Syd — Sayed Essam
Product designer and design lead. I build products from zero, the systems that hold them together, and the teams that ship them. Fifteen years, twenty-six teams, one tally at a time.
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STYDIO by SYD ©
02 // Impact
What the count says
Full-fledged products
Built MEA’s first payment-orchestration product.
Design built and led
Grew design from a solo practice into a team of five.
Volume growth
Scaled the value flowing through the product by three orders of magnitude — the truest single measure of a payments business.
Figures from MoneyHash, 2024 – 2026. The full numbers live in the dossier, chapter 05.
03 // The work
2019 – 2026 · newest first · hover to look
The full count
26 teams since 2014
04 // The maker layer
Nights and weekends
Design is the day job. This is the rest of the count.
Twelve mixtapes mixed and sleeved by hand, a camera that goes where the work doesn’t, and a habit of building things that never ship to anyone. It keeps the day job honest — precision with a pulse.
The sign
Studio, Cairo
Mixtape 03
Sleeve
The deck
Mixtapes
Mixtape 01
Sleeve
Ridge
Photography
Trip details
Interactions
Mixtape 05
Sleeve
Bloom
Photography
Card-sorting
Process
Mixtape 04
Sleeve
Mirror
Photography
Every house valued
Interactions
The desk
Workspace
Neon
Photography
Mixtape 02
Sleeve
The folder
Everything else
← Drag or scroll →
16 pieces · mixtapes, photography, interactions
05 // Two ways in
The count is complete
Hire me to lead
Head of design. Design lead. First design hire.
I build the team, the system and the product — in that order — and I have the numbers to show for it. The full case studies and the figures I don’t put on the open web are in the dossier. Tell me who you are and I’ll send it over.
STYDIO by SYD ©
Build with me, from zero.
STYDIO is the studio side: 0→1 sprints for founders and teams who need strategy, product and brand shipped by a hand that has done it before. One partner, no hand-offs, pause or cancel anytime.
Product strategy & UX
Weeks 1 – 2
Product & dashboard design
Weeks 2 – 6
Design system
Continuous
Brand & identity
On request