Dennis is a designer with 10 years of experience in building design teams and products used by millions of people (Uber, Facebook, Dave, KW). Available for design advising and product validation services.

Dennis Cortés - Designer & Music Producer

https://salvun.com/products/event-horizon-artisan-set

https://protozoa.studio/products/event-horizon-artisan-sets

Large, open room with a big glass wall at the back showing a sea of green trees. On the right is a polished concrete bar with stool seating, accented by a grid of wooden slats in a pleasant horizontal pattern.

Photo down the length of the main room at SFMOMA’s Art of Noise exhibit. Front to back: tables of home audio tech through the ages, soft seating with listening stations, and a large mosaic wall of record album art.

Close shot of GMK Chladni keycaps. The number row uses icons based on vibration plate experiements by Ernst Chladni

A clear, purple, and yellow modded Gameboy Advance in a direct sunbeam

Chunky icons on a yellow background: yen, square divide, distribute horizontally, card stack, crystal ball, seedling, page plus, filter, waveform, hockey sticks, browser window, person with arms out, glasses, label, blockquote, hashtag, calculator, terminal, hammer, distribute vertically, justify text, skeleton key, headlights, vector line, division symbol, move down, vector square, circle divide, UFO, move up, person waving, service bell, keyhole, square x, menu plus, mailbox, font case, ordered list, vector curve, vector circle

Aurora borealis (mostly pink and cyan) shimmering beyond some neighborhood trees and telephone wires

Photo of a big, white and yellow glass sculpture suspended from the ceiling of an atrium at Frederik Meijer Gardens in Grand Rapids, MI. It is Gilded Champagne Gardens Chandelier by Dale Chihuly

Text: Reading is my passion Drawing: A person with a phone in their hands and a book in their lap. A person with a book in their hands, distracted by the passing of a fly. A person napping with a book on their face.

Figma's boolean operation menu items, showing custom keyboard shortcuts for each one

Dark SLK Dessau keycaps on a yellow Matrix Corsa keyboard over a black background.

Silver Neo Ergo keyboard with GMK Dualshot 2 keycaps. It’s sitting on a wooden balcony railing in the sun, with Lake Huron visible in the background

Build better with Web Awesome, the open source library of web components from Font Awesome. Upgrade to Pro and ship websites faster!

Web Awesome

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/fontawesome/web-awesome

Intro text from my website set in Ohno’s new geometric sans typeface: “Hi! I’m Noah Jacobus, icon sommelier & design guy.”

Diagram from my solar app showing power distribution. The array is generating 1.8 kW, and dispersing to the house (0.4 kW), battery (1.0 kW), and back to the grid (0.5 kW).

Raw aluminum Kei v2 keyboard with GMK Mecha Kaiju keycaps. Underneath is a magical pattern deskpad

A long wooden dock into a lake, framed by trees at the entrance. There’s a black dog out there on it.

Cherry blossoms with bright blue sky behind

https://salvun.com/products/gmk-expo-aluminum-artisan-by-mvkb-pre-order

https://spaceholdings.net/products/expo-aluminum-artisan-by-mvkb

Long exposure view from the 35th floor of a San Francisco hotel

Evening light bouncing off a neighbor's window on some white house siding, making a little sunny patch on some climbing plants

How to design sound that elevates software and won't drive you crazy

The Sound of Software | !Boring Software

https://www.notboring.software/words/the-sound-of-software

Some stark light coming into my office, highlighting the standing desk. There’s a monitor with a MacOS 9-inspired background, keyboard, mouse, lamp, mice arm, and various tchotchkes.

Sunny and snowy photo of the maple sugar shack at Blandford Nature Center in Grand Rapids, MI. Shot on a Fujifilm X-T5

A black boxer/lab with sleepy brown eyes looking up from her grassy bed

“Font Awesome: Make the Font Be With You” in Star Wars style 😎

Config: time to eat a burger alone in my hotel room, watch The Bear, and play Riven.

Welp, I was laid off from my role at Northstar due to budget cuts 💔

If you have design needs for freelance or full time roles please let me know! 

Shares, leads, and kind words are very much appreciated 😊

My website: https://cortes.us

Released a set of 4 low-profile artisans matching the Event Horizon or Supermassive finish. Pre-order is open to anyone (not just raffle winners)!

EU: https://salvun.com/products/event-horizon-artisan-set
US & UK: https://protozoa.studio/products/event-horizon-artisan-sets

Painter’s tape holding the latest Tiden.co prototype together 😅
(🔈 on)

final test jacket, just few final tweaks to make, and some website content to write. orders opening soon… 🫶✨

My office gets some real special light at the end of the day

The fam and I will be in NYC for a few days in January. What are the best things to do with a 5-year-old in wintertime Manhattan?

Welcome to the intermittent reading club 🫠

Event Horizon artisan sets are available for another couple of days, wanted to show off the special custom packaging they’ll come in. 

EU: https://salvun.com/products/event-horizon-artisan-set
UK/US: https://protozoa.studio/products/event-horizon-artisan-sets

Storyboarding a little promo video to show off Chunk at Config this year 👀

Aspects of Config were quite fun (seeing buddies mostly), but I’m not sure I’ll be back. The looming AI gloom was certainly a factor, but it’s just too damn big!

Best Figma customization I’ve done in a minute

Been zhuzhing this up for the past few weeks, and it went live earlier today! And then funded in less than 2 hours! 😱 Even if you’re not a web dev person, check it out for the video alone.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/fontawesome/web-awesome

I hate NDAs. Designers have to be silent for most of their tenure at a company. When they leave, they have to sneak their work out for their portfolio or they’ll have nothing to show employers. 

We get hired based on what we make, but we can’t talk about or show what we make.

Yes I’m mid-website redesign right now, but I may have to start over just so I can use Ohno Polymath 🥵

I love mail days. Expo production units are shipping out to vendors right now, and extras will be in stock soon after they arrive. https://mvkb.com/expo/

Welp, my old job released a new website and removed my big blog post about icon design fundamentals 😅 Time to update and host it myself!

First morning with the solar turned on 😎🌤️

Why is designing for yourself so impossible 😵‍💫

Config is next week, so here’s a little sneak peek at something you might see at the Figma Creator Fund booth 😉

Due to popular demand, the Expo artisan is now available in aluminum with a tumble finish! Pre-order is live for a month.

EU: https://salvun.com/products/gmk-expo-aluminum-artisan-by-mvkb-pre-order
US: https://spaceholdings.net/products/expo-aluminum-artisan-by-mvkb

Hi! Viz is an accumulation of 4 years of work. Couldn’t be more proud of this project, my obsession with neon yellow finally paid off. More info: https://mvkb.com/hi-viz/

New essay on sound design in software.

https://www.notboring.software/words/the-sound-of-software

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