Bridging The Gap: Architecting the Digital World from Spotify to Across with Lead Designer, Tim 🖍️

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across.to

8 min readJun 21, 2023

Welcome to our interview series Tim 🤗Can you introduce yourself and your role within Risk Labs?

I’ll start with a bit about my background first. I have been a UX/UI Designer and Digital Product Designer for over seven years now. I started out, like most Designers do, working for design agencies, where the work is very fast paced and extremely varied, before transitioning into a product design-focused role at Spotify. In late 2020, during my time at Spotify, I got really, really into crypto. I’m talking full-on research paper nerd. I was super excited about it that I just had to invest and after a year of that, I moved to wanting more of a stake in what I thought were people and projects working towards shaping a new future.

Even though I had that drive, I still had my position at Spotify, so, I had the convenience to seek out the right opportunity at my leisure. While just keeping my eyes open for something, I started talking to Britt, Across Community Lead, and Jesper, previously Lead Designer for Risk Labs, when I stumbled in to the Across Discord.

I was pretty early — I think that the Across Discord had been up for only two or three weeks. I noticed that there weren’t any professional Designers in the community, so I made some noise to try and steer the design ship for Across. I wanted to really show that I was interested in helping out.

Something tells us that Tim’s “design ship” would look something like this IRL.

In what way did you initially help the Across brand and how did you transition from community member to your current role?

At that stage of the project, since the Across brand itself was already established, I contributed in more of a consulting role on how to steer the product in the right direction by conducting design workshops.

Coincidentally, Jesper and I lived in the same city, which was helpful in getting to know the team more intimately. When we met, he had told me that Risk Labs needed a second Designer, as Across was growing into its own, dedicated team, and needed to separate from its sister project, UMA. I agreed, and started with some freelance work for Across until I was ready to leave Spotify. When that position was over, I started working full-time with Risk Labs as Lead Designer for Across. Jesper and I had a similar design background and easily clicked, so we became a solid team very quickly.

You mentioned that you had stumbled into the Across Discord. How did that happen and how did you first hear about Across?

I first heard about Across hrough Twitter. When Across did their Fair Fair Launch campaign, I thought that was an impactful marketing message. Especially as someone who wanted to contribute to a crypto protocol, the messaging that every token holder could be a co-founder was very appealing.

Any Co-Founders scrolling through right now?

How would you describe the Across brand and what are the differences from its original look and feel to its present?

Minimal and very sleek, but not in the typical crypto product kind of way. While our design language indeed is futuristic, we’re trying to not be the same kind of futuristic (eg. relying on 3D graphics and abstract shapes all the time) that you see many crypto projects going for.

Jesper did incredible work designing the core of the brand, so we still use the same logo and branding colour scheme. I think where we can see the difference is more in the UI. Jesper tended to lean in more towards the aqua colors while I’ve been trying to include more of the gray shades and adding an aqua glow or illumination.

A little bit of then versus now. The left visual was from 2021 and the right visual from 2023.

What are some of your inspirations when designing for the Across brand?

Tron was something that had initially inspired Jesper in the brand creation. With that as a main theme, we started looking more into having lines and glow, meant to give a subtle nod to the futuristic style of Web3 projects, but without overdoing it.

When I started, I tried to strip off things as much as I could to make the brand feel more minimalistic. So working with a Tron style, but trying to make it have an essence of the inspiration without being a total ripoff was a fun challenge. I think making our brand less loud and cleaning it a little more suitable for a financial application, was something I kept in mind when I started contributing to Across.

I commend brands that can pull off loud branding with a lot of different elements, but I find it hard to imagine mass adoption of UIs like that.

We recently had the Bebop DEX team come in for a chat in our Weekly Community Call to discuss their unconventional design on their financial platform. What is your opinion of that aesthetic route?

I think it’s cool. I remember during the call someone from the Bebop team had mentioned that Cash App which has started rebranding with these new approaches, in addition to Klarna, who I’ve seen take on this angle as well. It’s something that is a sign of the times. Design is becoming more relatable across all kinds of industries by being colorful, using more shapes, and including more humour.

I think it’s a super valid approach and I like that kind of branding myself too, so, with their brand specifically I wasn’t surprised with their direction. I think we’ll see more of this as crypto evolves, as I think that kind of branding is more suitable for mainstream adoption in this age.

A splash of fun in DeFi, now available at Bebop DEX.

In a competitive landscape such as cross-chain bridging, how important do you think UI or brand aesthetics are to user loyalty or selection?

In the end, I don’t think it matters at all. If a brand has a super smooth looking UI, but it takes 10 clicks and 5 different windows to achieve a user’s final result, that brand will fail due to poor UX. Alternatively, if you had an application that does the exact same thing but the user can do it in one click, even if it were the ugliest website, there wouldn’t be a competition.

What matters most is a product’s functionality — A user doesn’t care about brand if the product is clunky and unusable. When you have a good product, then UI and branding can and will be a differentiator for sure, especially if it’s a product you’re using daily.

Imagine needing to do this guessing game everyday? Nightmare!!

Are there any Web3 brands that particularly stand out to you or any NFT collections that have piped your interest? Any particular PFPs that you would consider “bad design?”

I think the reason I haven’t been into NFTs, and I preface this with the fact that I think NFT tech is amazing, is because I’ve never really quite understood the logic behind some of the big names in that market. It’s just very hard to predict what will become a hit or why something is a hit. It seems to resonate with a very niche market that I’m not a part of or it is so much about pop culture which is something I’ve always had a hard time understanding, although I wish I had the ability to. I would have never guessed that Crypto Punks, for example, would grow to where they are now.

Was hard to be 100% on any of these to be honest.

How do you think NFTs help brands that are not dedicated NFT projects? How do you think it has or can help Across?

I think it’s definitely got a lot of potential if you do it right. If you have a long-term strategy and you treat NFT launches similarly to feature launches it could bring the value that people are looking for from a release like that.

Take Spotify for example. If we were to introduce a new feature for the app and it didn’t work, you could roll it back, but that could have a big impact on how people perceive the product and the brand. So, similarly to NFT releases for crypto projects, I think any sort of brand launch should be approached very strategically.

Our NFT strategy: A gift out of the kindness of our hearts for our 100-Day LPs!

In your personal life which artistic style inspires you?

I’m from Sweden so I think my taste is very typical of Swedish design. I like minimalism and designs that are very crisp. In my professional life I would rather have less elements to work with to make sure that I maintain control over the design. So, when I see designs that are very minimal and very crisp and where someone can make something out of very few things, that is usually what is inspires me the most personally.

I have a Designer that I stumbled upon recently called Min Pham. I saw his portfolio and I think he’s really the embodiment of what I mean by “very clean design.”

Outside of Across what are your hobbies?

I recently got into Crossfit, which has kind of become a new passion. Back in the days, I would do boxing as my exercise, but now Crossfit has taken its place. I used to also be a huge MMA fan. I haven’t had as much time to watch it these days, but if I had to pick two of my favourite hobbies, it would be these two.

What is your favourite IRL bridge?

Favorite bridge in real life, would have to be the bridge between Denmark and Sweden, because that’s the bridge that takes me to Copenhagen Airport so I can fly to places. It’s not because of its looks, it’s more because of its utility.

The Øresund Bridge looks pretty amazing!

Thank you for reading! Stay tuned for more team interviews bi-weekly.

Across is a cross-chain bridge for L2s and mainnet Ethereum. It is secured by UMA’s optimistic oracle. Across optimizes for capital efficiency by running a competitive relayer landscape, concentrating liquidity, and by offering a no-slippage fee model.