Ersel AktaşPrincipal product designer & design engineerEskişehir, Türkiye

I design products, and I build them.

I’ve been designing & coding for a living since 2012: software, brands, packaging, and now and then a game. In larger organizations I work as part of a team. Each project has a Method view that shows how it was made.

Now: Design & front-end consultant
Noctua · Birtech Technology
Studio: Founder, Aldacı
Design & development
Lab: Founder, AstroNote
Games, apps, dev tools

Selected work

Nine projects I’m proud of. Switch any of them to Method to see how it was made.

Noctua

Infrastructure monitoring platform · DCIM, BMS, EMS

I named it, drew its logo, designed its five hundred screens and guided the team that built them.

Client: Birtech Technology
Years: 2019 — now · live since 2024
Role: Product designer, then outsourced design & front-end consultant: hands-on build, team management, training
Scope: Naming & identity, product design, design system, Angular rebuild, launch, mobile

Full case →

Noctua cabinet and power dashboard: cabinet, UPS, battery cabinet, sensor ports and energy cost

Noctua 2D plan of the data hall with live sensor values

Cabinet and power dashboard · mobile visualisation · the data hall as a 3D twin and a 2D plan

Sequence

2019–23Product UI & design system from zero, as “Sensaway 3”
2024New name & logo; Noctua goes live
2024Ground-up Angular rebuild
2025Launch: deck, guide, webinars; on sale since October
2026Mobile app

Name & logo

Sensaway 3 became Noctua. The product had been rebuilt from zero, so I gave it a name of its own. Noctua is Latin for the little owl, from nox, night. The December 2024 sketches tried an owl shield, chevrons and an open ring; the ring became the owl’s eye in the final logo.

Numbers

50+Clients, Oct 2025 – Oct 2026

509Angular components

6Team members guided

−40%Front-end dev cycle

Palette

#6C63FFaccent

#A3A0FBaccent-2

#3C3C4Cink

#21BA45fine

#FBBD31warning

#F47822alert

#DB2828critical

Rule

Tokens only, no hard-coded hex. Status colours carry meaning and nothing else; the accent is reserved for what the user can act on.

ng-alda

Angular design system & component library

The library I wished I had on every project. It now runs inside Ulory, iDenote and parts of Noctua.

Studio: AstroNote
Years: 2025 — now
Role: Design, engineering, documentation
Scope: 60 components, theming engine, Figma kit, docs site, licensing

Full case →

Acme Console, a demo app built with ng-alda, with an open date picker and toasts

Acme Console, built entirely from ng-alda components

Lineage

2025·02CWEX: first shared components
2025·08Tallsoft: second generation
2026·02ng-alda 1.0, now 2.1
2026Ulory, iDenote, Noctua

Numbers

60Components

9Icon sets

5Locales, incl. RTL

~95%Test coverage

Theming

// Ulory's whole palette, from one colour
changeTheme('#2A7AED', TRIADIC);
// → primary #2A7AED · secondary #ED2A7A · WCAG-checked

Default

#EB4037accent

#EB9A37secondary

#2A7AEDulory

#ED2A7Atriadic

Birtech

Brand architecture for an infrastructure-monitoring company · rebrand, product logos, packaging, 3D

The parent logo, the product logos under it, from Noctua to SensPoint, and the boxes, catalogues and renders in between: eleven years, start-up to enterprise.

Years: 2015 — now
Role: Multidisciplinary designer → rebrand lead
Scope: Identity & guideline, packaging, catalogues, 3D product renders, sales decks

Full case →

Brand book · carrier bags · BS-4500 packaging · 2025 guideline

Sequence

2015First identities & marketing
2020Corporate identity
2020–22Product catalogues
2021Device packaging
2025Rebrand, guideline v2

Palette

#062B59navy

#E32026red

#0056B3blue

#F6F8FEpaper

Rule

Navy carries, red signals. The same two colours had to work on a 3 cm device label, a printed catalogue and a sales deck on a conference screen.

Vola

Aviation technology products · flight bag, training platform, website

Products for aviation organisations, from the tablet in the cockpit to the platform that trains the crew.

