Principal, Northstar Folio
Brooklyn, since 2022. Design sprints, design systems and embedded retainers for SaaS, fintech and health-tech teams, with no more than three active product teams at a time.
How we build
Senior product craft, without agency overhead.
Agencies often pitch with senior partners, staff the work with junior generalists and disappear behind three-week slide-deck reveals. Elena Cardoso runs Northstar Folio like an experienced staff designer sitting inside your product squad.
Practice boundary
What the studio does—and what it hands off.
Product design, UX research and design systems, all code-literate: everyone here understands box models, grid constraints, API latency states and component props. Production front-end engineering, brand identity from scratch and paid media get referred out to people who do them better.
Experience
Where the work came from.
Lead product designer, fintech
2018 to 2022. Owned the onboarding and account surfaces, and built the first design system the engineering team actually kept.
Designer, editorial and print studio
2014 to 2018. Layout, type and art direction for magazines and catalogues, which is where the colour habit started.
Qualifications
What can be checked.
- 01
BFA in graphic design, Rhode Island School of Design, 2014.
- 02
Certified Professional in Accessibility Core Competencies, IAAP, renewed 2025.
- 03
Working day to day in Figma, Framer and a good deal of paper.