Today we’re announcing the launch of a new web design agency for high-impact causes and the AI safety ecosystem: Common Mechanics (commonmechanics.io).
Reach out if you have a project in mind—we’re already set up and ready to take it on! Tell us about your needs at: team@commonmechanics.io
We design and build marketing websites, digital tools, platforms, interactive data explorers, demos, high-conversion web campaigns, and more. We work with mission-aligned organisations, especially those working on the existential risks from AI. We also plan to develop shared infrastructure and community tools that can inform and empower the community. We’re developing an in-house AI-powered product pipeline that will significantly reduce the time-to-launch of websites and tools across the ecosystem.
The first community tool we’ve built, aisafety.fyi, is an automated daily news dossier for AI safety powered by a modular AI editorial pipeline and knowledge graph (more on that in a forthcoming forum post).
Why design matters for AI safety
The AI safety ecosystem is full of high-impact organisations that are under-resourced in their communications. Websites are a critical component for digital campaigns, and many AI safety projects are doubling down on communications and advocacy today. Websites are essential for organisations who wish to establish a presence, share their research, build reputation, attract talent, and fundraise. But design and technology work can be complex and requires specialised knowledge; High-impact organisations consistently report that they have ongoing needs their internal teams aren’t well-suited to handle, and current market offerings tend to fall short for organisations with more technical requirements.
Demand for design and product-building in the ecosystem is significant and growing—Forethought, Coefficient Giving, Rethink Priorities, 80,000 Hours, and the Future of Life Foundation have each highlighted this kind of work as a top priority, while surveys and recent reports from EA-aligned agencies (User Friendly, Good Impressions) show widespread unmet need. Every year, a slew of 20-50 new EA, AI safety, and existential risk projects are formed via incubators like BlueDot Impact’s Incubator Week, Catalyze Impact, the Future of Life Foundation, Sheldon Lab, Halcyon Futures, and more, each of which must establish themselves and build an online presence.
By providing faster, more cost-effective and higher-quality product-building to this ecosystem—and eventually building shared infrastructure at scale—we aim to make the ecosystem more effective at its core mission. A fuller market validation write-up with sources is available on request.
What we do
We offer two main services:
Website Design & Build — We design and engineer the whole thing, from spec to launch and beyond. Marketing sites, web apps, platforms, data visualisations, and anything else. We have experience with sophisticated data pipelines, integrations, and user interfaces, and can handle every challenge your project might present.
Website Maintenance — Monthly plans that keep your site fast, secure & online, from a light-touch essentials tier up to continual development of new features and pages. We can also look after your domain and DNS.
Why bring your project to us?
When you work with Common Mechanics, you can expect:
Rapid delivery — Workflows designed to get your project to a first version rapidly and to iterate quickly, when your projects demand it.
Websites that can adapt to fast-changing requirements — Built with a modern, proven tech stack, and over a decade of web engineering experience, our websites deliver scalability, speed, and modularity in a wide range of conditions.
Beautiful, distinctive design — Websites that stand out from the crowd: a carefully crafted visual identity, refined typography, and clean, intuitive interfaces that make your work engaging and easy to use.
Impact-driven products — We don’t just make your website look good; we’re immersed in the strategy behind your product, and carefully examine your content strategy and structure to ensure it will deliver on your goals.
Campaigns built to convert — Message testing, A/B testing, conversion tracking, and audience analysis available as add-on services when your campaigns demand it.
Emergency handling built-in from the beginning — We’re prepared to handle emergencies, last-minute requests, and out-of-hours changes, and we’re designing our workflows to be able to handle such demands without breaking a sweat.
Sites that stay online and bounce back fast — AI is making cyberattacks cheaper, faster and easier to run at scale. We’ve made security and recovery a central criterion in how we choose every part of our tech & infrastructure stack.
Capacity to carry your full website portfolio — We’re able to handle the building and maintenance workload for your complete digital product portfolio under a single roof.
Continual development — Some websites must continually evolve and grow to remain relevant in the marketplace. We aim to be your strategic web partner, always on the lookout for opportunities to expand and improve your product portfolio.
Focused on results — We advocate for your success, even if it means downsizing or aborting a project. We tell you upfront when things aren’t working, remind you if you’re overpaying for a service you don’t use, and won’t sell you a project we don’t believe in.
