Dawn
Dawn is a forward-thinking design agency that assembles creative teams to handle strategy, brand, and go-to-market campaigns for Series B, Pre-IPO, and later stages of growing tech companies. Their work centers around a clear ethos of brand clarity with a human appeal. I got to make their website kooky crazy.
Phil Gibson (Brand)
Shachar Aylon (Copy)
The Jetsons, the Nothing Phone, and James Turrell
Shachar Aylon came to me looking to collaborate on a stunning website to represent a new Dawn, rooted in play, optimism, and techno-futurism. He was fresh off an amazing rebrand by Phil Gibson, and arrived with the most interesting and wide-ranging references of all time: pulpy sci-fi comics, retro space-age cartoons, techy devices like the Nothing Phone and Teenage Engineering products, fine art about sunlight by James Turrell, and an early 2000s ad with a bunch of bouncing balls. He knew they fit together, and it was my job to figure out how they made a website. Challenge accepted.
Work vs. Play
The problem with such an awesome brand with infinite potential is that I want to use it in bright, bold iterations. However, we agreed early on that we wanted the WORK to take center stage. This presented a tension: how do we build a website that's fun and whimsical, with lots of toys and distractions and colors, but make sure it feels focused and clear enough to showcase the agency's work above all? Humans only have two eyeballs, so everything can't be pulling the user's focus at once.
We settled on the idea of a spaceship control panel as the central experience of the site. Rather than sandwich the brand into explanatory sections between work cards, I created a suite of components that tuck the brand's playfulness behind hover states, scroll interactions, loading screens, and mysterious buttons. Color is used sparingly when showcasing work, so that project images can shine. And there's still SO much personality!
Bells, Whistles, and Shooting Stars
The website itself feels like a work of art, with tons of bells & whistles to discover. There's spinning icons, scroll interactions, a section that tells you where the sun will rise next in the world. There's a button that shoots a bunch of stars for fun. Phil and I had multiple calls purely to talk about the animation easing of card and button hover states to ensure it would feel as realistic and tactile as possible—like a real dial responding to touch, not pixels on a screen. I encourage you to visit the live site and play around.
Mobile Considerations
For all the fun components involved, there were extra precautions and considerations taken to ensure the mobile experience is not an afterthought. This meant designing responsive variations of each card and component so they looked good individually, and with the rest of the site when handled in the user's palm. The dashboard-like menu gains special functionality to optimize for mobile users.
Post-Launch Success
Just as in his work, Shachar deeply understands his own channels and the value of strategically improving them over time. Through testing & feedback, we've continued to iterate the website by adding new modular sections to the homepage, and a blog that fits seamlessly into the existing website to accommodate his thoughts & expertise. In August 2026, Dawn's website received an Honorable Mention from Awwwards, one of the top website awards platforms out there. A huge honor!
I'm often the sole creative voice on a project, so it's rare I get to work in tandem with such powerful creative forces. Getting to collaborate with Shachar Aylon (agency founder) and Phil Gibson (branding) on a design-forward site was so much fun. They both challenged me for the better as a designer, developer, and project manager, and the result is something none of us could have done alone. Above all, the site is just... fun to explore. That's a testament to Shachar's priority in his own work: helping tech brands reach more humanity.
