National Design Award 2021 - Danny Saltaren

On Friday, October 1st, our CPO & Co-founder, Danny Saltaren, was awarded the National Design Award 2021 in the category of Young Designers by the Ministry of Science and Innovation. This recognition comes as a result of being a prominent figure in digital design and innovative entrepreneurship, serving as a clear example of the significance of strategic design in the digital transformation of the Spanish economy.

To understand how this award was achieved, let's delve into who is behind it.

Who is Danny?

‍Danny Saltaren is a designer and entrepreneur, the son of Roque and Leidy. From a young age, he had close contact with technology, being the son of an innate researcher. Growing up in his father's research lab at the Polytechnic University of Madrid, surrounded by Legos and computer books, he learned the value of working passionately.

Passion was intrinsic to him, and he perceived the world as a place where things should be done well and thoroughly. He left school to embark on a quest to find something that would give him a reason to get out of bed, not to study but to learn.

Design as a Communication Tool

‍At the early age of 16, he began assisting his mother in a store they owned. He quickly learned that without customers, there is no business, leading to his first design commission and, consequently, his first problem to solve.

This marked the beginning of his discovery in the world of design. He downloaded a design program to create posters and flyers, attempting to help his mother promote the store. This sparked his self-taught and assertive spirit.

A Temporal Leap

‍He learned at a very young age that, despite putting effort and dedication, the market determines if your value proposition fits. His mother closed the store years later, and he learned that entrepreneurship is not easy.

At the age of 20, after continued informal design work for friends and acquaintances, he had the opportunity to enter the job market. At 21, he started in consulting but soon realized, like his father, that he enjoyed creating things from start to finish. At that point, he began his career in startups and newly established companies, initially as a layout artist rather than a designer.

Determination

With the determination and passion of someone who knows that design is the only thing that drives him, in 2013, he became the leader of the design department at a startup called Fever.

After the adventure as the head of design at Fever, he decided to venture with his product manager, thus creating a design studio. However, after a year, it closed due to disagreements between partners. This experience served as a great dose of humility and learning since creating a company is not the same as being good at designing. This lesson stayed with him for his future entrepreneurial endeavors.

Once his entrepreneurial journey concluded, in 2015, he joined jobandtalent as the design leader, working with high-profile individuals nationally and internationally. People from Google, Twitter, and Spotify, with extensive careers in digital product, continued to contribute to his growth in the sector.

Entrepreneurship

‍After his stint at jobandtalent, in 2017, he founded mendesaltaren alongside his partner and friend André Mendes. In these four years, he has managed to create a design culture with high-quality standards and values such as transparency and excellence.

The studio achieved the following milestones: the development and publication of educational content for the design community, assistance to the Spanish government in the health crisis by creating a digital product called CoronaMadrid, and the creation of an app to help neighbors communicate during confinement called TeAyudo. Currently, 34 people work rebelliously and elegantly to move forward companies and individuals under the prism of design. Companies like Inditex and Repsol have entrusted him with missions where design goes beyond screens.

Currently, he is focused on the creation of minimum.run, a new company where design and no-code technology combine to empower clients and be more agile.

No-code enables non-technical individuals to create digital products without programming. Thanks to this and a product mindset, truly interesting projects can be created in much less time.

His strategic vision of design aims to make this new company offer courses so that the new generations of creators have better tools to create value and continue contributing to the development of this sector in Spain and worldwide.