About Me

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I’ve been making products as a designer and developer for more than a decade. And in that time I’ve worked on lots of different challenges: from community building and gamification, to data, analytics, and management tools, ecommerce, marketing experiences, branding, design systems, and accessibility.

I help to ensure the products I work on are designed with clarity and expressiveness, and have strong architectural and goal-driven foundations. They are finely crafted, deeply personalized, and importantly, accessible to everyone.

Previously, I was a design lead at Team Liquid where I helped establish their design practice, and led the creation of several new products. And I’m a design educator helping teams with accessibility, operations, and mentoring designers with their craft.

See my résumé for more.

As a composer, my work is constantly engaged with intimate and complex details in music. The nuanced and expressive capabilities of sounds and instruments. The nature of shape and form on kineticism and palpableness. How cognition can be influenced in several ways to change one’s experience of a piece.

The music I write combines these elements, blending modern and traditional ideas to create works that are timbrally rich and colorful, deeply structured, dynamic, and driven by a tangible organicism to their expression.

I’ve written for many different contexts: from traditional acoustic ensembles, to multi-channel fixed and live electronics, sound installations, and stage works. And my music has been performed in concerts and at festivals internationally.

Check out my compositions or get in touch if you’re interested in performing one of my works or would like to work together on a new piece.

You can also grab my musician’s biography for publicity-related things.

Endorsements

Over the years, I’ve worked with some pretty great people. Here’s some of the kind words they’ve had to say about me.

Luuk Barten

Lead Front-End Developer, Team Liquid

Having worked intensively with him on design systems, documentation and web-accessibility guidelines, I can’t remember any colleague or friend being as meticulous as Nik. It’s rare to see such attention to detail and semantics as working with Nik infectiously moves you to look one step further.
Indu Reddy

Associate Creative Director, Crunchyroll

Nik takes the extra step to ensure code, design, and functionality is always inclusive. His work is extremely intentional and specific. What’s more, Nik has a history of knowledge far beyond the scope of design and development. He has shown me what to expect in working with an amazing lead or executive designer.
Tiffany Peng

Associate Creative Director, Team Liquid

Nik is incredibly open minded and curious, and will always give feedback & criticism careful consideration. And his unique insights from his multi-talented background have contributed to creating approaches & solutions we wouldn't have even considered, much less entertained.

He's incredible at finding color in black and white—so the "boring work" is almost never boring, and the difficult-to-swallow becomes easy-to-digest.
Stacey Yamada

Brand Design Lead, Team Liquid

Nikolas has the ability to take some of the densest information and be able simplify it for others to understand. He has a unique approach that combines both creative and scientific techniques to things.