Eric Bell

Most design freelancers can't ship a real backend. Most engineers can't make a brand worth trusting. The work on this site is what happens when one person can do both — design system, production code, infrastructure, and the brand voice that holds the whole thing together.

By day I run engineering at a national retail brand. Performance budgets, accessibility, real testing, infrastructure that doesn't fall over the first time it gets traffic. The studio work runs on the same standards. The difference is the team is one person, the timeline is honest, and the ownership doesn't hand off to anyone else after launch.

I started Eric Bell Designs straight out of college to help small and medium businesses modernize their websites. Early on I specialized in responsive, clean designs with graphic-design touches — sites that felt considered without being precious.

From there the work grew into full brand identity projects, and then into apparel design. Logos became wordmarks, wordmarks became full brand systems, and brand systems became product graphics on actual garments people wear. The throughline is the same: every surface a brand touches is a chance to either earn trust or burn it.

In parallel I've spent the last decade in-house at American Apparel, ModCloth, and Janie and Jack — building production e-commerce at scale and learning what actually breaks when real traffic shows up. The studio work benefits from that every day.

Mat Viper is the BJJ and MMA apparel brand I've operated since 2019. It started after I'd already designed for four or five other rashguard manufacturers and decided the work would be better if one person owned the brand, the product graphics, the Shopify build, and the decision-making.

We've outfitted Bryce Mitchell, Matt Schnell, Niko Price, Luis Peña, and Chuck Liddell — UFC fighters and a Hall of Famer in product I designed, on a Shopify storefront I built and maintain. Live at matviper.com.

Most freelance projects end at the launch screenshot. The site goes live, the freelancer disappears, and six months later the business is paying someone hourly to fix a broken contact form. The portfolio is built on the opposite of that pattern.

Mays Proper's interior design site has been live and maintained since 2020. Team Bully Buster's nonprofit site since 2019. Greg Lutzka's pro skateboarder site since 2019. The Camper Guy launched the marketing site and custom booking platform in 2025 and runs on it now. Site Care covers hosting, updates, content edits, and the small ongoing work that keeps real small businesses moving — at $350/mo with no minimum term.

Every engagement starts the same way: diagnose the business pressure, lock the design system before the code, build inside the system, and measure what real customers do once it's live. No discovery-call theatre, no decks that exist to look earned. The shortest path from a real constraint to a working product.

I take on a small number of engagements at a time. The reason is simple: I'm the designer, the engineer, and the operator. You're not paying for a layer of account management between you and the person doing the work — you're hiring the person doing the work.

I work well under demanding circumstances and tight deadlines. I don't work with unreasonable people. Pressure on a problem is a feature; pressure on a relationship isn't. If the fit is right, the engagement is durable. If it's not, the brief call at the start saves both of us a quarter.