Better, together: Southleft x Baseline, and a new CEO

There’s a lot of news coming out of Southleft this week, and it’s really one story: the next chapter of this company. Two announcements, both worth your attention.

Southleft is partnering with Baseline. And Nicole Hampton is Southleft’s new CEO.

Here’s both, in order.

Southleft x Baseline

If you’ve spent any time in the design systems community, you know Joey Banks and the caliber of work that comes out of Baseline. Today we’re making our collaboration official.

This isn’t a vendor relationship or a subcontractor arrangement. It’s two studios that cover different parts of the same problem deciding to formalize what working together looks like.

Baseline’s lane is strategy, design discovery, architecture, and visual design. Southleft’s lane is design systems engineering, front end, and AI integration. Where they meet is where most design system work actually lives, and until now, clients had to assemble that coverage themselves.

The practical benefit is simple. Clients who come to Baseline for strategy now have a trusted path to implementation. Clients who come to Southleft get the same in the other direction. Nobody stretches outside what they’re actually great at, and both studios work the same way with clients: with you, not at you.

Nicole Hampton is Southleft’s new CEO

A partnership like this needs the right person driving it, which brings me to the second piece of news. Effective July 1, Nicole Hampton takes over as CEO of Southleft.

Nicole isn’t a replacement hire, and she isn’t new to this work or to me. We’ve been in each other’s orbit for years. She worked alongside me as a producer back at SuperFriendly, and in the years since, she was the partner I kept ending up across the table from, leading the business side at agencies that paired with Southleft when a project needed both halves done right. We’ve always worked well together. Mutual respect, no ego, good work.

It made sense to stop partnering and start building something together.

Nicole has spent more than twenty years in senior leadership on the business side of creative and technical agencies. She knows how to build a commercial practice, manage complex client relationships, and create the operational infrastructure that lets a senior technical team do their best work. She’s also just genuinely good at this. Thoughtful, direct, and exactly the kind of leader a company needs heading into a period of real growth.

I spent fourteen years building Southleft. Handing the day to day to someone else was never something I’d take lightly. After working alongside Nicole, I’m not just comfortable with it. I’m excited about it. The Baseline partnership is the first proof of where she’s taking this, and it won’t be the last.

What changes, what doesn’t

By now you’ve probably seen that I’ve joined Figma. Since then, the question I’ve gotten most isn’t about me. It’s about Southleft. So let me name it and put it down:

Southleft isn’t going anywhere. It isn’t winding down, and it isn’t changing direction.

The agency was running well before I made my move, which is a big part of why I could make it.

I’m stepping into the founder and chairman role. Less in the operational weeds, more of the long view, and available when it matters. My move is a personal one. Southleft’s path is its own, and as of this week, it’s a wider one.

The team is the same. The clients are the same. The standards are the same. If you’re thinking about design systems, AI readiness, or the full strategy-to-implementation path that this partnership now covers, Nicole, Joey, and the teams are the people to talk to.

I’m proud of what we’ve built. I’m more excited about what comes next. And I’m still easy to find.

→ More details from Joey and Baseline over here.