A Decade of Design Systems
Design systems have been the throughline of my career for the better part of a decade—four companies, one specialization, and a habit of owning things end to end. Here's the full arc, most recent first.
Hamstack.design system – 2026–
Role: Created an open-source, AI-ready design system. Initially for Claude Design, but available to other models. Currently testing compatibility and portability.
Context: I wanted to create my own design system and be able to point Claude Design to it. This was my experiment.
Highlights:
Co-authored with Claude Code
Limited demo available [See Hamstack demo → Hamstack demo]
Available as open-source on GitHub [See the GitHub Repo → Hamstack GitHub]
Arc Design System – 2025–2026
Role: Owned end to end—architected the token layer (from scratch!), rebuilt the foundational components, and set the direction the rest of the library followed.
Context: Inherited a style-only library with no variable layer and components that needed rebuilding; adoption stayed flat until the re-architecture shipped.
Highlights:
226 variables authored from zero
327K+ component insertions
99% org adoption, sub-1% detach rate.
[Read the full case study → Arc Design System]
Sentry Design System – 2021–2024
Role: Built and managed solo over three years.
Context: A Figma-based, styles-based system supporting a growing product suite.
Highlights:
Longest single-company tenure owning a design system before Arc, proof of sustained, large-scale ownership.
ReVerb Design System – 2020–2021
Role: Sole owner and architect.
Context: Built on shared styles and components in Figma, prior to the introduction of native variables.
Highlights:
First solo design system ownership, set the template for the larger systems that followed.
Migrated from Sketch to Figma
Anchor Design System – 2016–2020
Role: Contributed as part of a larger design team.
Context: A Sketch symbol library and shared styles, built and maintained years before token tooling existed.
Highlights:
Early, formative systems work, the starting point of a decade-long specialization.
Shared Sketch symbol library maintained by the entire team