Timeline

Designer & developer

Launched a personal site built entirely by hand — no themes, no templates, six languages and one narrow column of warm cream paper.

Photographer & editor

Self-published a 48-page photo zine of early-morning walks through Shanghai. The first print run sold out in three weeks.

Product Designer

Designing an AI-native writing workspace — the editor, the prompts, and the quiet parts in between. First designer on the team.

• Designed and shipped the editor’s core writing loop, from first sketch to public beta.
• Built the product website and the first version of the design system.

A month off

Walked from Dali to Lijiang with one film camera and four rolls of Portra. Came home with the first notes for what became Field Notes.

Speaker

Gave a talk called “Tokens are a language” to ~200 designers about why naming things well is most of the work.

Maker

Released a small open-source Figma plugin that lints design tokens before they reach production. 3,000+ installs and still maintained.

Senior Product Designer, Design Systems

Owned the design system for a fintech platform used by 40+ product teams: foundations, tokens, documentation, and the governance that keeps it alive.

• Rebuilt the token architecture across web and iOS, cutting spec time by roughly half.
• Wrote and maintained the public documentation site used by every product team.

An ongoing practice

Bought a used Olympus XA and started carrying it everywhere — a slower, more deliberate way of looking at ordinary mornings.

Product Designer

Designed a mobile-first field research tool for academics. Learned to ship weekly and to interview people who don’t use design tools.

• Owned mobile design end to end, from research plans to the shipped iOS app.
• Introduced a lightweight design review ritual the team kept for years.

Freelance designer & developer

Three years of client work — brand sites, small web apps and one memorable museum kiosk. Learned to scope, price and deliver.

Exchange semester, Visual Communication Design

A semester in Helsinki with a very quiet, very rigorous typography department. Learned to defend every decision.

Design intern

First job in a real studio: kerning business cards, cutting foam-core, and learning how deadlines actually work.

B.A. Visual Communication Design

Focused on typography and editorial design; spent more time in the letterpress workshop than the render farm.