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Independent designer and art director shaping identities, motion and digital experiences.

Start a project Selected work, 06

Selected work 06

Six projects from 2023 to 2026. Every project, client and credit on this page is placeholder content for the demo.

Brand identity, art direction

Nocturne

A nocturnal identity for a record label that prints sound as image. One halftone gradient, a fixed grid, and a type system that never sits still.

Year
2026
Client
Placeholder client
Output
Wordmark, sleeves, motion toolkit

Capabilities

Four ways in. Most projects use two or three at once.

Names, marks and visual systems built to survive contact with the real world. Strategy first, then the smallest set of decisions that make everything else obvious.

  • Strategy
  • Naming
  • Visual identity
  • Guidelines

Titles, loops and brand films with a pulse you can feel. Built as systems, not one-off clips, so the motion still sounds like the brand a year later.

  • Motion systems
  • Direction
  • Edit
  • Sound

Sites and products where interaction is part of the identity. Designed in the browser, prototyped with real motion, handed over in code that a team can keep.

  • Web design
  • Interaction
  • Prototyping
  • Front end

Campaign worlds and image systems with taste strong enough to hold a hundred assets together. Photography, casting, layout and the small rules that keep it sharp.

  • Campaign
  • Photography
  • Casting
  • Print

Studio

I design identities that move. Ten years of turning strategy into systems, and systems into things people want to keep.

设计不是装饰，是秩序。

Design is not decoration. It is order.

Alex Ren is an independent designer and art director working between Shanghai and everywhere the work goes. He partners with founders, studios and cultural institutions to build identities, campaigns and digital experiences with a clear point of view.

The work starts with language, not layout: what a brand would say if it could only say one thing, then the type, motion and code that make that sentence hold.

Based
Shanghai, CN
Working
Worldwide, remote first
Focus
Identity, motion, digital
Status
Select projects, 2026

Process

Four moves, repeated until the work is inevitable. No theatre, no forty-slide reveal.

01Two weeks

Read

We start with the uncomfortable questions: who this is for, what it must do, and what it should refuse to be.

02Two weeks

Frame

One sharp idea, written as a sentence, before a single pixel. If it cannot be said simply, it is not ready.

03Four to eight weeks

Make

Design in the open. Type, motion and code built together so the system holds at every size and in every hand.

04Ongoing

Ship

Files, guidelines and the last ten percent that makes the work feel inevitable. Then a handover that does not need me in the room.

Recognition

Placeholder awards

  1. 2025Type Directors Circle, SelectionIndependent
  2. 2024Motion Archive, FeaturedScreening
  3. 2024Independent Design Index, WinnerIdentity
  4. 2023Print Futures, ShortlistEditorial

Selected clients, all placeholder: Northwind, Atelier Nine, Meridian, Kite, Foundry 44, Mono Museum.

Contact

Tell me what you are building, who it is for, and when it needs to exist. I reply within two working days.

Start a project

Shanghai, working worldwide. Placeholder email.

Case 01 Placeholder case study
Placeholder artwork

Nocturne