Meet the team
We’re a team of three co-founders, based in the UK and Germany, serving clients across the Americas, Europe, and further afield.
We have a combined 30 years of experience designing and building digital products, and a combined 12 years operating in the high-impact ecosystem. Here’s a brief introduction to our current team:
Taylor Jones, Chief Executive Officer — London, UK (LinkedIn)
Design and product leader. Led all design and web projects at the Future of Life Institute (2021–2026), one of the world’s oldest and largest AI safety think tanks. Built a small, high-performance design, web, and print team. Delivered hundreds of design and product deliverables including 20+ websites, 5 large-scale public open letters reaching tens of millions, the AI Safety Index, hundreds of documents, one-pagers, and policymakers’ guides shipped to senior meetings and conferences in 30+ countries, and the setup of FLI’s Digital Media Accelerator ($650k+ deployed). Previously freelanced for 3 years serving high-impact organisations with graphic design projects.
Alexander Haase, Chief Design Officer — Berlin, Germany (LinkedIn)
Design leader with 15 years of experience spanning cybersecurity, climate tech, consulting, and AI safety. Created the visual identity, website, and data visualization system for Epoch AI, and redesigned the website and course experience for BlueDot Impact. Developed foundational design systems, digital products, and brand identities for organizations ranging from YC startups to global enterprises. His design leadership has delivered measurable business impact, improving operational efficiency, reducing costs, and contributing to successful acquisitions. Before co-founding Common Mechanics, Alex co-founded a climate-tech startup, held founding and lead design roles at several technology companies, and led design projects for more than 50 clients, including Apollo Research, Metaculus, the AI Whistleblower Initiative, and the Horizon Institute for Public Service.
Max Werner, Chief Technical Officer — Braunschweig, Germany (LinkedIn)
Engineering leader with ten years of experience in developing software, and five years of experience in leading teams and projects. He has also lectured in Software Engineering and Software Testing. Max has been active in the AI Safety community for the last 1.5 years, and has published a research paper on multi-agent alignment.
Common questions
You can find answers to a range of common questions on our website: commonmechanics.io
And if you have any more questions that aren’t answered here, don’t hesitate to send us a message: team@commonmechanics.io
Announcing: New Digital Product Agency for high-impact websites, tools, demos, and more
Today we’re announcing the launch of a new web design agency for high-impact causes and the AI safety ecosystem: Common Mechanics (commonmechanics.io).
Reach out if you have a project in mind—we’re already set up and ready to take it on! Tell us about your needs at: team@commonmechanics.io
We design and build marketing websites, digital tools, platforms, interactive data explorers, demos, high-conversion web campaigns, and more. We work with mission-aligned organisations, especially those working on the existential risks from AI. We also plan to develop shared infrastructure and community tools that can inform and empower the community. We’re developing an in-house AI-powered product pipeline that will significantly reduce the time-to-launch of websites and tools across the ecosystem.
The first community tool we’ve built, aisafety.fyi, is an automated daily news dossier for AI safety powered by a modular AI editorial pipeline and knowledge graph (more on that in a forthcoming forum post).
Why design matters for AI safety
The AI safety ecosystem is full of high-impact organisations that are under-resourced in their communications. Websites are a critical component for digital campaigns, and many AI safety projects are doubling down on communications and advocacy today. Websites are essential for organisations who wish to establish a presence, share their research, build reputation, attract talent, and fundraise. But design and technology work can be complex and requires specialised knowledge; High-impact organisations consistently report that they have ongoing needs their internal teams aren’t well-suited to handle, and current market offerings tend to fall short for organisations with more technical requirements.
Demand for design and product-building in the ecosystem is significant and growing—Forethought, Coefficient Giving, Rethink Priorities, 80,000 Hours, and the Future of Life Foundation have each highlighted this kind of work as a top priority, while surveys and recent reports from EA-aligned agencies (User Friendly, Good Impressions) show widespread unmet need. Every year, a slew of 20-50 new EA, AI safety, and existential risk projects are formed via incubators like BlueDot Impact’s Incubator Week, Catalyze Impact, the Future of Life Foundation, Sheldon Lab, Halcyon Futures, and more, each of which must establish themselves and build an online presence.
By providing faster, more cost-effective and higher-quality product-building to this ecosystem—and eventually building shared infrastructure at scale—we aim to make the ecosystem more effective at its core mission. A fuller market validation write-up with sources is available on request.
