's approval. It is in private beta. Connections to Figma libraries and code repositories are planned.

**Design Intelligence Engine** (https://design-intelligence-engine.lovable.app/?lang=en). A site scanner we built that scores how well a site is designed and built, including how readable it is to LLMs and search. It runs from the "Scan your site" button on the home page.

**Raft's own design and brand system** (https://raftdesign.studio/design-system-deck/, English only). The system behind our own site and materials, built the way we build systems for clients: design tokens, typography and layout rules, reusable components, brand voice, motion guidance, presentation templates, and a DESIGN.md file with guidance for AI tools such as Claude Design. It covers English and Japanese typesetting.

## Experience behind the studio

Raft is founder-led. The work below was led by our founder before Raft, at Walmart, Adobe, and previous studios.

### At Walmart and Adobe

**Walmart** (https://raftdesign.studio/work/walmart/). Our founder was Design Director at Walmart and design lead for a next-generation AI shopping experience. The work reimagined product discovery with four capabilities: multimodal search combining voice, photo, and video; an AI shopping wizard that uses AR to place products in a customer's room; GenAI fashion discovery with virtual try-on; and product comparison that surfaces evidence rather than specs. The team layered AI onto search rather than replacing it, to protect trust in a core experience.

**Adobe Express Photos** (https://raftdesign.studio/work/adobe-express-photos/). Our founder worked on this at Adobe. It is a 0-to-1 AI-powered desktop image editor that turns complex editing into one-click operations and leads into Adobe Express. The page states 25M projected installations and a 34% increase in Express monthly active users.

**Adobe Express Enterprise** (https://raftdesign.studio/work/adobe-express-enterprise/). Our founder led design for the Adobe Express Extensibility team, shaping embedded editors, SDK integrations, and a governed plugin marketplace. The page states 114% monthly active user growth, 8M new users through integrations, and doubled Express engagement across enterprise and partner ecosystems.

**Modular Suite for XD** (https://raftdesign.studio/work/modular-suite-xd/). At Adobe, our founder's research found that designers and non-designers lacked tools to collaborate. The team shipped three plugins for ideation, rapid design, and presenting inside Adobe XD in under 12 months. The page states it was the most-downloaded XD plugin collection.

### At previous studios

**Fitbit** (https://raftdesign.studio/work/fitbit/). Wearables were a new category and shoppers struggled to tell devices apart. Our founder led the exploration of three approaches, then the design of a guided in-store experience using photography, motion, iconography, video, and product comparison. It launched across more than 1,000 Best Buy and Target stores in the U.S. within three months, then expanded to Canada and other markets and became part of Fitbit's presence at CES.

**California Walnuts** (https://raftdesign.studio/work/california-walnuts/). The walnuts.org site had to serve home cooks, health professionals, foodservice teams, growers, and industry partners as one brand. Our founder led creative direction and UX/UI design, with a new site structure and visual system that separates consumer and professional content using color coding, photography, typography, and navigation. The page states a 120% increase in website traffic.

**That's Not Cool** (https://raftdesign.studio/work/thats-not-cool/). Futures Without Violence needed its teen site, about online bullying and unhealthy relationships, to match how teens use the internet. Our founder led a redesign grounded in research with young people, with a direct visual voice, shareable data, and Ambassador Stories where visitors contribute videos, photos, and writing. The page states a 230% increase in website traffic and a 155% increase in social shares. The site won a Webby Award for Best Nonprofit Website.

**Modere** (https://raftdesign.studio/work/modere/). Modere.co.jp was a transactional storefront that lacked the personalization and trust-building Japanese wellness shoppers expect. Our founder led its rebuild as a community-powered wellness platform with personalized discovery, a redesigned product and category experience, community content, and brand storytelling, without fragmenting the global brand. The page states +45% repeat engagement and +30% conversion.

**Earlier clients.** The Design Foundation page lists these companies as clients who hired our founder early, with the following outcomes for the companies themselves: Cloud Cruiser (acquired by HPE, 2017), Health Catalyst (IPO on Nasdaq, 2019), OrderDynamics (acquired by Tecsys, 2018), and Leadspace (still operating). Leadspace had a B2B website redesign. The page also lists Rally Health (consumer health platform) and Besure (crowdfunded insurance) under selected work. These have no case-study pages.

Earlier career, from the About page: our founder ran an award-winning design studio in San Francisco, led a Tokyo design team for a decade (including the global brand sites for Hitachi and ANA, and a Good Design Award for Hitachi.com), and built Adobe's first international design team. Awards on the About page include a 2024 Webby for Adobe Express.

## Approach

We work on brand, product, and strategy together, because a strong brand cannot make up for a confusing product. We prototype early and stay with the team through design and build. AI is part of how the work gets made. Strategy forms in conversation with language models such as Claude and ChatGPT before any design tool opens. Design and prototype move together in Figma and AI tools, close enough to the real thing to test and share without waiting for engineering. Claude Code, Cursor, and V0 then turn the design into working software. The build is directed, not delegated, and people make the final calls. Raft is founder-led and brings in specialist collaborators for engineering and other disciplines as each project needs. Raft publishes the AI tools it uses, with verdicts and a list of tools it dropped, at https://raftdesign.studio/tools/.

## FAQ

### How much does it cost?

The Design Foundation Sprint is $28,000 for Core and $34,000 for Full System, billed 50% to start and 50% at delivery. There is no hourly billing. Land & Expand fractional design leadership is $10,000 per month for roughly 15 hours a week. Pricing for other project work is not published, so ask on a call.

### How long does it take?

The sprint runs four weeks. Sprints typically start within four weeks of booking a fit assessment call, depending on availability. Land & Expand has no fixed end date.

### Should we fix the brand or the product first?

Brand first, then product, in the same sprint. Week 1 sets direction. Week 2 builds the brand system. Week 3 designs the product screens on that system. Week 4 turns it into a documented component library.

### Does Raft only design, or also build?

Both. The sprint delivers high-fidelity screens, an interactive prototype, and engineering handoff. On project work, Raft takes designs through to working software using Claude Code, Cursor, and V0. For example, the AI Design LA website was designed and built with Claude Code and then converted to WordPress.

### What do we have at the end of a sprint?

Everything is built and delivered in Figma. The Core deliverables include a brand identity system, templates, core product screens, an interactive prototype, a component library with design tokens, documentation, and a DESIGN.md file. The sprint also includes a recorded engineering walkthrough so the team can build without Raft in the room. The site does not state contract or ownership terms, so confirm them on the fit assessment call.

### How do AI tools use the design system?

The system includes a DESIGN.md file with structured context for AI tools, plus brand rules, voice guidance, design tokens, components, and templates. A team loads these into tools such as Claude Design, ChatGPT, Figma Make, Cursor, or Lovable so the output stays on brand. Raft is tool-agnostic.

### Will our product details stay confidential?

Yes. Raft will sign an NDA before any detailed discussion if asked.

## Contact

- Email: hello@raftdesign.studio
- Contact page: https://raftdesign.studio/contact/
- Book a 30-minute call: https://calendly.com/raftdesignstudio/30min
- Phone: (415) 361-9584
- Overview PDF: https://raftdesign.studio/assets/raft-design-overview.pdf
- Office: 6662 Emmet Terrace, Los Angeles, CA 90068
- Site index for AI: https://raftdesign.studio/llms.txt