Dag-Henning Brandsæter
Hi! I'm a designer who builds. For close to 20 years I've led design teams and shaped digital products and brands. I specialize in developing product concepts and visual identities, and in taking a product from concept to a built MVP using agentic systems and AI-powered tools.
Product
I define and design new digital products and services. I specialize in minimizing risk by validating and testing product desirability with end users through rapid, high fidelity, prototyping and fake door testing to name a few.
Digital product design
Product validation & testing
Prototyping
Fake door testing
Service design
UX/UI design
Brand
As a graphic designer by trade, I develop new visual identities and brands, or scale existing design systems, and I bring them to life through digital ecosystems (ux/ui).
Brand identity design
Visual identity
Design systems
Art direction
Creative leadership
AI
I design and build products with AI, not just about it. Fleets of Claude agents write most of the code while I hold the direction, the design system and the quality bar. That's how Off To reached TestFlight and how Loupe is being built now: concept to a built MVP, shipped and iterated in the open.
AI development
Design engineering
Agentic development
Multi-agent systems
AI coding
2021 – Present
Creative Director,
EY Doberman Oslo
Doberman.co
For the past five years I've had the pleasure of establishing EY Doberman's Oslo office as creative director. As a creative lead, while being hands-on in projects, my main responsibilities has been assuring quality of deliverables, team culture, and recruitment. As one of the founders, I also contributed to strategic business development, proposal writing, and assembling cross-disciplinary teams for complex product deliveries. The primary project focus has been developing new digital business ventures.
2008 – 2013
Partner & designer
NODE Berlin/Oslo
nodeberlin.com
I joined Anders Hofgaard, Serge Rompza and Andreas Skilhagen as co-founder of Node's Oslo office and as a designer in 2008. The office was, and still is, highly specialized in contemporary graphic design- challenging the status quo and developing highly avant garde visual expressions for international institutions within the arts. We worked with established institutions such as Haus der kultur der welt, Office for contemporary arts (OCA), Stiftung Baauhaus Dessau to name a few.
2018 – 2021
Manager Digital
Snøhetta
Snohetta.com
I joined the established architecture- and design office Snøhetta in 2018, as manager of their new digital design department, bringing a new offering to already established brand in the world of architecture. My main responsibilities was acquiring new business, quality of deliverables, team culture, and recruitment, aswell as hands on project work. Split 50/50. We worked with a broad range of international clients on digital product and service design, e-commerce, and brand identity design.
2002 – 2003
Designer
QUA Associates, Amsterdam
I joined QuA associates in Amsterdam after my studies at Hyper Island as a graphic designer. As a combined architecture- and design office I worked on a wide range of spatial experience projects and visual identities. Pon Caterpillar and Batavus- if you are into the dutch bike scene, was some of our biggest clients.
2013 – 2018
Head of Design
Netlife
Netlife.com
As Head of Design in Netlife I led a department of 30 designers across product (UI/UX) and brand. With its legacy of being a UX-first design agency, my time was split between hands on client projects, primarily focused on creating user-centric websites and services to strategic business development, assuring quality of deliverables, team culture, and recruitment.
2001 – 2002
Internship design
Syrup NYC
As a part of the Hyper Island internship programme I had the privilege of living the dream at an early age (19), living-and working in New York. I was working at brand design studio Syrup (later Kokoro moi), where my days was spent sketching visual concepts and ideas for actual clients, in between getting coffee for everyone. A wonderful year!
Education
2004 – 2006
Gerrit Rietveld Academie,
Bachelor Design
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
2000 – 2002
Hyper Island
Higher education diploma
Karlskrona, Sweden
Personalia
Male
Born 1982 (43y)
Lives and works from Oslo, Norway but is available for relocation if needed.
Clients
Over the years I've had the opportunity to work with a range of international organizations and brands. Much of my career has been based in Scandinavia, but I've also spent roughly seven years working abroad, collaborating with teams and clients across different cultures and industries. Working across these contexts has taught me a lot about how design operates inside complex organizations.
I've put together a wide selection of ongoing and past projects, in somewhat chronological order, to show the range of what I do, from currently designing and building an iOS app and a desktop tool with AI, to visual identities, bespoke typefaces and artist's books.
Loupe
I am a designer, but technical one too. Building with AI, I kept losing the overview of user journeys, and the model makes a mess of them quickly. At the same time I needed to work on the product with colleagues who are not designers, product managers for example, who had no good way to set priorities or structure feedback.
