Hi, I’m Callum Flack. I’m a designer, web engineer and product leader.
With 20+ years designing and 12+ coding, I have deep knowhow in each discipline, and more importantly, the ability to think across them. I can take an idea from exploration to working product, collapsing feedback loops and raising the bar.
I’ve led across contexts: founding a startup engineering team through to its sale, launching a viral AI product before ChatGPT, running an agency, and creating brands at Saatchi & Saatchi. I enjoy the scrap.
I can help you:
- Make better decisions faster. Design, product, and code expertise in one person.
- Ship coherent products. I carry ideas from conversation to prototype to working product, closing gaps and seeing downstream further, faster.
- Multiply capability. Lift design, product, and technical thinking across teams.
- Create customer trust. Craft is the antidote to AI saturation. Discerning judgment across disciplines enable products that work in the blink of an eye, creating the most valued currency—trust.
Can I help you? Let’s talk:
Here’s my CV. Some highlights:
- I worked at Vana, a San Francisco-based start-up from 2022 to 2024 as engineer and designer. We built a viral generative AI app before ChatGPT existed.
- I built Cleared from initial commit in 2019 through to its sale in 2022. I assembled and lead its engineering team, and designed and built the app.
- I ran my own agency 2015 to 2020 for Australian and US clients, remote from Cairns. I planned, designed, built and managed projects from brief to launch.
- In the 00s, I did brand design at Saatchi & Saatchi, London among other places. You can still find my 2000-era brand work in Australian supermarkets.
You can also check out some case studies.
As a frontend engineer, I’m fluid with React and Typescript. Not afraid to read/write backend code. I’m particularly interested in the server-client sync, design systems and coding with LLMs.
As a designer, I use high-res tools such as Figma to derive design systems and assets, or low-res tools such as TLDraw or whiteboards to hold conversations about product flows. I love typography, graphic design and UI that elegantly solves hard user problems.
I can work singularly as either designer or programmer. Or both together—what people call “design engineering”. You’ll get the most value from me by allowing my competencies to “bleed across” domains. I can speak with marketers, designers, founders and engineers, cycling their intents back into the workflow.
I collect music of all kinds and ran multiple vinyl record labels with friends between 2007 and 2013, for which I designed (or rebuilt) all the record covers.
I read books and watch films voraciously; Gerald Murnane’s “Border Districts” or Jonathon Glazer’s “Under The Skin” are current favourites. My favourite artist is either Agnes Martin or Joseph Cornell.
I’ve lived in 3 countries and 8 cities. Home is now tropical Cairns, Australia with my wife and children.