About

Fernando Mostacero Taking on new projects

One designer,
brief to finished files.

I am a freelance product and experience designer in Auckland, working under my own studio name, Foxtale. Fifteen years in, split between UX and interface work, design systems, gamified learning and the art direction of whole campaigns.

What clients hire me for is the range: I can take a vague problem, find the structure inside it, design the thing, and hand over files a developer or a volunteer can actually use. No account manager in the middle, no handover between three suppliers.

Right now that means a satellite monitoring platform whose users are fishing fleets across the world's oceans, and the 2027 edition of a New Zealand film festival. Before that, fifteen years of enterprise clients and my own cultural venue in Barcelona.

I am set up to invoice here — self-employed with an IRD number and registered for GST — and I take client work in English and Spanish.

Auckland, New Zealand

Download CV (PDF)

Background

How I got here

Pre-2008

Learning to make things move

Classical animation, 3D and visual storytelling. The habit of thinking in sequences and in what the viewer notices first came from here, and it still shows in how I structure a screen.

2008 – 2016

Interfaces for people at work

UX and UI inside consultancies and digital studios, mostly enterprise: the kind of screens someone has open for eight hours and cannot afford to misread. Where I learnt that clarity beats novelty.

2016 – 2020

Two trades at once

Gamification, learning systems and narrative design by day. In parallel I founded and ran a cultural venue in Barcelona around European folklore — talks, workshops, podcasts, a physical space and the brand around it. Running that taught me more about audiences than any brief.

2020 – 2023

Making training worth finishing

Progression systems, engagement frameworks and design systems for corporate learning. Dry material, and the job was to get people to the end of it — which is the same problem as onboarding, only more honest about it.

2023 – 2025 · Independent practice

Working direct, as Foxtale

Registered as self-employed and started taking clients directly instead of through agencies. Fewer layers, shorter decisions, and my name on the outcome.

Aug 2025 – Now · Auckland, NZ

The practice, from Auckland

Moved here and kept the studio running across two hemispheres: product and design-system work for a maritime technology client whose users are fleets worldwide, and creative direction for a New Zealand arts organisation. Set up to invoice locally, available onsite or remote.

How I work

What informs the work

Four habits I bring to client work, and four things outside design that make it better.

How I approach a project

I start with the structure

Before any screen, the model underneath: what the thing is, what it owes the user, where it breaks. Half the design problems dissolve there, and the other half get cheaper.

Order, not decoration

Narrative is sequence and consequence: what comes first, what it makes you expect, what happens if you get it wrong. It works the same in a poster campaign and in an error state.

Built to be finished

Progression, feedback and a reason to keep going. The measure of a training piece is not whether it is accurate, it is how many people reach the end of it.

AI where it saves days

I use it to explore wide and produce fast, and I keep the decisions, the final interface and the quality bar manual. It compresses the middle of the process; it does not close it.

What I bring from outside design

Running something of my own

A cultural venue in Barcelona: the space, the brand, the programme and the bills. It is why I think about budget, volunteers and what happens after the designer leaves.

Explaining things out loud

Talks, workshops and podcasts. Standing in front of people is the fastest way to find out which part of your explanation does not work.

Fifteen years of research

European folklore and belief systems, read properly rather than borrowed for atmosphere. Long-form research is a discipline: sources, contradictions, and knowing when the evidence does not say what you want.

A finished novel

135,695 words, plus the world it belongs to. Writing something that long teaches continuity, pacing and how to keep a system coherent over months — all of which is design work by another name.

Personal explorations

Things I make to keep learning

Realtime and 3D studies made outside client work, to test ideas and keep my hands in techniques
that eventually show up in the paid work.

Unreal Engine

Study

Unreal Connector – Storytelling Study

A narrative sequence developed in Unreal Engine as part of the Unreal Connector certification program.

Unreal EngineCinematicsStorytellingSequencing

Watch Study

Blender

Study

Blender – Animation Study

Animation exploration created in Blender to experiment with acting, movement and visual storytelling.

BlenderActingMotionAnimation

Watch Study

Unreal Engine

Study

Unreal – Animation Study

Animation, lighting and cinematic sequencing study created in Unreal Engine to explore storytelling and visual flow.

Unreal EngineAnimationCinematicsVisual Storytelling

Watch Study

Still reading?

Tell me what you are trying to solve.

I'm always open to discussing new opportunities and interesting challenges.