I'm Max Klaw — designer and builder in Berlin. I make opinionated websites, identity systems, and product UIs for founders who'd rather be remembered than tasteful. 8 years, 64 launches, zero stock photos.
Four selected builds from the last 18 months. Each one shipped to production, each one had a real impact metric, each one was hand-coded.
A 12ms cold-start build tool for monorepos. Cut CI time by 64% for three internal teams. Open source, MIT, 4.2k stars.
A lookbook + launch microsite for an Italian fashion house. Custom WebGL fabric simulator, real-time color-shift on scroll.
An internal admin OS for a 200-person fintech. Replaced 14 separate tools with one keyboard-first interface. +28% ops throughput.
A 6-week multi-channel launch — 32 ad variants, 4 social films, one microsite. +28% CTR vs. industry baseline.
I don't do "tasteful." I do specific, opinionated, and committed. A website should know what it thinks — and say it loud enough that you either agree or you don't. The middle is where work dies.
Most of what gets shipped today is design by committee — neutral, safe, forgettable. I work with founders who want the opposite. If you want safe, hire an agency. If you want loud, hire me.
Three disciplines, one person, hand-coded. No juniors learning on your dime.
Wordmarks, identity systems, and motion guidelines for brands that need to be heard above the noise.
Marketing sites, product UIs, and interactive campaigns. I design and code it myself — no handoff gap.
Multi-channel launch campaigns — concept, films, ad creative, and the microsite that ties it together.
Where I've been and what I shipped.
Solo studio. Selective on clients — typically 8–10 projects a year. Two Awwwards SOTDs in 2025. Clients include Northwind Labs, Aurelia Couture, and Foundry & Co.
Led design on automotive and fashion launches. Built the studio's first design system shipped as code. Spoke at SmashingConf 2022 on brutalist web design.
Shipped my first Awwwards-mentioned project within 9 months. Specialized in scroll-driven storytelling and bold type systems for editorial and brand work.
Cut my teeth on campaign microsites. Learned to code on the job so I could ship my own designs. First open-source release — a brutalist CSS framework.
Max shipped our launch site in 6 weeks. 99 Lighthouse on day one. Looked like nothing else in our category — exactly what we wanted.
Working with Max is loud, fast, and surprisingly disciplined. He has an opinion on everything — and he's usually right. We've shipped four projects together.
He's the only designer I've worked with who treats the build as part of the design. The handoff isn't a Figma file — it's a working site. That's rare.
I take on 8–10 projects a year. Tell me what you're building — I'll tell you if I'm the right designer for it.
I respond to every enquiry within 24 hours, weekends excluded. NDAs signed by default. I work in 2-week sprints with weekly demos.