Charlie Gleason
Designer, developer, creative coder, and musician
Iβm a staff designer at Replicate, looking after developer experience at the intersection of design, code, and machine learning.
Before that I was a lead product designer at Salesforce, owned design and brand at Heroku, worked on design and front-end development for London-based crowdfunding publisher Unbound, co-founded the Melbourne-based social film site Goodfilms, and was the technical lead of the Clemenger BBDO ad agency.
I studied design and computer science, and I like the space between creativity and code. I also enjoy the blind terror of the creative process, solving difficult problems, and a clean sheet of paper.
I cannot skateboard. I tried, but it was a whole thing.
In my spare time I like to work on micro projects, from tools for creative coding, to tweet-based music videos, to design-focused macOS apps. I also sometimes write about development, contribute to open source, and share resources.
My work has been featured by Googleβs Creative Sandbox, and has received numerous awards, including from Awwwards and the FWA.
I believe there are few things more comforting than good documentation.
Recent writing (code.charliegleason.com)
How to open-source a public Remix site while keeping some routes authenticated and private on Cloudflare.
How to handle bundling Satori (Yoga) and Resvg WASM files for both Vite and Cloudflare.
A list of hardware, software, and creative tools I use day-to-day.
β― code.charliegleason.com is a space to share code, resources, and thoughts on design and front-end development.
Awards & Achievements
Talks, Demos & Workshops
Education
RMIT University, Melbourne
2011 - incomplete
First Class Honours
Swinburne School of Design, Melbourne
2004 - 2007
Certifications
Volunteering
- Samaritans
2020 - 2024
Triathlons
Half Marathons
Marathons
Ultra Marathons
Case Studies
A partner-focused overhaul of publishing.
Centralising the publishing process across multiple tenants, reducing the time to publish by 2.5x, dramatically speeding up the security review process by 3.5x, and 65% faster approvals.
An interactive, AI-augmented 3D music video.
Powered by open-source tools, Lysterfield Lake is an AI-augmented music video about a place outside Melbourne, Australia. It's about the endless summers of your youth, and the tiny changes in you that you don't even notice adding up.
Project Highlights
Selected Projects
Selected Articles
Selected Features
βCharlie is so gifted and productive. I would work with him again any day. It's been a great professional and personal pleasure to spend these last few years travelling in his company, and seeing the great beauty he's brought to the world through his work on Heroku. May we have the chance to do good things together again someday!β
Margaret FrancisFormer GMHeroku / Salesforce
βCharlie is one of the most gifted, multi-skilled designers I have ever worked with. He's an amazing collaborator and teammate. Everything he touched made our work 1,000% better.β
Ashlyn WattersProduct ArchitectSalesforce
βWhat impressed me the most was his attention to every detail, his professionalism, his leadership in this space, and also his empathy and kindness. Oh did I mention he is one fantastic designer?β
Natalie MalloySenior DirectorSalesforce
βCharlieβs nicer friends will say great things about his creativity and empathy, which is true, but not interesting. Charlie has hustle. He works and he works and he works, and that is how he got so good at what he does.β
John BartonCTOAmber Electric
βCharlie has a formidable blend of talents: a grounded, empathetic design sense, an artistβs eye for subversion, and the tenacity to do whateverβand learn whateverβis necessary to ship projects.β
Glen MaddernSystems EngineerCloudflare
βCharlie has a unique, articulate, polished understanding of design, art and how people interact and care for one another.β
Will DaybleCo-founderSquareweave
βCharlie is a supercharged teammate. When he is assigned to something, he carries it to the finish line. He has laser-focused attention to detail [and] no fear when it comes to dealing in ambiguous and new spaces.β
Vicky ZeamerLead Researcher, Research & InsightsSalesforce
β[His] talent, humor, knowledge shares, thoughtfulness, storytelling, creative contributions, the list goes on! I'm grateful to have crossed paths.β
Olivia YuLead DesignerSalesforce
βCharlie is a developer of exceptional talent. He is personable and fun, and these qualities made him universally loved by the team around him.β
Becky BoltonFormer DeveloperUnbound
β[Charlie is that] near-impossible combo of crazy talented and down-to-earth.β
John GeyerTechnical Writing LeadSalesforce
Typeset in Commuter Sans and the system font stack.
Built with NextJS. CSS with Tailwind. Hosted on Heroku.
Primary illustration inspired by The Design Squiggle.