I’m Karl Smyth and I’m an Irishman based in Portugal. I've spent more than 25 years designing brands, products and digital experiences.

I started in animation, moved through advertising and branding, into product design, and currently lead the design team at a fintech. My job is to make complex products easier to understand and easier to use.

Over the years I've created campaigns, branding and products for large companies including Coca-Cola, Vodafone and Sony, and for smaller companies and startups. I've learned from both.

These days I'm most interested in helping growing companies build better products and stronger design teams.

I'm also exploring how AI can support the design process through research, ideas and prototyping, but I still believe the important decisions need people.

I speak at events including Web Summit, The Next Web and Friends of Figma about design, creativity and the changing roles designers.

  • I lead design for Alt21's FX platform, working across customer products, partner platforms and internal tools. My focus is on making a complex product simple to use, whether that's cutting onboarding from 30 minutes to 10, improving the trading experience, building a design system, rebuilding key parts of the platform, mentoring designers, or using AI to speed up the work without losing human judgement.

  • Led product design for the MVP of an esports media platform, working closely with the founders to turn an ambitious idea into a product people could understand, use and invest in. I designed the user experience, creator tools and content licensing workflows, and helped shape the product story that supported early investment and industry partnerships.

  • Co-founded a live rugby prediction app where fans could make match calls before the referee or TMO. The app turned live matches into a shared, interactive experience and was successfully piloted during the British & Irish Lions Tour with Premier Sports. It later attracted interest from other sports organisations as a model for fan engagement.

  • A platform that connected independent breweries with local beer lovers, by allowing users to discover small-batch beers, pre-order limited releases, follow the brewing process, and collect their orders directly from the brewery.

  • Led the creative direction for a travel tech startup that used a visitor's location to tell stories about the places around them. I designed the apps, launched one of the first city guide apps for Apple Watch, helped grow the platform to 16 cities in seven languages, and built a marketplace for travel writers and tourism organisations. Along the way I spoke at events including Web Summit and The Next Web, and gained my first real experience of startups, investors and building a product from the ground up.

  • Purple is where I really learned my craft.

    I joined on the day the studio opened and grew from a middleweight designer into the company’s design director. I worked on branding, advertising and campaigns for clients in Ireland and around the world, across print, TV and digital.

    Some of the brands I worked with included Sony, O2, RTÉ, Brennan's Bread, SuperValu, Alltech and the Diabetes Federation of Ireland.

    More than anything, this is where I learned how to solve problems with design, work closely with clients and teams, and turn ideas into work that people connect with.

    I still have a great relationship with the studio and continue to collaborate with them on projects from time to time.

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