Bass Shaker.
Software designer and engineer
I’m Bass. Bassem Shaker on the paperwork. I’ve spent 16 years as an engineer and designer, mostly inside other people’s companies: Deliveroo, Farmdrop, Friday, and most recently Nory. In 2025 I started Bloombase Studio because I wanted to make things under my own name and stay close to them for a long time.
I try to keep an operator’s view: how the day actually runs, where the workarounds live, whether the copy is honest under pressure. The good work tends to be in the answers to those questions, not in the headline.
How I work.
- 1
Make the boring screens as good as the marketing screens.
The home page gets seen once. The settings page gets lived in. I spend most of my time on the screens nobody is going to screenshot.
- 2
Default to the calm version.
Quieter type, smaller motion, less chrome. If something needs to shout to work, it usually doesn’t work.
- 3
Words are part of the design.
If the copy on a button is fuzzy, the model underneath is fuzzy. I write the sentence first and let the interface argue with it.
- 4
The empty state is the front door.
Most people meet a product when there’s nothing in it yet. That screen should explain itself, set the tone, and leave them with one obvious next thing to do.
- 5
One person should be able to hold the whole product in their head.
It keeps the surface area honest. When the product gets too big for one head, the answer is usually to cut, not to grow the team.
What I’m working on now.
Most of my week goes to RitualPass. Some of that work comes off a roadmap. More of it comes from a phone call with a studio owner describing what they need.
Outside of that, I take on a handful of contract projects each year. Usually an early product still finding its shape, or a later one that’s lost its thread. The shape of those engagements is on the services page.