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Maya Okonkwo

Maya Okonkwo

Brand & Product Designer · Identity and design systems

London, UK https://maya.aboutstack.com

I build brands that survive contact with a product team — identity, type, colour and the system that keeps it all intact once forty people start shipping with it.

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About

Brand and product designer, eight years between studio and in-house. I've run a rebrand end to end — naming through to the Figma library forty engineers build from — and I like the unglamorous half best: the naming rules, the contrast audit, the reason a component exists. Currently leading design at Fold & Co.

Selected work

Fold & Co. — rebrand

Naming, identity and a 60-component Figma library. Rolled out across app, web and print in eleven weeks without freezing the product roadmap.

  • Brand identity
  • Design system
  • Figma
See the case study

Kindling — packaging system

A modular label grid for a 40-SKU range, built so the in-house team could add a flavour without a designer in the room.

  • Packaging
  • Type design
  • Illustrator
View on Behance

Northpaper — editorial refresh

New typographic hierarchy and a two-colour system for an independent print quarterly. Ad revenue held while the page count dropped 18%.

  • Editorial
  • Typography
  • InDesign
See the spreads

Experience

Lead Product Designer

Mar 2023 – Present

Fold & Co. (London)

Own brand and product design for a 40-person fintech. Led the 2024 rebrand and built the design system behind it — component reuse took a typical feature's design time from days to hours, and the contrast audit that came with it cleared the whole app to WCAG AA. I run crit and mentor two designers.

Senior Brand Designer

Sep 2020 – Feb 2023

Kindling Studio

Identity and packaging for food, drink and retail clients. Ran four brand projects end to end, including a 40-SKU range still shipping with the label system I built. Pitched and won two of them.

Designer

Jul 2018 – Aug 2020

Northpaper (Leeds)

In-house on an independent print quarterly: covers, layout, and the typographic system that replaced a decade of one-off page designs.

Skills

Brand identity · Expert Design systems · Expert Typography · Expert Figma · Expert Art direction · Advanced Prototyping · Advanced Motion Illustrator Accessibility Design research

Projects

Grain

↗

A risograph zine about small type

Three issues, two colours, printed on a borrowed RISO. Sold out the last run in a fortnight.

Kerning Club

↗

Monthly type crit in Hackney

I host it. Twelve to twenty designers, one project each, no laptops after the first hour.

Palette Pocket

↗

Contrast checker that fits in a tab

A tiny tool that grades a palette against WCAG and suggests the nearest passing tint. Built it because I was doing the maths by hand.

Certificates & awards

Google UX Design Professional Certificate

Google / Coursera

Feb 2021

Accessibility for Designers (WCAG 2.2)

Deque University

Apr 2024

D&AD New Blood Pencil — Wood

D&AD

Jun 2019

Education

BA (Hons) Graphic Communication Design

2015 – 2018

Central Saint Martins, UAL

First Class Honours

Foundation Diploma in Art & Design

2014 – 2015

Leeds Arts University

Distinction

Off the clock

I throw badly on a wheel in a Deptford basement, photograph shop fascias nobody else looks at, and I'm slowly drawing a typeface based on 1970s British road signage.

Contact

Email
maya.okonkwo.design@gmail.com
Location
London, UK · open to hybrid and remote

Elsewhere

Dribbble ↗ Behance ↗ Grain zine ↗