Alex Nelson, Graphic Designer

Hi. I'm Alex.

I'm a graphic designer, creative director, developer, and entrepreneur based in Vancouver. Graphic design is the foundation of my practice, but the work often leads into other territory: technology, digital products, business, and the built environment. I’m interested in design as both a cultural practice and a practical tool.

I studied Communication Design at Emily Carr University and, in 2011, co-founded Post Projects, an independent design studio in Vancouver. For the past fifteen years I’ve led much of the studio’s creative work, developing identities, publications, websites, digital products, campaigns, and environments for clients across culture, architecture, real estate, technology, and business.

My practice has always had a strong relationship with technology. I began designing and building websites early in my career and gradually moved deeper into software development, eventually working across both the design and engineering sides of digital projects. I’m particularly interested in the point where those disciplines meet: how a visual system becomes an interface, how an idea becomes a working product, and how decisions made in code can shape the character of an experience.

That interest led me to found Tempo, a software platform for real estate professionals. Building a product company has expanded the way I think about design. It requires moving beyond the artefact itself to consider the systems around it: product strategy, user behaviour, distribution, technology, operations, and the economics that determine whether an idea can survive.

Across all of this work, I tend to approach design in much the same way. I like clear ideas, strong typography, careful systems, and emotional resonance. I’m less interested in treating design as a layer applied at the end than in using it to understand the problem in the first place.

The thread connecting the work is a belief that design can be both culturally meaningful and useful. The best projects do both: they have a point of view, but they also work.