Justin Zilla

Designer in San Francisco

Justin Zilla

Designer in San Francisco

I’ve spent my life building systems—real ones, not just metaphors. Data centers, club nights, servers humming under flickering fluorescents. Infrastructure has always made sense to me. You plan for failure, you watch the load, you leave space for the unknown. Eventually, that mindset becomes muscle memory. You stop needing certainty. You just prepare better.

These days, I call myself a Hell Designer. That’s not a job title. It’s a worldview. I take the wreckage—of tech, of identity, of recovery—and shape it into something with function. Sometimes that looks like a cursed little website. Sometimes it’s a dinner party in my head with Bill Maher and a Taoist rabbit. Sometimes it’s just listening to a cat named Coco breathe.

I’m not interested in pitching myself. I’m interested in being real. I’ve been manic, I’ve been silent. I’ve built a life out of glue, karaoke echoes, and very sharp instincts. I don’t do God mode. I do uptime.