Easing Is a Voice: Building a Motion Language for Brands
Why every product needs three curves and no more, and how to spec them so engineers actually use them.
JUN 2026 · 9 MIN
AL/OS · Booting
I design and build interfaces with intent, systems where engineering rigor and visual craft are the same discipline.
I'm Angela, a software engineer and web designer with nine years spent where design systems meet production code. This site isn't a portfolio you scroll; it's an environment you operate. Every window, animation, and keystroke here is part of the demonstration.
Meridian Bank · Nova Health · Kestrel Analytics · Fieldnote · Lumen Studio · Arc Public Library System
"Angela is the rare engineer whose pull requests make the design better and the rare designer whose mockups make the architecture simpler."
Dana Reyes, VP Engineering, Kestrel Analytics"She rebuilt our platform's front end and our conversion rate followed. Twice."
Marcus Oyelaran, Founder, FieldnoteI started as a print designer who learned to code out of impatience, and became an engineer who never stopped caring how things look and feel. That dual fluency is the whole practice: I don't hand off designs. I ship them.
Reduction over decoration. Every element should earn its place; the best interface is the one users stop noticing. I design in real constraints (actual data, actual latency, actual viewport chaos) because a mockup that ignores reality is fiction.
Boring infrastructure, expressive surfaces. I keep the architecture conservative (typed, tested, observable) so the interface layer can afford to take creative risks. Performance is a design feature: 60fps is a brand value.
Learned production JavaScript by rebuilding my own comps. Never looked back.
Led the dashboard rebuild; owned the design system used by 6 product teams.
Bridged design and platform teams; shipped accessible patient portals to 2M users.
Design engineering for teams that care about the last 5%.
BFA Graphic Design, Savannah College of Art & Design · AWS Certified Developer · W3C/Deque Accessibility Certification · Google UX Design Professional Certificate
Analog synthesizers, generative art sketchbooks, long-distance cycling, and an ongoing quest to make the perfect chocolate babka. Current goal: publishing an open-source motion library and speaking at two conferences this year.
ProjectsCase studies over screenshots. Each project below covers the challenge, the process, the stack, and what the numbers did afterward.
Engagements are structured like software: scoped, versioned, and shipped. Here's the service catalog and the process every project moves through.
Research-driven interface design, from wireframe to pixel-final systems in Figma.
React, Next.js, Astro. Typed, tested, and fast, with motion that serves meaning.
Token architecture, component libraries, and the governance to keep them alive.
Node, Supabase, Postgres. Complete products from schema to ship.
Core Web Vitals rescue missions and WCAG 2.2 AA remediation with receipts.
Architecture reviews, hiring help, and design-engineering team coaching.
Stakeholder interviews, user research, and a written strategy doc we both sign.
Low-fi flows first, then a full-fidelity system with tokens, states, and motion specs.
Component-driven builds with CI, visual regression, and accessibility gates.
Zero-downtime launch, performance budgets in CI, and a 30-day support window.
Tools I maintain, contributions I'm proud of, and the community work that keeps the practice honest.
A 4kb spring-physics motion library for people who think easing curves have feelings. 2.1k ★
CLI that generates WCAG-compliant color ramps from a single brand hue. 890 ★
Figma variables → CSS/iOS/Android design tokens with drift detection in CI. 1.4k ★
Patches merged into Next.js docs, Radix UI, Astro, and axe-core. Reviewer for @react-spring.
Co-organizer of Design Engineers Atlanta (1,200 members) · Mentor at Underdog Devs · Yearly free website builds for two local nonprofits; see the Donate app for how that works.
"The Interface Is the Brand: Motion as Identity"
"Design Tokens at 60fps", talk + workshop
"Ship the Mockup: A Case for Design Engineers"
Writing on the craft: CSS architecture, motion, performance, accessibility, and the occasional career confession.
Why every product needs three curves and no more, and how to spec them so engineers actually use them.
JUN 2026 · 9 MIN
INP is the new battleground. A practical tour of the traces behind a real product's 340ms → 68ms journey.
MAY 2026 · 12 MIN
Rebuilding a component library around intrinsic sizing, with the diff stats to prove it was worth it.
MAR 2026 · 7 MIN
Three months of agentic coding on production work. What it's great at, where taste still wins.
FEB 2026 · 14 MIN
Focus rings, reduced motion, forced colors, the states that separate polished from professional.
JAN 2026 · 8 MIN
On refusing to pick a lane, and how hybrid roles become force multipliers inside product teams.
NOV 2025 · 6 MIN
Currently accepting one retained client for Q4 2026, plus select advisory work. Below: the résumé, the skills, and the receipts.
Design-engineering consultancy. 11 launches, 4 design systems, zero missed deadlines.
Patient portal serving 2M users; WCAG AA across 300+ screens; INP down 74%.
Dashboard platform rebuild; design system adopted by 6 teams; 38% activation lift.
Brand and web for 20+ clients; taught myself to ship what I drew.
Awwwards Honorable Mention ×3 · CSS Design Awards: Site of the Day · FWA of the Day · Webby Honoree (Health category, Nova Health portal)
Donate · Give-Back ProgramEvery year I build two websites free of charge for small nonprofits, funded partly by my studio, partly by this page. 100% of donations route to the program's hosting, tooling, and accessibility-audit costs for those organizations.
Three years of infrastructure covered for every organization we build for.
Third-party WCAG verification so the work holds up for every visitor.
Hands-on CMS training so teams own their site after handoff.
Donations are handled through Open Collective for full transparency; every expense is public.
Available for new engagements starting Q4 2026. I reply within two business days.
✉ hello@angelalatoure.dev · ⬡ github.com/alatoure · ◈ linkedin.com/in/angelalatoure · ✕ @alatoure · ⏱ cal.com/angela/intro
Playground · Live EditorA live sandbox wired to this site's design tokens. Edit the code; the preview compiles on every keystroke.
A real(ish) shell. Try help, stack, metrics, or hire.