Fixate For Artists
Where tabletop creators find their audience.
Fixate For Artists is a dedicated platform within the Fixate ecosystem, designed to give TTRPG illustrators, cartographers, and character artists the tools to showcase, sell, and manage their creative work. The challenge was building a product that respected the nuances of how tabletop artists actually work, commissions, asset packs, licensing, while keeping the interface approachable enough for creators who aren't tech-savvy. I owned the end-to-end product design, from user research through final handoff.
Listening before drawing.
Before opening any design tool, I spent time in artist communities, Discord servers, Reddit threads, Twitter spaces, understanding pain points with existing platforms. Artists wanted portfolio control without the overhead of maintaining a personal site, and buyers wanted to browse by style, not just by keyword. These insights shaped the information architecture: artist profiles built around visual identity rather than metadata, with filtering that mirrors how people naturally describe art styles.
Building toward a community launch.
The platform needed to ship in time for a major TTRPG convention where Fixate was exhibiting. That gave us a hard deadline and a clear MVP scope: artist profiles, a gallery browser, and commission request flows. I worked backward from the launch date, prioritizing the flows that would generate the most word-of-mouth at the event. Post-launch features like analytics dashboards and licensing tools were scoped but intentionally deferred.
Designing for art without competing with it.
The biggest design tension was creating a UI that enhances artwork without overshadowing it. Every color choice, spacing decision, and typographic detail had to serve as a neutral backdrop that makes the art pop. I developed a visual system built on warm neutrals and generous negative space, with the accent color reserved exclusively for interactive elements. The result is an interface that disappears when you're browsing and reappears only when you need to take action.
Community-driven design builds loyalty.
The most valuable takeaway was how deeply community involvement shaped the product's direction. Early artist beta testers didn't just find bugs, they challenged assumptions about workflows I'd taken for granted. Features I thought were essential got deprioritized, while small quality-of-life details I'd overlooked became the most praised aspects of the platform. Designing for a passionate niche audience means the feedback is honest, specific, and worth its weight in gold.