Client: Vola Aero, via Aldacı
Years: 2023 — 2024
Role: Senior product designer & UI developer, dedicated team
Scope: EFB, TAPS & LMS training platform, aviation SaaS, website

Full case →

Vola corporate website on tablet, laptop and phone

EFB in the cockpit · training platform · the EFB’s 3D route globe · corporate website

Products

EFB · cockpit tabletTAPS · training analysisLMS · courses & examsAviation SaaS · web & mobileCorporate site

Team

One team, one stack. Two years as Vola’s dedicated design and development team: every product in Angular, wrapped with Capacitor for tablet and phone, the flight bag’s complex views coded by hand.

Built with

Angular 17Capacitor 6CesiumJSNxSSR

Spin-off

AstroNote Labs ships a free METAR/TAF decoder.

S4E

Cyber-security platform: website, onboarding & web app

Sign-ups went from 12–15% of visitors to 40–45%: three times as many members from the same traffic.

Client: S4E, via Aldacı
Years: 06.2024 — 01.2025
Role: Senior UX designer
Scope: Website redesign, onboarding flow, web app, design system · UX & front end

Full case →

The redesigned site on three screens · the web app dashboard

Numbers

12–15%Sign-ups before

40–45%Sign-ups after

3×Members, same traffic

6Months

Scope

Website redesignOnboarding flowWeb app dashboardDesign systemFront end

Palette

#1483D2app blue

#0F69AAsite CTA

#121F28ink

#2DC866signal

#F9FAFBpage

Rule

One promise, kept. The hero says no expertise required; the onboarding, the plan picker and the dashboard all had to hold to it.

Beempa

Every marketplace in one panel: brand, website & web app

Orders, cargo, invoices and stock from every marketplace, in one panel, under one new brand.

Client: Beempa, via Aldacı
Years: 2025 — 2026
Role: Brand & product designer
Scope: Brand identity & style guide, brochure, website, web app UI in Angular

Full case →

Orders panel · z-fold brochure · the logo on its three grounds

Numbers

20+Marketplace & cargo integrations

5,000Orders integrated free

1Panel for all of them

Connects

TrendyolHepsiburadaAmazonN11ShopifyİkasEtsyAras Kargo

Palette

#122D51navy

#245AA2blue

#F0F3F8mist

#C6242Bsignal red

Built with

AngularBrand & style guideWebsiteSeller panel

Tallsoft

Accounting & e-services SaaS: brand, website & app

One logo, four products: accounting, e-signature, ERP and CRM.

Client: Tallsoft, via Aldacı
Years: 2025
Role: Product designer & UI developer
Scope: Logo & sub-brands, website, print & social, web app UI & front end

Full case →

Accounting dashboard and logo · four sub-brands · landing page · 50×70 poster

Products

Muhasebe · accountingE-İmza · e-signatureERPCRM

Palette

#351F62deep purple

#8252FCweb violet

#EA8335orange

#ECE3F0lavender

Built with

Angular 19alda-ds, ng-alda’s second generation

Rule

One logo, four products. The striped logo stays put; the product name beside it changes, so every product reads as Tallsoft first.

Sensaway

IoT & energy monitoring, web & mobile

Where it started: built from zero, grown twenty-fold, and still running beside its successor, Noctua.

Client: Birtech Technology
Years: 2015 — 2020 · still in service
Role: End-to-end UI/UX & front-end
Scope: Sensaway 2 web & mobile, and the next generation that became Noctua

Full case →

Sensaway 3 mobile: the working title before it became Noctua

Numbers

20×Revenue, $100K → $2M

1,100+Users in total

90%Satisfaction · IPSOS

6Years, from zero

Sequence

2015–18Sensaway 2, web & mobile, from zero
2019Next generation starts as “Sensaway 3”
2020Last major version; it keeps running
2024Noctua goes live beside it

The Club Journey

Football management game

A match engine, a 3D world and 1,110 clubs, built by one person with AI as the second pair of hands.

Studio: AstroNote
Years: 2025 — in development
Role: Sole designer & developer, AI-assisted
Scope: Match engine & HUD, 3D world, management UI, crest, website

Full case →

The Club Journey in-engine shot: a keeper dives at grass level in a floodlit stadium

Grass-level replay, rendered in the engine

Under the art

The 2D match view the key art sits on top of.

