Colton Schweitzer

DESIGNPaaL

- Design partner for early-stage through Series C startups.
- We offer an 8-hour free design trial where we resolve a design issue for you.

Co-Founder

Kickass UX

For the past four years, we've been reimagining UX education specifically for graphic designers.

Kitty AF

New comics every so often. 

https://www.facebook.com/kittyasf/

Owner

Smartsheet

- Led the UX design for the "Solutions" pillar of the product team. 
- Redesigned and shipped the Admin Center to help thousands of users better administrate their instance of Smartsheet.
- Designed and shipped 3+ premium products that significantly increased revenue.

Senior UX Designer

UX Designer

At Kickass UX, we're on a mission to empower graphic designers to craft a career they love and achieve financial success.

Payan Design Studio

Design Felt Reactive. I Built Payan to Change That.

If you make something that truly helps people -
 that’s how you show you care.

So I made the leap.
 Not to freelance.
 But to build what I wished existed.
That's why I started "Payan"

A design studio that thinks like founders.
 Fast. Strategic. Outcome-first.

Founder

DesignCoffeeClub

To build a community that creates design leadership culture and practice leadership mindset to change the design education.

Founding member & Facilitator

SaaSDesign

Founding Member

Kissflow

Manager - Creative Design

-> Build teams - hire, mentor, and help individual marketing designers become a better version of themselves.
-> Manage and mentor direct reports, while leading the design for your primary product hands-on.
-> Create branding guidelines and design standardization across all of the team's products.
-> Understand how to handle creative differences between designers and yet manage consistency.
-> Understand customers and their needs through market analysis, customer research, and feedback.
-> Quickly and iteratively create wireframes, prototypes, high fidelity mockups, and detailed UI and visual design specifications for the marketing team, as well as business stakeholders and executive leadership.
-> Be resourceful and creative to overcome obstacles and turn challenges into opportunities.
-> Be a brand champion and work with marketing design on digital and out-of-home campaigns towards building a solid recognizable brand
-> Empower the team to take on individual leadership across products
-> Lead the design of useful, usable, and desirable products.

 Creative design lead - Marketing

-> Ensure the marketing design team and junior designers are producing quality work.
-> Hold a position of responsibility and have a scope for growth to other job roles.
-> Create execution plans for projects and see them through to completion.
-> Ensure the designs created are user-friendly and convey brand consistency with all projects.
-> Coordinate between marketing and design teams to ensure the smooth flow of work.
-> Working closely with various stakeholders to understand the overall messaging and come up with innovative designs to support that messaging.
-> Effectively utilize style guides, templates and be consistent with visual guidelines across all produced materials
-> Excellent team working, communication, and interpersonal skills with the ability to communicate, persuade and advise
-> Able to thrive in a fast-paced and deadline-driven environment
-> Pursue and share best practices within the department

Creative Visualiser - Marketing

Associate Director - Creative Services

Ad2pro media solutions (2adpro)

I've worked in 2ADPRO Media Solutions Chennai as a Specialist Creative Graphic Designer. 
They have clients from the US, AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, and the UK.

My responsibilities are to create innovative solutions for designing brandings, Magazines, Flyers based on the client's requirements. I’ve involved in lots of important projects such as CBBC, Myntra, Standard Fireworks. And also have driven the team to know more about Creative designing and help them to motivate them to deliver the projects on time. I also did freelancing work to challenge myself. 

Each day is a challenge for me since each of these clients has different requirements, ideas, and concepts.

Creative Specialist

Senior Creative Designer

Graphic Designer Executive

Tidels llc

Illustrating e-publishing work for Education books to Overseas clients with the reference of style sheets. we evolved into a premier digital book provider. We have over 1 million downloads in Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Android.

Tidels LLC , 13 Brandon Road, Haverhill, MA 01832 USA

Mobile Apps Illustrator

Fostering design leadership, beyond design! 🚀 Investor(learning) | AI Powered Designer | Associate Director - Creative Services at Kissflow

Most design looks good.
Very little of "it" works.

After 20+ years in visual design including heading the creative services at Kissflow. I’ve seen one truth repeat:

Founders don’t just need design that looks nice.
They need design that moves numbers, builds confidence, and helps them pitch bolder.

That’s been my obsession:

Turning websites into growth engines
Making marketing assets perform, not just exist
Helping founders ship fast with clarity, not chaos
Blending creative systems with AI for scale

I now work closely with SaaS founders to help them go from:
“Design looks good” → “It worked.”

Now I’m on a mission:
Help 50+ AI founders grow with design they trust.

Feel free to reach out to me at - yuvi@payan.design

Cheers!

Yuvaraj Muthu (Yuvi)😎

To the design juniors who feel behind

let me tell you something, I wish someone told me earlier

If you’re early in your design career and constantly feel like you’re late, slow, or not “there yet”, you’re not broken.

