JHB

(Expertise) I shorten the journeys people give up on.

Flash to AI, and every shift between.

Twenty years turning things people have to use into things they want to: loan applications, booking journeys, job portals, shopfronts. Some of it for a bank that 12.8 million people rely on, some for a hydraulics workshop. The discipline does not change with the budget.

The case studies go into how.

View case studies
A fabricator in a welding mask joining a hydraulic cylinder flange at a workshop bench, sparks lighting the steel, a white hard hat hanging on the wall behind.

Milestones

  • Thesis: Design for the Internet. 2007
  • B-Tech, cum laude. 2007
  • Founded a studio of four. 2015
  • Freelance designer. 2017
  • Best architecture site in SA. 2024
  • Co-founded an AI studio. 2026
Absa's home loans page, a family among moving boxes beneath the headline Find the home loan that's best for you.

Featured websites

(Expertise) Regulated work is where design earns its keep.

Finance, healthcare, recruitment

Constraint is the useful part. A journey that has to satisfy a regulator, a risk team and somebody applying on a phone at midnight has only one honest answer, and finding it is the job.

Two hands holding a phone in a dark kitchen, lit only by its screen, which shows Absa's mobile home loans page with an Apply now button.
An entire Absa home loans page printed as one long scroll, rolled at both ends and unrolled across a reclaimed timber desk in a studio, marked up in red pen with revise, simplify and move up, beside an open notebook and a red pen, with a jacaranda in blossom through the window.

The record, in figures

  • 20+ Years in practice
  • 12.8M People using the lending journeys
  • 19 Projects published on this site

Case studies

The reasoning, not just the result.

View more work
A woman in her own kitchen in the morning, turned away from the camera, reading Absa’s mobile home loans page on her phone: the headline Apply to access funds from my Home Loan, a Tell me more button and an orange Apply now button.
Absa Personal Bank Redesigning the 59 pages that lead to a home loan
The studio at night: a large display on a timber desk showing the Graaft home page and its promise, we build AI people, made present, with a keyboard and trackpad in front and a dark window behind.
Graaft Building the site that sells AI people

One client, fourteen years

“I have been working with Will for over 14 years now. He has designed and managed a number of websites for me, for my different business ventures, both in South Africa and abroad. I have recommended him and his services to a number of clients and friends who have had success with him.”
— Michael Lewis Photographer

Twenty years, and I’m still hands-on.

Contact

Absa Home Loans. 59 screens, 2025.

Will Derman at his desk in the studio at night, lit only by his screens: Absa's home loans page on the display, and on the laptop beside it the design file it was built in — dozens of small screens on a dark canvas, joined by connector lines into one long journey.