Justin Schueler

Independent Design Director

Designer helping teams build brands that resonate and products that actually feel considered.

My work sits at the intersection of strategy and craft. I lead design, shape direction, align stakeholders, and still care about the details. Whether it's a brand identity, a product interface, or a design system, I'm as interested in the thinking as I am in the output.

I founded smalltribe, a branding and product design studio. Alongside that, I work directly with companies as an embedded partner — a fractional design lead for teams that need senior guidance without the full-time overhead.

What I do

01

Fractional design lead

Embed with your team a few days per month to set direction, raise the design bar, and coach designers.

02

Brand and product design

From early-stage positioning to product UI, I help teams shape the narrative and the interface around it.

03

Design systems and process

Define how design works: systems, tools, and rituals that keep teams moving without killing creativity.

04

Strategic design partner

A sounding board for founders and product leaders on vision, prioritisation, and what "good" looks like.

I mostly work with early-stage to growth-stage tech companies, founders, and product teams who care about design as a strategic lever, not just decoration.

If you're looking for someone who can see the whole system and still ship the details, .

A selection of projects ranging from brand identity systems to digital products and design leadership.

A focused workspace in West Leipzig.

tribehouse.space

A studio for branding and digital product design.

smalltribe.studio

A modern business software for freelancers.

heev.me

Ideas, observations, and notes on design, technology, and intentional work.

With recent AI tool explorations - with Claude Code, Figma make etc. - I realized something quite banal. Simple and plain prompting, yet still precise, seems to outplay hyper-optimized pre-prompted approaches.

I have tried to explain my intent and let ChatGPT create "the most optimal prompt." For creative work, such as image generation using Midjourney or Freepik spaces, this approach worked really well. Without taking notes or counting stats, anecdotally, I'd say it's better than just trying it with plain language.

For my more product and software related experiments however, I've find it to be counterproductive. I have tried the same "create the optimal prompt" approach for one experiment with different tools. Claude code, Antigravity + Gemini 3, Framer Workshop and Figma make.

All outcomes were rather mediocre, whereas Framer workshop and Figma make came up with the best results. In this case, "best" might be very subjective. But overall, they understood the idea best, proposed best layouts and didn't try to engineer.

Claude and Antigravity in contrast created small monsters for a simple form / chat idea with some logic. It did work, but it would've needed many iterations to get to a satisfying point. It felt like doing way too much and then having to trim off the fat.

I decided to start over again in Claude code. Same version, but a simplified procing logic - I've used a spec for instructions I previously created with the help of Notion Ai, since it had access to our studio related details - and provided claude with an instructions.md.

With that, all I started with was:

"build a super minimalistic chat bot like interface for a proposal estimator. fetch all details from instructions.md. the chat window should look like a modern, minimal, high quality chat interface, similar to chatgpt."

The initial version was already closer to what I've imagined. Far simpler, better ui, nailed the logic and flow.

Why I am writing this has actually less to do with AI and prompting, but with a finding for myself. Overthinking stuff, in maaany cases and situations will not lead to better a better outcome.

It sounds obvious and banal, but as someone who would call myself an introvert with tendencies of a perfectionist, this is something I have to remind myself quite regularly. Which, luckily, has become much better over the last years.

The ability to see, feel, hear and simply know what is good. The ability to distinguish quietly and confidently between what works and what doesn’t. To separate signal from noise. To decide what deserves attention and what deserves to be removed.

As AI accelerates the pace of creation and floods every space with endless options, taste becomes less of a luxury and more of a survival skill. Tools are democratized. Quantity becomes effortless. Quality stays rare.

Design won’t be about pushing pixels or mastering software anymore. It will be about having a strong filter. Clear judgment. The courage to say no. Sensitivity to aesthetics, meaning and timing. The discipline to remove anything that doesn’t serve the idea.

Taste might become the most valuable skill of the future.

Not because it creates more but because it chooses better.

Experiments, AI explorations, visual studies, and things that didn't fit anywhere else.

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A minimal Framer template for writers and content creators. Clean typography, responsive layout, ready to customize.

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