// context_&_my_role
| company | Aptos Labs — a Layer 1 blockchain building both consumer and developer products including a wallet and decentralized exchange |
| team size | Design team of 7 |
| my title | Lead Product Designer, Design Systems |
| tenure | Sep 2023 – Apr 2026 |
| contribution scope | End-to-end design system ownership: visual language, component architecture, theming, accessibility, and developer handoff across web and mobile |
| link | view live → |
// the_problem
When I joined, Aptos Labs had accumulated 5+ separate product libraries across teams, each with its own components, naming conventions, and design decisions. There was no shared source of truth, no token system, and no governance model. Product teams were maintaining their own component libraries in parallel, creating redundant work and compounding inconsistency with every new feature shipped.
The opportunity was to consolidate everything into a single, scalable system that could serve multiple branded products without fragmenting again.
// system_architecture
Component Taxonomy
The system was structured into two distinctly branded libraries, Aptos Labs and Petra Wallet, built on a shared foundation and visual language. Primitive components (color, typography, spacing, iconography) were defined once and referenced across both brands through a theming layer, preventing duplication while allowing brand-level divergence.
Tooling & Workflow
Figma served as the design source of truth. Components were built to mirror the React component API, with prop structures and variant naming aligned to the engineering implementation. Handoff was documented at the component level with explicit spec annotations.
Governance Model
As the sole design systems designer, I owned contribution intake, versioning, and adoption. Product designers used Figma comments and branching to communicate proposed edits and new features to the components.
// contributions
- Rebranded the initial system in under one month — translated external agency brand work into a production-ready system including color, typography, iconography, 30 redesigned components, and light/dark mode support
- Built TokenUI — a white-label UI system that enabled complete product rebrands (Petra wallet across mobile and extension) and a decentralized exchange launch (Decibel) using shared token and component foundations
- Defined the theming architecture — designed the token structure that allowed a single component set to power multiple branded products without forking
// reflection
What worked: Treating the token architecture as the foundation before touching any components. Getting the naming conventions and theming model right early meant the rebrand and white-label work could move at speed without accumulating design debt.
What I'd do differently: Taking a second pass at naming conventions prior to building out the initial Aptos Labs branded system. With use, the feedback received from the design team indicated a different direction to take the semantic tokens and typography styles.