Ellev8

// Senior design leadership that ships. Denver.

Brand to software.
Shipped in weeks.

Most recently, Subsurface Water Storage: brand and full website, live in about three weeks. Before that, I led design at Dollar General for 12M+ monthly users.

Start with ScopeSee the work

A two-week paid diagnostic. Fixed fee, credited if you proceed.

The Subsurface Water Storage homepage on desktop, designed and built by Ellev8
The Subsurface Water Storage homepage on a phone

// Recent work

Work you can open.

Subsurface Water Storage · Parker, Colorado · 2026

Brand and website, live in about three weeks.

Delivered

The brand, the full website, and the build behind it, end to end.

Result

A Colorado water storage company now has a live site that shows water providers and agriculture how storing water underground loses nothing to evaporation.

Read the caseSee the live site
The Subsurface Water Storage homepage on desktop
The Subsurface Water Storage homepage on a phone

Holly Hills Bible Church · Denver, Colorado · 2026

A 40-year sermon archive, now a teaching library the church owns.

Delivered

A new logo and brand, the full website, the archive moved from WordPress to SermonAudio, and a searchable teaching library built on top of it.

Result

4,600+ messages from 27 teachers, going back to 1990. Browse by series, speaker, book of the Bible, or topic. Agents pull new sermons in from SermonAudio every night, so no one has to touch the site.

Read the caseSee the teaching library
The Holly Hills Bible Church homepage on desktop: Holding Fast the Word of Life
The Holly Hills Bible Church teaching library on a phone

12M+

monthly users under my design lead, up from 5M, with a design team that grew to eight and ended at five, reporting to the CDO.

Dollar General, Fortune 500, 2022 to 2026

113

screens shipped in six weeks. 75K lockouts prevented.

Dollar General, auth rescue

130%+

engagement recovered. Six screens down to one.

Dollar General, Wallet

A to C

first design hire, Series A through C. A 100+ component design system.

Swimlane, 2016 to 2022

Dollar General work was done through Agilitee.

All case studies at jdmcculley.com/ux

// Ways in

Three ways to work together. One way to start.

Founders grow from the brand into the software. Owners of a business already running get the website and back office fixed. Product teams bring me in to lead design.

// For founders

You're great at the work and invisible online.

Rung by rung

Each rung fixed in scope before work starts

Start with the brand
  • Brand: positioning, an identity, and the words for what you do
  • Website: a shipped site I host and keep running. The content and code are yours to take anytime
  • Sales and presentation material in the same brand
  • Back-office tools for the work still done by hand
  • Product or field software, starting with a 0 to 1 prototype

// For business owners

The business is busy and working. The website or the back office isn't.

Fix the one thing

Scoped to the problem, fixed before work starts

Tell me what's slowing you down
  • Website: rebuilt or repaired, easy for your team to update. I host and run it, and you can take it with you anytime
  • Back-office tools that replace the spreadsheets, re-keying and email chains
  • One system across locations or brands, so each one stops reinventing its own
  • Cleanup when a site has been neglected or left behind
  • No new brand required. Your name and your look stay

// Lead · I run it

Product is making the design calls.

2 to 3 days a week

Embedded, or Interim for 3 to 6 months

Bring me in to lead
  • Direction your designers follow
  • Critique that holds
  • The right hires
  • My hands on the one or two things that matter most
  • AI-augmented workflows, the same ones I run my own practice on
  • Proof: Dollar General at 12M+ monthly users, Swimlane from first hire through Series C

Every engagement starts with Scope: a two-week paid diagnostic, fixed fee, credited if you proceed.

// How I work

Agents do the production. I make every call.

That's how a brand and a site ship in about three weeks.

See how the work moves
  1. 01The agents do the research, the drafts, and the checks.
  2. 02I make every call that matters.
  3. 03Nothing ships until I sign off.

Built for my own practice · The Morning Scan Desk

Hundreds of listings a week, two minutes of decisions a morning.

Scheduled agents read 18 sources every weekday, screen what they find against rules I wrote, and stop at three points where only I decide. The design work was choosing which decisions stay human.

Design the decisions, then automate around them.

The Morning Scan Desk Today view in its night theme: three listings marked hot, three new, nine live and not yet worked, and 23 screened out
The Today view, shown with sample data.

106

weekday scans run by scheduled agents since February

450+

listings tracked, one record each, every sighting kept

63%

screened out by rules, each with its reason so I can audit it

~2 min

of my attention each morning

How a listing moves

  1. AgentScanReads 18 sources at 9 AM and flags any that failed.
  2. RulesScreenRules I wrote remove what doesn’t fit, and log why.
  3. AgentToday viewWhat’s new, what’s urgent, what’s waiting.
  4. MeWorth a look?One click: open it or pass.
  5. AgentOverviewReads the full listing and recommends. Then stops.
  6. MeGo or passOnly a go spends real agent time.
  7. AgentDraftBuilds the tailored response and checks it.
  8. MeReview and sendI read it, fix it, and send it myself.
Agents or rulesMy decision
JD McCulley

// About

One operator. Two engagements at a time.

I'm JD McCulley. Twenty-five years in design, eight at director level, at Fortune 500 and venture scale. Most recently Dollar General through Agilitee, 2022 to 2026. Before that, Swimlane, first design hire through Series C.

Ellev8 is me and a system of agents. Two engagements at a time, so the calls stay mine.

Full case studies on my portfolio

// FAQ

Questions before you start?

How Scope works, who does the work, and what you own at the end.

A two-week paid diagnostic with a fixed fee. You get one written recommendation. The fee is credited if you proceed. If you don’t, the recommendation is yours to keep.

// The way in

Two weeks. One written recommendation.

Scope is the only way in. A fixed fee, credited if you proceed. If you don't, the recommendation is yours to keep.

Start with ScopeHow engagements are structured