I’ve met many talented juniors who think they’re failing because they don’t move fast enough, don’t know enough tools, or don’t have a clean story yet.

That’s not the real struggle.

The real struggle is that early in your career, you’re trying to learn everything at once:
 craft, taste, tools, communication, confidence, speed, judgment 
all while comparing yourself to people who’ve been doing this for years.

That comparison is unfair. And it’s exhausting.

What most juniors don’t realise is this:

senior designers weren’t always clear, confident, or decisive.
We were confused longer than we admit.
 We made choices we couldn’t explain.
 We copied before we understood.
 We shipped work we’re not proud of today.
And that was necessary.

From seeing the same problem repeat in different forms.
 From making decisions and living with the consequences.
 From slowly learning what to remove, not just what to add.

If you’re learning slowly, that’s okay.
 If you’re asking basic questions, that’s okay.
 If you’re still figuring out what kind of designer you want to become, that’s okay.

What matters is this:
 stay curious, stay honest about what you don’t know, and keep showing up to the work.

Speed will come later.
 Confidence will come later.
 Judgment will come later.

Right now, your job isn’t to be impressive.
 It’s to be present.
And if you ever feel lost remember:
 every senior you admire was once exactly where YOU are now.

They just didn’t quit.

If this resonates, I’m hosting a small session this Saturday for early-stage designers to talk about first principles, clarity, and navigating this phase of the journey. 

Check comment for the registration link and you can use discount code: yuvi30

Yuvaraj Muthu (Yuvi)

Flexible Design Subscription @Payan | Fast, Reliable Design Support for Tech Companies

Hiring more designers won’t fix your design problem.

Years inside tech teams, I’ve seen it play out again and again.

When design starts slowing things down, the instinct is predictable:
“We need more designers.”
So teams hire.
Or outsource.
Or split work across more people.

And for a short while, things feel better.
Then the real problems surface.

More designers mean more handoffs.
More opinions.
More variations.
More decisions to align.

Suddenly, speed doesn’t improve, it fragments.
Design reviews get longer.

Consistency becomes harder to protect.
Context gets diluted.

And everyone starts asking,
 “Why does this feel more complicated than before?”
The issue was never capacity alone.

It was how design decisions were being made and carried forward.
When teams rush to scale execution before fixing clarity, they multiply confusion, not progress.

This is where design starts doing its real job.
Not producing more output.
But helping teams slow down just enough to understand what actually matters.

What should stay consistent.
What can evolve.
What problems are worth solving now.

And what decisions don’t need to be re-made every sprint.
That’s also why I believe a subscription-based design partner works better than constantly adding more hands.
Design doesn’t fix teams by doing more.

It fixes teams by keeping decisions connected, clarity intact, and priorities aligned as work scales.
That’s why the solution isn’t hiring more designers.

It’s working with a design partner like Payan Design Studio who stays close to the work, carries context forward, 

and helps teams scale thinking before scaling execution

9 things every pitch deck needs 


After reviewing and building decks for founders, PMMs, and leadership teams, one thing is clear:

Most decks don’t fail because of visuals.
They fail because they don’t answer the right questions.

Before you open Figma or Keynote, make sure your deck clearly covers these 8 things:

1. A clear opening
Logo + one line that instantly explains what you do and who it’s for.
If this isn’t clear, attention drops immediately.

2. A real problem
 Not features. Not buzzwords.
 Explain the problem so someone outside your industry can feel it.

3. Your solution
 Simple. Visual. Obvious.
 Your audience should think, “That makes sense.”

4. The opportunity
 Why this matters now.
 Show that the space is growing and worth paying attention to.

5. Momentum
 Revenue helps, but momentum can also be:
 progress over time, real conversations, the right team coming together.

6. How this becomes a business
 No complex forecasts.
 Just show there’s a clear path to making money.

7. The team
 Why you’re the right people to solve this.
 Strengths, gaps, and the ability to attract talent matter more than perfection.

8. The ask
 End with clarity.
 What do you want from the audience, investment, introductions, expertise?

9. Credibility signals
Proof that you’re real and reliable.
Clients worked with, years in business, recognisable logos, office locations, or scale indicators that build trust quickly.

A pitch deck isn’t a document. It’s a decision tool.

When these 8 things are clear, design simply makes the story easier to follow.

When they’re not, no amount of polish will save the deck.

9 things every pitch deck needs 

Shout out to Koen Stam, the person I connected with the most on LinkedIn this year. #YearinReview

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One uncomfortable truth about design in organizations.

Real change inside organizations doesn’t come from big ideas.
It comes from how teams learn to think together.

Early in my career, I believed good design was about having the right answer.
The right layout.
The right flow.
The right solution.

Working inside fast-moving tech teams changed that belief completely.
Most problems weren’t design problems.
They were thinking problems.

