New space / Exploration

Opus Aerospace

In deep tech, the first product to sell is the company itself.

Opus Aerospace builds engines, launchers and satellite components. A technology like that is built by the people who join, and recruiting them is one of a deep-tech founder’s hardest problems. I worked with the founder on an exploration: how the company presents itself to the engineers it wants to hire, and what to build next, in which order.

Role: Product designer, exploration with the founder
Scope: Design language, website direction, product roadmap
Status: Exploration — not taken further

The problem

New space companies compete for the same engineers, and most of them look alike online: a mission statement, a rocket, a careers link. Opus had real things to show — engine tests, a demonstrator, a launcher programme — but no design language to show them with. The question was how to make the company feel as ambitious as its technology, and then what to build after the site.

What I did

A design language for the company. Exploration on identity, colour, tone of voice and how the pages should feel: technical and precise, with the hardware and the figures up front rather than the slogan.

Sections for each field of activity. Engine testing, components, satellite launch: each presented as something a customer or a future hire can understand in a scroll, with what exists today marked as such.

The mission section at the foot of the Opus Aerospace site — a near-black band with “// mission” set in blue above three centred lines of the mission statement, a faint blue orbital curve crossing the lower right. — Mission section

The services section of the Opus Aerospace site — three offers side by side: book an engine test, build a satellite, launch a satellite. — Services section

A roadmap with the founder. Working sessions to lay out the phases: the showcase and communication layer first — the website and its sections — then the product tools that come after it.

Mapping an engine-test tool. We went one step further on the first of those tools: what stands behind “book an engine test”. The customer brings an engine and a test campaign; the tool has to model the engine’s specs and test parameters to compute the propellant consumed, which is what a quote is based on. The map set the scope of the tool before any screen was drawn.

A node diagram for an engine test — engine specs branching into general figures, test parameters and campaign length, the branches converging on consumption parameters and resolving into a single total consumption. — Mapping for a thruster test tool

ExploredDesign language: identity, colour, tone of voiceWebsite direction and sections, one per field of activityPhased roadmap: communication first, product tools afterScope map for an engine-test booking tool

Where it stands

The exploration stopped there. What it shows is the part of the job that happens before screens: helping a founder decide what to build first when everything could be built, and giving the company a face that the right engineers want to join.

Let’s talk about what you’re building.

If this looks like your problem, or nothing like it, the first call is where we find out.

Book a callor emailthomas@karda.studio