You deal with me
The person you speak to is the person understanding the problem, making the design decisions and doing the work.
About Athay Design
Big-agency thinking.
Small-business simplicity.
Athay Design gives small businesses direct access to more than 20 years of digital design experience — without the layers, jargon or big upfront project costs that can make getting good digital work unnecessarily difficult.
20+
years designing digital experiences
1:1
direct access to your designer
£79
website plans from £79 per month
Why Athay Design exists
Good digital design shouldn't only be available to big businesses.
I've spent more than two decades designing websites, digital products and customer experiences.
Much of that work has been around complicated problems: understanding what customers need, simplifying difficult journeys and working out how technology can make something genuinely easier to use.
But smaller businesses often don't get access to that kind of thinking.
Instead, the choice can feel like paying thousands for an agency project, trying to build something yourself or buying a cheap website that looks acceptable but hasn't really considered how the business works.
I think there's useful space between those options.
That's what Athay Design is for.
A different model
Less machinery around the work.
More experience in it.
Athay Design isn't trying to recreate a traditional agency on a smaller scale. The model is deliberately simpler.
We start with the business
Before deciding what to build, I want to understand what you do, who your customers are and what needs to work better.
Technology is a tool
Modern tools make it possible to work faster and more efficiently. I use them where they're useful, while the thinking and design judgement stay very human.
Keep it proportionate
Not every problem needs a rebuild, a huge specification or months of work. The solution should make sense for the size of the problem and the business.
The person behind it
I'm Stuart Athay.
I'm a product and digital designer with more than 20 years' experience designing things people actually have to use.
My background spans websites, digital products, mobile experiences and complex customer journeys.
I've worked on everything from relatively simple interactions to products where clarity, trust and making the right decision really matter.
That experience has taught me that good design isn't about making something look clever. It's about understanding the problem, removing unnecessary complexity and making the next step obvious.
That's the same thinking I bring to Athay Design, whether we're building a new small-business website or improving one part of an existing customer experience.
What experience changes
You're not just paying for someone to build pages.
The value is knowing what should be on them, what shouldn't, and how everything should work together.
01
Asking better questions
Getting underneath the initial request to understand what the business and its customers actually need.
02
Making complexity simpler
Turning complicated information, choices and processes into something customers can understand.
03
Knowing what matters
Concentrating effort where it can improve the experience rather than adding features simply because we can.
04
Designing the whole journey
Thinking beyond an individual page to how someone finds you, understands you, takes action and what happens next.
One simple principle
The website is the output.
Your business is where we start.
Sometimes you'll need a new website. Sometimes improving what you already have will be the smarter answer. And sometimes we'll discover that a different digital change could make a bigger difference.
I'm interested in solving the useful problem — not finding the biggest project I can sell you.
Working together
Straightforward from the start.
You don't need to write a specification or learn design terminology.
Tell me about the business, what you're trying to achieve and anything that currently feels harder than it should.
I'll ask the questions, help make sense of the problem and work out a sensible way forward.
From there the process is simple: understand, plan, design and build, then launch and support.
See how it worksStart with a conversation
Tell me about your business.
You don't need to know exactly what you need. Tell me where you are now and what you'd like to make better, and we'll start there.
Continue exploring
From £79 a month
20+ years' experience
Direct access to your designer
Ongoing support
Built around your business