DESIGN
what does Raft Design do?
Raft Design is an AI-native studio for brand, product, and digital experience.
Brand and product design for what comes next. We help startups and established companies turn new technology into brands and products people trust.
We use AI to move faster. People make the calls.
──[ 01 ]── ABOUT ────────────────────────────────────────────────
- name
- Raft Design
- type
- AI-native brand & product design studio
- founder
- Lance Shields
- location
- Los Angeles, CA 90068
- languages
- en, ja
- experience
- 25+ years · Adobe, Walmart, LegalOn
- url
- https://raftdesign.studio
──[ 02 ]── APPROACH ─────────────────────────────────────────────
cat approach.md
# Knowing what's worth making.
Anything can be made now. The hard part is deciding what matters to your customers and your business. We work on brand, product, and strategy together, because a strong brand can't make up for a confusing product. Then we prototype early and stay with your team through design and build.
──[ 03 ]── PROOF ────────────────────────────────────────────────
560M+
monthly Walmart visitors reached by our founder’s design
2X
our founder helped double Adobe Express MAU
──[ 04 ]── FEATURED WORK ──────────────────────────────────────────
ls -l /work --featured
──[ 05 ]── OFFERINGS ────────────────────────────────────────────
design-foundation-sprint
tagline: Your product outgrew your brand. Fix both in four weeks.
In 30 days, Raft aligns your strategy, brand, product experience, and design foundation so customers understand your value, trust what they see, and choose you with confidence.
→ design foundation sprintai-ready-design-systems
tagline: Build a design system your team and AI can work from.
Raft turns brand rules, voice, components, templates, and DESIGN.md into one shared source of truth, helping your team and AI create faster, more consistent work.
→ ai-ready design systemsdesign-intelligence-engine
Find out how well your site is designed and built, and how readable it is to LLMs and search. Our tool scans your site and gives you a genuine score.
→ scan your site──[ 06 ]── JOURNAL ───────────────────────────────────────────────
tail -n 8 /journal
──[ 07 ]── FAQ ────────────────────────────────────────────────────
- What is Raft Design?
- Raft Design is an AI-native studio for brand, product, and digital experience. 25+ years of experience across Adobe, Walmart, and LegalOn shape how we work: hands-on, fast, and built to move with change rather than around it.
- What does "AI-native studio" mean?
- It means AI is part of how the work gets made, not just what it's about. Strategy forms in conversation with language models, design and prototype move together, and working software gets built without the usual handoff between design and engineering. The result is senior design judgment delivered at a speed a traditional studio can't match.
- How do engagements work?
- Three ways, depending on what a team needs. We take on projects like a traditional studio, from brand and product design to shipped experiences. We embed as fractional design leadership when a team is scaling and needs senior direction. And we consult with teams that want to make their own design practice AI-native. Engagements run from short diagnostic sprints to ongoing partnerships.
- Does Raft Design design, or also build?
- Both. Most studios hand off static designs for someone else to build. We take work through to functioning software: prototypes that behave like the real thing, testable and demoable, using tools like Claude Code, Cursor, and V0. The build is directed, not just delegated.
──[ 08 ]── CONTACT ───────────────────────────────────────────────
raft --connect
Move at Raft speed.
- hello@raftdesign.studio
- phone
- (415) 361-9584
- book
- /contact
- overview
- raft-overview.pdf
/* EOF */