Old Friends is an engineering studio. We build custom websites for teams who value craft.

An immersive portfolio for an AR agency that builds virtual worlds for brands like Netflix

Building a brand portal for one of the world’s most popular streaming platforms

Notes From Friends

Chester Chipperfield · Running Tide

James is one of the rare talents that harmonizes design and technology. Very few people get it, and teams often throw projects over the wall for the next person in the chain to deal with. James approaches his project with real thought, insight, and care. His eye for detail is so welcome in my world, and I've loved every project I've worked on with him.

Running Tide Advisor, Former Creative Director at Tesla and Apple

Kevin Robinson · LVLY

James has a rare combination of skills. He knows tech backwards and forwards but speaks like a human. He's clear, communicative, professional, and highly talented. His UI/UX aesthetic is bar none. And working with him all amounts to the most important thing of all. Trust.

Founder / Creative Director at Juniper Jones

Danny Crichton · Lux Capital

James is exceptional at creative yet functional designs for the web. His user experiences are delightful but not baroque, which allowed us to present a compelling and unique identity while offering familiarity to readers. He’s clear and structured on project management, which is ever so rare to find these days. Really, it’s like getting the best of a large team coalesced into one profound brain.

Head of Editorial at Lux Capital, Former Editor at TechCrunch

Frank Shi · Paper Triangles

Working with James was one of the best experiences I’ve had. He has an amazing eye for detail, design, user experience, and interactions. He helped us bring our site to life with ease and built an easy to use backend so we can scale on our own. He also added his own flairs, which in my opinion, made the site 10x better. We could not be happier with our new website.

Co-Founder at Paper Triangles

Heather Beserra · Running Tide

James helped us build a complex, interactive site that aligned with a new brand launch, and I can confidently say his work exceeded all our expectations. He was a delight to work with—very communicative, great at balancing many inbound requests, stayed on schedule, good eye for design, technical expert, and so much more. Thanks James! Can’t wait to work together again.

Head of Special Projects

Paige Hewlett · Margo

After interviews with more than 12 different service providers, including engineering studios and recommendations from friends, I hired James and his studio, Old Friends, to build the product's future. Not only is he incredibly qualified from a functional perspective, but also from the whole approach — every discussion has pushed the product into a more rounded, quality experience for our customers.

Founder / Head of Marketing at Margo

Jimmy Shelton · Axios

It’s amazing how much everyone loves the site. It’s so cool. It feels so us. We’ve been showing it around and using it in other partner meetings to try and sell more.

Vice President at Axios Studio

Daniel Klopfenstein · Fantesca Estate

We highly recommend James for any web development project, regardless of its scale. His clarity in communication and punctuality throughout our project made him a valuable extension of our team. Our design team provided James a landing page mockup. James not only completed the project on time, but he also responded with constructive feedback and suggestions for how we could improve our work and achieve our goals.

Marketing Manager at Fantesca Estate & Winery

Enterprise Marketing Team

We met with four designers before deciding to work with Old Friends, and it was your approach and personality on our initial call that made me want to choose you. You took the time to understand what we were trying to create and why, the other designers just asked that we sent over our content and they'd get back to us with what they could do. You've been fantastic to work with, and I will be certain to recommend you to my comm colleagues. 10/10.

Marketing Team at Fortune 100 Company

Kade Keith · IBM

James is one of the finest developers I have had the pleasure of working with. He has the vision for the big picture, the skills to get the details right, and can clearly communicate why and what he does. He is an excellent collaborator capable of producing elegant technical solutions to almost any problem.

His work also stands the test of time. Speaking specifically to the project we worked on together, the parts that he had a hand in making are consistently the most resilient and easiest to maintain. For that I am continually thankful.

Senior Software Engineer

Mark Bessen · Storyfit

James is a talented front-end developer with a keen eye for design. He was an instrumental part of our product development team at StoryFit, serving as a connection point between product management, design, and engineering teams, while also leading the development of our front-end app.

CTO at Storyfit

Deck Docs

Personifying consultancy services with brand-inspired metaphors and motion