Alex Morgan

Designer & developer.

I build software for people at work, write about interfaces, and develop my own film.

I live in Bristol and work four days a week as the only designer at Halden Health, where I look after a scheduling tool used by about nine hundred district nurses. The other day is for my own things: a slow rewrite of my photo archive, and a small typesetting tool I have been picking at since February. I do take on one project most quarters, usually design and front-end together.

What I am interested in at the moment is how much software can be removed before people notice, keyboard-first interfaces, and the odd fact that almost every form asks for more than it needs. I read a lot about the history of printed timetables, which is less strange than it sounds.

Work

  • Halden Health Rota and visit planning for community nursing teams 2021–
  • Setterby A typesetting tool for short print runs 2024
  • Ovenbird A reading queue that stays quiet 2022
  • Marlowe Press Catalogue and shop for an independent publisher 2020
  • Quay Signal Departure boards for a small ferry operator 2019
  • Fieldnote Offline notebook for survey work 2017

Notes

12 Aug 2026
The form that asked for my middle name
3 Jun 2026
Why shift patterns do not fit a calendar
28 Feb 2026
Setting a book in a browser
9 Nov 2025
Against the empty state illustration
14 Jul 2025
Six years of departure boards
2 Mar 2025
What I learned from printed timetables
21 Oct 2024
Keyboard shortcuts nobody discovers

About

I grew up in Sheffield, studied graphic design at Leeds, and fell into building things when a print job needed a website attached to it. That was 2013. I have been doing both ever since and have stopped trying to pick one.

Most of my work is quiet infrastructure for people who did not choose the software they use. Nurses, ferry crews, printers. It suits me. I am slow, I ask a lot of questions, and I would rather ship something narrow that works on the third Tuesday of the month than something broad that does not.

Outside that: a Rolleiflex I develop at home, long walks along the Avon, and an ongoing argument with my brother about whether Sheffield is in the north.