This page details my background including, process and how I work.
I’m Marco Braunschweiler. I create brand systems, interfaces, and products — combining deep research, elegant typography, and strong systems thinking into experiences that actually feel good to use.
Clients I’ve worked with include Acura, Sonos, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, Carmine Finance, Tribute Labs, and NTS Radio, among others.
From 2020 to 2024, I focused on finding a rock-solid process to build brand systems, and have extended that approach to experiences — both interface and full end-to-end apps like Liquid Calling. I start with a concept, find the edges of the constraints, build an accordant design system, select a technical implementation, and iterate from there.
I work primarily with modern JavaScript frameworks — React and Next.js for the frontend, paired with TypeScript. For content and data-driven projects, I use Python for scripting and analysis. When working with legacy systems or specific client needs, I tend toward PHP and WordPress environments.
Having a background in art has given me an aesthetic approach — specifically from the transliterated Latin aestheticus, meaning the study of sensory experience. It’s all ultimately about the feeling. While research and positioning are a solid backbone for understanding a project, I prioritize intuition and feeling — nobody has ever listened to a good song and said, “I wonder what the research was like for this.”
My interest in design started with skateboarding as both an expressive form and a relational tool to read a design environment critically, and these two poles typify my approach.1 My background is in art, specifically in conceptually focused practices that manifest into worlds which either show or actively alter societal structures, like Michael Asher.2 The way I build, design, and code pulls from Christopher Alexander’s The Timeless Way of Building: he indicates that a well-designed space, like a garden, is organic, can grow, and seems to exist naturally — without feeling designed — though this is actually the result of meticulous planning and research over time, whatever the modality is.3
I am American and Swiss, originally from California, though I grew up in the Midwest and was shaped by that hard-working Protestant culture.