World

1,110Clubs

80,702Players

60Leagues

89,600Biggest stadium

Built with

WebGPU · OrillusionElectron clientAngular 21 site, 4 languagesCrest & wordmark

How

Built solo, with AI as a pair programmer. Game design, art direction, UI and architecture are mine; AI tools write a good share of the code, and I review and shape what they write.

Logos & identities

99designs, mostly 2017 — 2018 · ~100 contests · 2× winner · 6× finalist

SensCareIdentity · after-sales brand

Lyric MarketLogo · 99designs entry

HighBrainsLogo · software agency

MatrixLogo · 99designs finalist

Franchise RampIdentity · 99designs winner

MoontowerIdentity · 99designs winner

More logos & identities →

How I work

Design starts once there’s an idea or a problem on the table. From there it usually goes like this.

I ask a lot of questions

First I try to understand the idea and the problem properly, and the world the product will live in. My clients know I ask a lot of questions, sometimes more than they’d like.

I look at how others solved it

Then I research the market. I look at the products that do well and at how similar problems have been solved before.

I come up with ideas

My fourteen years of experience, my own reading of the problem, the research and what makes this client’s case unique come together here, and a few possible ideas come out of it.

I show concepts first

Sometimes I pick the best idea and start visualising it. Other times I draw two or three alternatives and we carry on with the one we like. Most clients are convinced once they see the concepts, and they’re happy well before the work is finished.

Then I take it as far as needed

Tokens and the design system come after the concept. From there it depends on what the client needs: just the concept, a full Figma prototype, the design plus the Angular front-end, or the whole thing end to end.

I can look after the build

Sometimes the client has another agency writing the code. Then I do the design and work with that agency directly on the company’s behalf, managing the work and keeping track of it. You can think of that part as consultancy.

Then we measure and adjust

Once it’s out, we look at the metrics and measure what the work changed. Based on that we fine-tune it, or pivot if we need to.

Where ng-alda came from

Client work, 2025 — 2026

2025 · FebCWEX
A finance & ERP platform. The first shared app bar, data table, page wizard and tree.
2025 · AugTallsoft
Accounting SaaS redesign. The second generation, now with its own tokens.
2026 · Febng-alda
Extracted, documented, tested and licensed as a product of its own.
2026Ulory · iDenote · Noctua
All three run on ng-alda now, each with its own theme.

Fourteen years so far

Where I worked, what I built on the side and where I studied, year by year.

Ersel Aktaş on a terrace above the sea, wearing a Birtech lanyard

The archive

Everything else, from logo contests to 3D shorts. Hover a row to see it.

About

Ersel Aktaş · Eskişehir

Hello, I’m Ersel. A multidisciplinary designer who drifted, happily, into code.

I studied visual communication design, started out modelling 3D for games, and entered around a hundred logo contests on 99designs, mostly while I was a student. I won a couple of them. For the last eleven years I’ve been shaping Birtech’s products and brand, from hardware packaging to naming and building Noctua.

Today I consult on design and front-end for Noctua, take on client work through Aldacı, and build my own products at AstroNote. Learning, teaching, sharing, designing and producing are still the parts I like best.

“Life is a never-ending puzzle game about learning. The puzzle is never complete, but the more pieces we place, the clearer the picture becomes.”— Me, on most days

Toolbox: Figma, Illustrator, Photoshop, After Effects · Blender, LightWave, Unity · Angular, TypeScript, RxJS, Storybook, HTML/CSS, Xcode · Claude, Gemini
Beyond the desk: Father of twins · cycling · football · Path of Exile · Age of Empires II since 1999
Languages: Turkish, native · English, professional

Studio · since 2022

Aldacı

My design & development studio. Short, focused engagements for growing brands: products, design systems, identities.

aldaci.com Lab · R&D

AstroNote

Where I build my own things: games, apps and developer tools like ng-alda, Ulory and The Club Journey.

astronote.co

Working on something? I’d love to hear about it.

[email protected]

LinkedIn Aldacı case studies AstroNote 99designs

Design wizard, at your service.