What we do
We offer two main services:
Website Design & Build — We design and engineer the whole thing, from spec to launch and beyond. Marketing sites, web apps, platforms, data visualisations, and anything else. We have experience with sophisticated data pipelines, integrations, and user interfaces, and can handle every challenge your project might present.
Website Maintenance — Monthly plans that keep your site fast, secure & online, from a light-touch essentials tier up to continual development of new features and pages. We can also look after your domain and DNS.
Why bring your project to us?
When you work with Common Mechanics, you can expect:
Rapid delivery — Workflows designed to get your project to a first version rapidly and to iterate quickly, when your projects demand it.
Websites that can adapt to fast-changing requirements — Built with a modern, proven tech stack, and over a decade of web engineering experience, our websites deliver scalability, speed, and modularity in a wide range of conditions.
Beautiful, distinctive design — Websites that stand out from the crowd: a carefully crafted visual identity, refined typography, and clean, intuitive interfaces that make your work engaging and easy to use.
Impact-driven products — We don’t just make your website look good; we’re immersed in the strategy behind your product, and carefully examine your content strategy and structure to ensure it will deliver on your goals.
Campaigns built to convert — Message testing, A/B testing, conversion tracking, and audience analysis available as add-on services when your campaigns demand it.
Emergency handling built-in from the beginning — We’re prepared to handle emergencies, last-minute requests, and out-of-hours changes, and we’re designing our workflows to be able to handle such demands without breaking a sweat.
Sites that stay online and bounce back fast — AI is making cyberattacks cheaper, faster and easier to run at scale. We’ve made security and recovery a central criterion in how we choose every part of our tech & infrastructure stack.
Capacity to carry your full website portfolio — We’re able to handle the building and maintenance workload for your complete digital product portfolio under a single roof.
Continual development — Some websites must continually evolve and grow to remain relevant in the marketplace. We aim to be your strategic web partner, always on the lookout for opportunities to expand and improve your product portfolio.
Focused on results — We advocate for your success, even if it means downsizing or aborting a project. We tell you upfront when things aren’t working, remind you if you’re overpaying for a service you don’t use, and won’t sell you a project we don’t believe in.
Meet the team
We’re a team of three co-founders, based in the UK and Germany, serving clients across the Americas, Europe, and further afield.
We have a combined 30 years of experience designing and building digital products, and a combined 12 years operating in the high-impact ecosystem. Here’s a brief introduction to our current team:
Taylor Jones, Chief Executive Officer — London, UK (LinkedIn)
Design and product leader. Led all design and web projects at the Future of Life Institute (2021–2026), one of the world’s oldest and largest AI safety think tanks. Built a small, high-performance design, web, and print team. Delivered hundreds of design and product deliverables including 20+ websites, 5 large-scale public open letters reaching tens of millions, the AI Safety Index, hundreds of documents, one-pagers, and policymakers’ guides shipped to senior meetings and conferences in 30+ countries, and the setup of FLI’s Digital Media Accelerator ($650k+ deployed). Previously freelanced for 3 years serving high-impact organisations with graphic design projects.
Alexander Haase, Chief Design Officer — Berlin, Germany (LinkedIn)
Design leader with 15 years of experience spanning cybersecurity, climate tech, consulting, and AI safety. Created the visual identity, website, and data visualization system for Epoch AI, and redesigned the website and course experience for BlueDot Impact. Developed foundational design systems, digital products, and brand identities for organizations ranging from YC startups to global enterprises. His design leadership has delivered measurable business impact, improving operational efficiency, reducing costs, and contributing to successful acquisitions. Before co-founding Common Mechanics, Alex co-founded a climate-tech startup, held founding and lead design roles at several technology companies, and led design projects for more than 50 clients, including Apollo Research, Metaculus, the AI Whistleblower Initiative, and the Horizon Institute for Public Service.
Max Werner, Chief Technical Officer — Braunschweig, Germany (LinkedIn)
Engineering leader with ten years of experience in developing software, and five years of experience in leading teams and projects. He has also lectured in Software Engineering and Software Testing. Max has been active in the AI Safety community for the last 1.5 years, and has published a research paper on multi-agent alignment.
Common questions
You can find answers to a range of common questions on our website: commonmechanics.io
And if you have any more questions that aren’t answered here, don’t hesitate to send us a message: team@commonmechanics.io