I'm Tyler Pixel (legally Tyler Patterson), a design engineer working across brand and product. Nine years in, I still care most about the thing I cared about on day one: context. Why something exists, who it's for, and what it has to do, long before it needs to look like anything.

I studied Visual Communication Design at Massey University's College of Creative Arts in Wellington, graduating with honours. Since then: identity, interaction, ecommerce, apparel, art direction and packaging. In-house at VTNZ, Eight360 and Northbound Gear. Agency and freelance at Rise SEO, and through my own studio. Between them I learned both halves of the job: the craft and the constraints.

These days I'm in Brisbane, designing and building sort.cash, a budgeting app that teaches financial literacy by getting people to an emergency fund. Building my own product has made me better at designing other people's: it's much harder to hand-wave a decision when you're the one shipping it.

Away from that I make synthwave-leaning music and art as Timecodec, fly FPV drones, and 3D print things I probably don't need.