Grant Custer

designer & engineer

Slowly going out on a limb

About

I'm a designer and engineer focused on new and alternative interfaces. I specialize in prototyping and I love to work iteratively through a design in code.

Finding the right primitives for exploring a system is one of my favorite challenges.

I've built interfaces focused on spatial thinking, machine learning models, and data visualization. I like to work on small, collaborative teams. If you're interested in working together email grantcuster at gmail dot com.

Work

Constraint Systems

Experimental web-based creative tools. Featuring image distorters, freeform text editors, and weird website builders. Targeted experiments in alternative interfaces.

Creator, designer and engineer
2019-Present

Featured

Flow

An experimental image editor that lets you set and direct pixel-flows.

Type

A directed typing experiment. You choose the direction the letters should flow.

Grid

Adjust the grid size and text direction to create weird and expressive layouts.

Sprout

Virtual spaces where you can meet, collaborate and play. I led engineering on features like drawing and screenshare, and built prototypes for experimental features like card stacking.

Engineer
2022

Soot

A better system for image organization. I led front-end engineering for the first versions of an experimental interface that lets you browse and make connections between thousands of images. We used WebGL to build a reactive, intuitive way to explore images clustered through machine learning.

Front-end engineer
2021

Featured

Drop Everything Collection

A special demo we built for the London Design Biennale.

Fast Forward Labs

A research lab. We built quarterly prototoypes exploring machine learning capabilities. I designed and built the front-end for experiments exploring capabilities like summarization, sentiment analysis, and prediction. I also led design for the branding and print reports.

Designer and engineer
2014-2021

Featured