Teams rushed to solutions before understanding the problem.
Decisions were made based on assumptions, not observation.
Execution moved fast, but learning lagged behind.

What actually helped wasn’t more features or better visuals.
It was slowing down just enough to understand what was really happening.
Listening before deciding.

Observing patterns instead of reacting to noise.
Testing small ideas instead of betting everything on one big move.
That shift changed how teams worked together.
Design stopped being a department.

It became a way of approaching problems.
Questions became more important than answers.
Exploration came before execution.
Learning stayed continuous instead of happening only after things broke.

Over time, I realized this is what transforms organizations, not creativity alone, but how design reshapes the way teams think, decide, and adapt.

The discipline to sit with ambiguity.
The patience to test instead of assume.
The courage to change direction when reality proves you wrong.

That mindset doesn’t just build better products.
It builds better teams.

And when teams learn how to think through problems together, innovation stops being accidental and starts becoming repeatable.

That’s the quiet power of design, not as output, but as the backbone of how organizations solve problems.

Recently, while working as a design partner with fast-moving teams, I noticed something:

Design doesn’t drift because it’s missing.
It drifts because context gets lost.

Design is produced every day. Assets ship. Pages change. Decks evolve. Screens get refined.

Nothing looks broken. But slowly, somewhere, I started to feel off.

That misalignment rarely comes from bad decisions.
It comes from good decisions made in isolation.

There were small changes to solve today’s need.
Quick edits to speed up a launch.
Tweaks that help close a deal.

Each & every decision makes sense in the moment.
But the reasoning behind earlier decisions doesn’t always carry forward.

That’s where a design partner like us actually matters.
-Not to control output.
-Not to “fix” design.

But to stay close to the why behind decisions.
-To protect continuity.
-And to catch drift before it compounds.

Alignment isn’t about rigid systems.

It’s about continuity.
And in fast-moving teams, continuity doesn’t maintain itself.

Someone has to hold the thread.

After working inside fast-moving tech teams, one thing became obvious to me:

Design rarely fails because of skill.
 It fails because of how it’s structured.
Most teams still consume design in bursts.

A project here.
A sprint there.
A rush before a launch.
That model creates three predictable problems.

First, context resets constantly.
Every new project starts with re-explaining history, decisions, and constraints.
Design time gets wasted just catching up.

Second, priorities collide.
Marketing, PMM, sales, and brand all need design at the same time.
Projects don’t queue neatly in real teams, they overlap.

Third, speed becomes expensive.
Quick fixes today turn into rework next month.
Consistency slowly erodes, even when the work looks “good.”

The subscription model solves these problems in a very practical way.
Decisions carry forward instead of getting re-made.

Work flows continuously instead of spiking under pressure.

Most importantly, teams stop thinking in terms of
 “Can we squeeze this request in?”
 and start thinking in terms of
 “How do we move this forward properly?”
That’s what a design partner should feel like.

Not a vendor waiting for briefs.
Not an agency jumping between projects.

But a steady extension of the team, flexible enough to absorb change, structured enough to protect consistency.

That thinking is exactly why Payan Design Studio exists today.
Not to deliver “more design,” but to stay embedded long enough for design decisions to actually stick.

So teams spend less time reworking and more time moving forward.

How teams actually find the right design partners

Most teams think finding a design partner is an outreach problem.
It isn’t.

Good design partners are a small group.
They don’t sit on lists.
They don’t respond well to cold pitches.

And they don’t show up because you chased them.
They show up because something caught their attention.
These are people who actively look for better ways of working.

They follow ideas, not sales language.
They respond to clarity, not persuasion.

So the real work isn’t “finding” them.
It’s making your thinking visible.
If you already have an audience, you start there.

Share how you think.
What you’re building.
What problem you’re trying to solve.

If you don’t, you still do the same thing, just in public.

A short demo.
A clear concept walkthrough.
A one-pager that shows how things work, not why people should buy.

Visual. Direct. Honest.
Because good partners won’t design the solution for you.

But they will tell you very clearly what feels right and what doesn’t.
Your job is to absorb that feedback and shape the work.
The part most teams underestimate is patience.

You keep sharing.
You keep refining.
You keep showing up.
And when the right people reach out, you need to be ready, not with a pitch, but with clarity.

What it is.
Who it’s for.
How it works.

That’s how real design partnerships begin.
Not through chasing.
Through consistency and signal.

Season of thanks 🎄 ❤️  from Payan Design Studio

Ending the year thankful for the people who believed in us from day one.
This journey has always been about trust, relationships, and showing up with intent.

Grateful. Always. 🧁🎄
#merrychristmas❤️

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The Battle

Colton Schweitzer

Yuvaraj Muthu (Yuvi)😎

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taplio

The Battle

Colton Schweitzer

Yuvaraj Muthu (Yuvi)😎

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Yuvaraj Muthu (Yuvi)😎's LinkedIn Performance

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