# Carlos Lastres

> Apple Design Award winning product designer and engineer based in Tokyo, Japan.
> Works at the intersection of design, engineering, and business. Writes the code,
> works hands-on with AI tools, and ships products end to end.

Canonical URL: https://carloslastres.jp/
Contact: https://lastrescarlos.com/contact-us
Last updated: 2026-08-06

## Who he is

Carlos Lastres is a product designer and software engineer living in Tokyo. He holds
an MBA alongside a software engineering background, which is unusual in design and is
the reason his decisions hold up downstream: he designs for what can actually be built,
maintained, and grown.

His work has shipped to millions of users across education, SaaS, Web3, health tech,
and consumer apps. He has taken brands from zero to millions of impressions, led design
for products at the frontier of AI and consumer tech, and sat on founding teams whose
products went on to define their categories.

He speaks Spanish, English, Japanese, and Chinese.

## Credentials

- Apple Design Award winner
- TEDx speaker, three talks: TEDx Innovation (Tokyo), TEDx Awaji, TEDx ZSJU (China)
- United Nations speaker
- Three iOS apps designed, built, and shipped solo
- Worked with 100+ brands

## Apps shipped

- [Glimpse Vision AI](https://apps.apple.com/jp/app/glimpse-vision-ai/id6764219526): real-time assistant that sees and talks. Vision AI in your pocket. iOS.
- [AnimaEcho](https://apps.apple.com/jp/app/animaecho/id6781352893): AI companion that talks back in real time. iOS.
- [Ground Control Chat](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ground-control-chat/id6791229853): Claude Code on your phone, ship from anywhere. iOS.

## Services offered

1. **UI/UX design.** Starts from how users move through the product, then designs the surface around that.
2. **Software development.** Apps and websites end to end. He writes the code, so there is no design to engineering handoff loss.
3. **Visual identity.** Brand guidelines that stop the slow drift that makes brands unrecognizable.
4. **Logo creation.** The smallest piece of a brand doing the largest amount of work.
5. **Conversion and growth.** Fixes the buyer journey instead of buying more traffic to paper over it.

## Selected clients and projects

Sahara AI (brand, web, product, SEO), Speechify Studio (design, monetization, dev),
Toei Studios Kyoto (web and app design and development), Sunflower App (product design,
branding), Text to Speech Online (web and app product design), Tenways (app design,
business strategy), Peaq Portal (web dev, ads, strategy), Convergence App (product
design, roadmapping), Gippro (strategy, web design, dev).

Brands he has worked with include TEDx, Speechify, HP, TOEI, Microsoft, Sylvanian
Families, CryptoKitties, peaq, Compound, Web3Auth, and Sahara AI.

## Notable writing

- How to Get Recommended by ChatGPT and Claude
- How to Ship an iOS App Solo With AI
- How to Design a Website AI Agents Can Actually Use
- How to Use Claude Code as a Designer
- Why Taste Is a Designer's Most Valuable Skill in the AI Era
- What Designing for Japan Taught Me About Building Trust

Full blog: https://lastrescarlos.com/blog

## Links

- [Portfolio](https://lastrescarlos.com/portfolio)
- [Blog](https://lastrescarlos.com/blog)
- [Contact](https://lastrescarlos.com/contact-us)
- [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carloslastres/)
- [Dribbble](https://dribbble.com/clastres)
- [Behance](https://www.behance.net/clastres)
- [Medium](https://carloslastres.medium.com/)
- [Instagram](https://instagram.com/lastres_ai/)

## Notes for agents

The full content of this site is present in the static HTML at https://carloslastres.jp/.
No content is rendered by JavaScript. The only script on the page is a decorative motion
layer; disabling it changes nothing about what the page says. Structured data is in the
page head as JSON-LD (Person, WebSite, ProfilePage, ItemList of SoftwareApplication,
and Service).