Alexander Stephanos Lakas is a Los Angeles-based designer and art director with over a decade of experience whose work spans product and interaction design, identity, systems, prototyping, and generative AI. His work includes local discovery and booking experiences at Google, home and sharing products at LinkedIn, and data infrastructure work at Fiveonefour. His work has also been featured in Forbes and TechCrunch, and on The Tonight Show.[12][12][1][7][3]
Raised on the East Coast, Lakas began in illustration, animation, web development, and interactive design before moving west to work across Bay Area technology teams and Los Angeles creative studios. That visual foundation continues to inform projects for Peanut Travel, Culprit, Google Maps, and independent creative ventures. His practice centers storytelling, craft, humor, Swiss-influenced design principles, motion, and detail.[12][12][11]
Alex was raised on the East Coast, where an early interest in illustration, animation, and making for the web shaped his approach to design. He began experimenting with visual systems, motion, and interactive work before product design became the center of his practice.[12]
Alex later moved west, first working across Bay Area technology companies and then building a Los Angeles-based practice. The move carried his work from self-directed creative experiments into maps, search, content experiences, and the small-business tools used by people every day.[12][13]
His education has been largely project-led: work on Google My Business and local discovery in Maps, LinkedIn Home and Sharing, the Peanut Travel browser extension, and Fiveonefour data infrastructure experiences built the range behind his later practice.[1][4][13][11]
Alex has held design roles across agency, startup, and large technology company contexts. Public profile summaries list early agency and ecommerce work followed by roles at Google, LinkedIn, Peanut Travel, Culprit Creative, and Fiveonefour.[12][12]
Branching out
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Before joining larger product teams, Alex worked across independent web, identity, and interactive projects. That early practice established the editorial systems, motion studies, and direct visual language that later carried into product work.[12]
These projects treated websites and prototypes as complete experiences rather than static portfolios: each combined narrative, interface, and behavior. The work formed the foundation for Alex's later focus on clear systems and useful digital tools.
Local search for merchants and consumers
At Google, Alex worked across Google My Business, Local Search, and Maps. His work helped shape local discovery, Live Popular Times, visit-duration information, and booking flows that connect people with nearby businesses and services.[12][13][10]
Those experiences turned complex local data into timely signals people could act on: whether a place was busy, when to visit, and how to make a reservation without leaving Search or Maps. For small businesses, the same tools made practical information and conversion paths easier to maintain and find.
Modernizing social media for professionals
As a Senior Product Designer at LinkedIn, Alex worked on the home experience and sharing tools, then helped develop polls and live video features as the platform expanded how professional communities could participate and connect.[12][4][7]
The goal was to make professional participation feel less formal and more immediate. Streamlined sharing, lightweight polls, and live formats gave members more ways to contribute, while preserving the context and utility people expect from a professional network.
Freelance and 0-1
Alex co-founded Peanut Travel, a browser-based travel-planning product that partnered with Insured Nomads, a travel-insurance company, before it was acquired by the company. He then served as Design Director at Culprit Creative, extending his work across brand, social, and product experiences.[12][11]
Built by a lean founding team, Peanut delivered booking-time travel intelligence for thousands of destinations across Expedia, Booking.com, and Google Flights. At Peanut, the product brought useful travel choices into the browsing moment, reducing the distance between research and action. At Culprit, Alex applied the same product thinking to creative direction, building systems that could carry a clear point of view across platforms and campaigns.[12]
New territory — AI Data Infra at 514
As Head of Design at Fiveonefour, Alex shaped data-infrastructure products and design systems through 2026, including work for F45 and District Cannabis.[1]
The work focused on making technical systems easier to understand and operate: interfaces that reveal what data is doing, workflows that support faster decisions, and a shared design language that can scale across a growing product. The team also built AI agents that ingest, stream, and transform data in just a few clicks. The F45 and District Cannabis projects carried that discipline into consumer-facing experiences.
Alex's published work often uses restrained typography, black-and-white palettes, kinetic transitions, image-led case studies, and direct editorial writing. LinkedIn recommendations describe a collaborator who brings clarity to complex problems, pairs a strong visual point of view with practical product judgment, and makes teams feel heard throughout the process. His Dribbble profile describes his practice as art direction and design.[12][12]
Alex's work has appeared in coverage of independent product, travel, and technology projects. Forbes featured Peanut Travel in reporting on travel planning, while TechCrunch covered LinkedIn work involving polls and live video-based events, as well as the modernization of LinkedIn's homepage and sharing experience.[7][5][8]
His Google Live Popular Times work was featured on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, alongside publication coverage of Fiveonefour's data-infrastructure practice and other independent creative projects.[3]
- Fiveonefour announces its $17M raise. PR Newswire.
- Do I need a COVID test to travel? And other summer travel questions. Forbes.
- LinkedIn adds polls and live video-based events. TechCrunch.
- Google adds salon and spa bookings through Maps and Search. TechCrunch.
- Google Live Popular Times featured on The Tonight Show. YouTube.
- LinkedIn is gearing up for a redesign. TechCrunch.
- Designing a simpler, more inclusive LinkedIn Home and Sharing experience. Case Study Club.
Fiveonefour
Prototyping AI with AI
How AI tools can help turn early product ideas into useful prototypes.
Designing a simpler, more inclusive LinkedIn Home & Sharing
Behind-the-scenes thinking on a reimagined social network.
Know before you go with Google's Live Popular Times
A case study on real-time local information for Google Maps and Search.
- Claude
- Codex
- Hermes
- Vercel
- GitHub
- Figma
- shadcn/ui
- Three.js
- WebGL
- Webflow
- React
- GSAP
- Basic ass design principles
- Grids
- Minimalism
- ^Alex Lakas featured in 10 UX design portfolio examples. Shutterstock.
- ^Alex Lakas featured in UX designer portfolios worth studying. UXPin.
- ^Alex Lakas featured in 30 UX designer portfolio examples. FounderJar.
- ^Alex Lakas featured in product-designer portfolio case studies. DesignPeeps.
- ^Google Maps redesign case study crediting Alex Lakas. Simon Fung Creative.
- ^Alex Lakas portfolio and product-design archive. Dribbble.
- ^Alex Lakas product-design portfolio. Behance.
- ^Fiveonefour announces $17M raise. PR Newswire.
- ^Insured Nomads acquires Peanut. ITIJ.
- ^Do I need a COVID test to travel? And other summer travel questions. Forbes.
- ^Designing LinkedIn Home and Sharing Experience. Case Study Club.
- ^LinkedIn adds polls and live video-based events. TechCrunch.
- ^Google Live Popular Times featured on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. YouTube.
- ^Google adds salon and spa bookings through Maps and Search. TechCrunch.
- ^LinkedIn is gearing up for a redesign. TechCrunch.
- ^Alex Lakas portfolio. Craftwork.
- ^Google Business Profile help: popular times, wait times, and visit duration. Google.
- ^Alex's design portfolio archive. The Creative Finder.
- ^U.S. design patents: D893,509, D892,816, D869,501. Patents.
Social games and ecommerce
Beginning in 2009, Alex worked with Cubix Labs and Virid on digital experiences spanning social games and ecommerce. The work combined product thinking, interaction design, and campaign systems at a time when social platforms were becoming a primary place for brands to meet people.
That period included work connected to Zippo and Nintendo, translating established brands into playful, participatory web experiences. It established an early interest in designing systems that balance clear utility with character, motion, and a strong visual point of view.[12]