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The Design Channel’s from /design on Farcaster is a publication that extends the conversation beyond casts — featuring essays, interviews, and deep dives from the Farcaster design community. It’s a space to document ideas, share process, and explore how design shapes the products we use every day. Designer Of The Week is hosted by the /design channel and releases each Monday at 3pm GMT+1 / 7am PDT/ 2pm UTC Interested in writing for The Design Channel? Drop us a DM on Farcaster or 0xdesignchannel@gmail.com.
Nicolaus was born in California, raised in Atlanta, and now calls Austin home. He focuses on building design capacity within organizations through scalable design systems spanning brand, product, and activation experiences. He currently leads design at Decent and has founded a solo practice called Atmo Studio.
I’d say it’s a deep curiosity about the world combined with a commitment to make beautiful spaces. I learn best hands-on and try to take something away from every experience that I can apply to new or familiar contexts. A rule I was taught early on was to leave something better than you found it. So whether it’s a multi-brand design system or simply organizing my closet, I adopt a curious, custodial mindset and figure out where I can apply design to create intention, remove clutter, and add beauty over time.
I recently hosted my first ever coffee shop pop-up to prototype part of a larger vision my partner and I have begun dreaming. We turned our home into a coffee shop for a day and asked everyone we knew to break up their typical weekend coffee routine and swing by. At the center was a focus on three things: analog experiences, warm atmosphere, and really good coffee.
It was a huge challenge: The whole thing came together from concept to service in only a couple of weeks and 75% of my coffee setup was on borrowed equipment. I planned and executed the entire thing myself but I had to lean into my community for damn near everything to pull it off.
A lot of valuable lessons in there.
Dream big, start small.
This was the thought that kept coming to the surface in retrospect of my recent popup. Starting small was the entire goal in order to really stress test a few things at a time, take feedback, and make a plan to iterate and expand in the future.
Returning to my central focus of analog, I pretty much managed the entire experience from physical to-do lists to a memo pad for orders. By design, I removed digital conveniences to avoid introducing too much complexity too early into the process. That gave me a crystal clear idea of what problems I was even dealing with and what systems would be needed to solve them.
Nothing will ever beat a pen and paper. Every idea starts there. If I don’t write it down it doesn’t exist. I keep notebooks within reach anywhere I go — they’re an extension of my thinking.
I am a big fan of changing my environment. Inspiration comes when I stop obsessing over the work. Long walks or bike rides are the go-tos to clear my head and let ideas surface naturally. I often work from 3-5 different places in any given week because the simple ritual of packing up and physically moving to a new space gives my brain enough time to rest and reset.
Design education. There's often a gap between how design is taught and how it’s practiced. Students are given rigid briefs and work in isolation, while real-world design is fluid and deeply collaborative.
My dad worked in prepress at small print shops. I watched him spend hours recreating clients’ files so they could actually be printed — that stuck with me. It’s why I studied print design: to understand the production process and avoid creating unnecessary friction for others.
Great design isn’t just about vision — you need to deeply understand everything about what you’re building and how every other role fits into the bigger picture.
Oh wow, where do I start? Everything I engage with fuels my creativity and finds its way back to design. From baking to biking, community-building to coffee. Everything can be creative if you pay close enough attention. Lately, it’s been photography. I love how a camera lens serves as a medium to visually encode not only what I saw but also what I was feeling at a given time. Photography has also been a good practice to document more of the moments between moments. I’ve been an iPhone amateur for years and recently acquired a Polaroid and a Ricoh GRIII to push myself out of my comfort zone technically and learn equipment that’s more tailored to the photographic styles I’m trying to develop.
Before Decent pivoted to a product startup, we explored building a venture studio run as a DAO. One of our biggest challenges was onboarding: people needed a clear sense of purpose and place within this open network.
To solve that, I developed Builder Personas — six archetypes inspired by both organizational roles and RPG character classes: Connectors, Educators, Explorers, Healers, Leaders, and Makers.
Users could take a quiz on our site to discover their persona and receive a profile linked to skills, projects, and bounties within the DAO. My goal was to make onboarding feel intuitive and personal — a path into meaningful contribution, not just participation.
Generate your Persona Here
Back in 2019 I set out to run the outline of all 242 neighbourhoods of Atlanta (more on the importance of neighborhoods in Atlanta) and map them out on foot, using Strava, within the year. It gave me a deeply personal understanding of the city’s geographic and socioeconomic makeup at the most intimate level — on the street.
I ran along every major train line that marked the genesis of the city’s very existence, on the shoulder of every interstate built with intention to connect communities as much as divide them, through remote stretches of forest nested deep within the urban core. I met incredible people on the streets, outside their homes, in their communities—from kids to legacy residents—all sharing their stories about their city.
I ran 142 neighbourhoods in total.
Success isn’t the goal; it is a result of putting in the work day after day, trusting your gut, and doing what you love. Don’t focus on success; focus on building a life that truly supports every part of you — your weaknesses as well as your strengths.
I’d like to get better at sharing my work. I often feel overwhelmed trying to figure out how to present it in the right way, which can lead to inaction. Not documenting in real time only adds to that challenge. I'm working on developing a more natural rhythm of sharing — one that feels clear, intentional, and true to the work itself.
Thank you Nicolaus for joining us today.
Discover more from Nicolaus below.
Community, coffee, bicycles, design, sustainability. // Builder of visuals systems that connect people to place and purpose // Head of Design @decentdao
ATL raised. 🐦🔥 // Design, music, coffee, bikes, community. // Designing @decentdao
Enjoy Nicolaus his Spotify playlist:
User · The Galley
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Check out the previous Designer Of The Week Featuring Erica here:
Erica is the cofounder of Unofficial, a discovery engine for onchain content. Unofficial's flagship product is Uno, a people-first Farcaster client. With a background in UX and web design, she recently transitioned into full-stack development while building Uno over the past year.
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