One senior designer who owns UX, UI and the design system, works inside your team's tools, and ships dev-ready Figma every week. No agency layer, no account manager, and the person you talk to is the person who does the work.
Most freelance designers do screens. I do the part before the screens and the part after them, which is where SaaS products are won.
Onboarding, the core workflow, billing, settings. Mapped with you before a single pixel, so the product is right before it is pretty.
Tokens, components and light and dark modes in Figma, named to match your code, so every new screen your team or your AI tools build stays on-brand.
Structured Figma files, specs in Dev Mode, and me on Slack for your engineers. Handoff is reading, not translating.
For MVPs and marketing sites I also ship the code, in Next.js or Webflow. One person from first sketch to a product people can log into.
Fixed scope
Validate your idea and get a launch-ready MVP fast.
Weekly sprints
Go from idea to real product with weekly design sprints.
Dedicated partner
Scale your product with a dedicated design partner.
Pause or cancel anytime · No long-term contracts · Response within 24h
Three ways to get product design done, compared honestly. Each is right for someone. The long version is on the blog.
| Senior freelancer (me) | Design agency | Toptal or marketplace | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who does the work | The person you met on the call | A senior pitches, a mid-level designer produces | Whoever the matching gives you |
| Owns the design system | Yes, built token-first to match your code | Sometimes, often as a separate project | Rarely, scoped per task |
| First screens | Within one week | Three to six weeks, after discovery and proposals | Days, once matched |
| Typical monthly cost | $4,000 to $6,500 | $15,000 to $40,000 | $10,000 to $20,000 at $80 to $150 an hour |
| Minimum commitment | One month, or a one-time kickstart | Usually three months | Hourly or weekly |
| Communication | Direct, async by default, Slack and Loom | Through an account manager | Direct, plus platform admin |
| Best for | The product itself: UX, UI, system, handoff | Brand, site, video and product at once | Short tasks and overflow |
“Dejan rebranded our company and made our solutions more user-friendly. We have been collaborating for over 8 years, and I highly recommend him!”
“Dejan's exceptional UX and design skills have made him an indispensable member of our team. His contributions have significantly enhanced our projects.”
“Collaborating with Dejan has been a delight. Responsive, creative, and consistent quality across all our product vertical launches.”
A senior freelance product designer typically costs $4,000 to $8,000 a month for sprint or retainer work, against $15,000 or more a month for an agency and $140,000 plus equity for a full-time senior hire in the US. My pricing is on this page: a one-time MVP kickstart, a product sprint at $4,000 a month, and a growth retainer at $6,500 a month.
If the job is the product itself, UX, UI and a design system that your developers build on, one senior freelancer is faster and cheaper, and the person you meet is the person who does the work. If you need brand, website, video and product at the same time with a large budget, an agency can staff that. I wrote a longer comparison of freelance, agency and Toptal on the blog.
A free 30-minute call. I open your product live, tell you what I would fix first, and we pick the plan that fits. If it is a sprint, you get a one-page brief the same day and the first screens within a week.
Both. Most clients have engineers, so I hand over dev-ready Figma with a token-based design system and stay on Slack for questions. For MVPs and marketing sites I also build, in Next.js or Webflow, so one person takes it from first sketch to shipped product.
I am in Skopje, Central European Time. That overlaps the full UK and EU working day and US East Coast mornings. Reviews are async by default, as Loom videos and Figma comments, so time zones rarely matter in practice.
The growth partner retainer is built for that: one to two days a week, month to month, no long contract. Several clients have worked with me for years this way, the longest for eight.
A free 30-minute call. I open your product live and tell you what I would fix first. No deck, no pitch.