Loupe shows the whole of a digital product and lets you change it. That's as much as I can share for now. Beta this autumn or winter, as a Mac application and on the web.
More soon!
Follow on: loupe.ing
Off To
I'm currently designing and developing Off To, a travel app where every recommendation comes from friends, or friends of friends. No stars, no strangers with opinions. Plan and share your trips, save your favorite spots, share them with your friends.
A place with no trusted source behind it simply doesn't appear.
iOS app and website is currently in development, aiming for a beta with 50 testers in my own circle who signed up through offto.io.
See the trips your friends make. Where they stayed, what they'd go back to, save any of it into your own trip with one tap.
Draw your favourite spots or areas on a map, select the highlights, save it to the map that you share with your network.
Fluxus
AI has opened the door for designers and entrepreneurs like me, to build products faster than ever.
Using agentic development workflows, I'm currently building Fluxus, an autonomous AI trader powered by real-time blockchain data, machine learning models, and a locally running Qwen LLM. The system continuously learns from market behavior and trade outcomes, refining its predictions over time. The project explores how LLMs can move beyond interfaces and become active decision-making systems.
Through projects like Fluxus, I experiment with how AI agents can be designed, built, and validated before becoming full-scale products.
F-L-U
X-U-S
While I am developing and coding (with my AI friend) the actual product, I am also developing a visual language and an activation campaign that can be used to trigger attention. The idea is to offer the trader as a product, and through that - create a collective intelligence which allows us to make highly sophisticated predictions (ML).
Fello
I served the role as creative lead on developing a new peer-to-peer payment solution for Interac, a leading Canadian financial institution. We defined product value propositions and prototyped and validated them with real users in a series of tests, resulting in a MVP and visiontype setting the direction going forward.
When conducting desirability tests and validating product features, I'm used to creating high fidelity prototypes, both of the product- and the brand experience we want to achieve.
Fake door testing
When conducting desirability tests and validating product features, I'm used to creating high fidelity prototypes, both of the product- and the brand experience we want to achieve.
Kassa
Kassa doesn't sell dreams. It just wants to offer people a mortgage in a responsible and transparent way, quickly, and with a good interest rate.
Oslo Pension Fund sought new business areas. We crafted a strategy to democratize their mortgage product for all Norwegians. I had overall responsibility for the strategic and design development, from naming to visual identity, design system, website, and UX design. Working closely with top talent in motion, illustration, and photography, we tested the strategy with a prototype and brought Kassa to market as a completely new brand.
Everyone with the same financial situation gets the same rate. No negotiations. The magic happens in the details. Kassa received more applications than expected, exceeded all targets, and had to stop accepting applications several times.
Visual identity
A “kassa” (“box”) is a practical, mundane object. The identity and product share these characteristics; the tools are simple, almost mundane. But they are elevated through execution and details. The simple elements are brought to life through photos, text, illustrations, and motion graphics made by talented professionals. Kassa doesn't scream loudly, the magic happens in the details.
End to end digital journey
From landing page to completed mortgage application. The entire experience was designed and prototyped at high fidelity, then continuously user tested to ensure clarity at every step.
The full delivery
From naming and strategy to visual identity, design system, website, and activation campaign. Every touchpoint was crafted to feel simple, bold, and distinctly different from traditional mortgage providers.
Wikipedia
I served as digital design director and was responsible for the sales acquisition of Wikimedia foundation while at Snøhetta. In the project I worked closely with the client and the creative team, also hands-on, in developing a new framework and identity for the 200.000 strong organization.
Fikse
Fikse aims to increase the rate of repair in society for clothing, textiles, and small electronics. Through the digital product, design system, and visual identity, we designed Fikse to express simplicity and a friendly charm that makes the concept feel approachable and easy to adopt.
Netlife
Developed a new visual identity, website, and content strategy for Netlife. Provided art direction for a custom typeface created specifically for Netlife in close collaboration with the Swiss type designers at ABC Dinamo Typefaces.
NODE
I joined Anders Hofgaard, Serge Rompza and Andreas Skilhagen as co-founder of Node's Oslo office and as a designer in 2008. The office was, and still is, highly specialized in contemporary graphic design, challenging the status quo and developing highly avant garde visual expressions for international institutions within the arts. We worked with established institutions such as Haus der Kultur der Welt, Office for Contemporary Arts (OCA), Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau to name a few.
Thank you!