Lumen Grid
Grid operations for a community solar co-op — real-time load you can read from the back of the room.
Product design & engineering studio · Est. 2019 · Remote / everywhere
Every product gets one first frame.
Cold Open is a small studio of designers who ship production code and engineers who argue about kerning. We direct the first eight seconds of a digital product — then spend the whole build earning every second after.
SCENE 01 · TAKE 01 · ROLLING · SOUND SPEED
- Interface design
- Motion and prototyping
- Design systems
- Creative direction
- TypeScript
- Rust
- WebGL and Canvas
- Accessibility
- Design tokens
- Content modeling
Scene 01The verdictExt. first scroll — continuous
The scroll is the audition.
Nobody reads your landing page. They scan it like a trailer — the way a projectionist's leader flashes before the feature: numbers, sweep, burn-in, and then either attention or a trip back to the results page.
We design for that verdict. Not with tricks — with framing, pacing and craft: the spacing of a headline, the timing of a transition, the weight of the first thing that moves. Because a product that opens well gets watched to the end.
Scene 02Locations: two desks, one tableInt. studio — day
Design and engineering
share one desk.
The drawing department
Interface design, motion, design systems.
We design in the browser, in the real type, at the real breakpoints — because a mockup that lies is worse than no mockup at all. Every gesture is prototyped at the frame rate it will actually ship at.
The build department
TypeScript, Rust, WebGL, accessibility.
Token pipelines, rendering, performance budgets, screen-reader passes. The people who drew it compile it, so nothing gets rounded off in translation between disciplines that shouldn't be separate.
No handoffs. The spec is the shipping code.
Scene 03Selected slatesAll case studies illustrative
Paceview
A running companion that treats split times like film cuts — the whole race, edited.
Halftone Press
Publishing tools for print-first magazines making the jump to a weekly web edition.
Tandem Dispatch
Dispatch software for a bike-courier co-op, with routes drawn like storyboard frames.
Scene 04The shootInt. repository — nights
Four acts, no reruns.
Slate
One week to align on what "done" looks like. We write the cut list before anyone touches a pixel — scope, audience, and the one thing that must be unforgettable.
Rough cut
A clickable, deployed build by the end of week two. Ugly on purpose; wrong about nothing. Every stakeholder reacts to the real thing, not a slideshow of it.
Grip work
Engineering, motion, accessibility, and the ten thousand small decisions that never make the trailer but decide whether the film works.
Premiere
Launch, measure, tighten. We stay through the first real audience and hand over keys that turn — documentation, tokens, and a team that can drive without us.
Final sceneCreditsYour product — soon
Ready when the light hits.
A COLD OPEN PRODUCTION
Written, designed & engineered by the studio
Shot on browsers in Oslo & Lisbon
No stock illustrations were used in this picture
All case studies illustrative · © 2025 COLD OPEN®