During my tenure at Earnest, I had the chance to play a pivotal role in elevating the brand’s visual identity, marketing presence, and design systems to drive engagement and conversion across multiple channels. From rebranding efforts to product design system expansions, I worked cross-functionally with marketing, product, and growth teams to build scalable, high-impact design solutions.

Impact

• Strengthened cross-functional collaboration between product, marketing, and growth teams.
• Drove higher engagement and conversion rates through targeted social, email, and direct mail campaigns.
• Enhanced internal communication and alignment through an improved intranet experience.

• Library Structure & Coverage

• Component coverage increased materially

• Components / variants grew from 38 / ~127 to 90 / ~385

• Growth reflects consolidation, formalization, and systematization of existing patterns rather than net-new visual exploration

• Clear hierarchical organization introduced

• Components now consistently live within one of four layers: Primitives, Blocks, Grids, Templates

• This replaced a previously flat or inconsistent structure that made discovery and reuse unreliable

• Reduction in Duplication & Drift

• Variant sprawl reduced

• Many components previously included dozens of near-identical variants

• These were reduced to smaller, intentional sets aligned with actual usage

• Additional consolidation opportunities remain and are documented for future phases

• Deprecated and unused assets removed

• Outdated pastel variants, one-off modules, broken references, and unused components were either removed or rebuilt

• Resulting library generates fewer warnings and is materially easier to maintain

• Foundational Consistency

• Design primitives standardized

• Typography, spacing, radii, and icon treatments are now applied consistently across the system

• Previously mixed dependencies from deprecated libraries were cleaned up where possible

• Remaining Nucleus dependencies are explicitly overridden and documented until upstream updates occur

• Naming consistency improved

• Component names were rewritten to follow a predictable, semantic pattern

• This reduced ambiguity during design work and improved searchability within Figma

• Cross-Team Usability

• Closer visual parity with Storyblok

• The library components were intentionally aligned to reflect Storyblok output rather than introducing a visual refresh

• This reduces mismatch between design files and live pages, particularly for Marketing and Content teams

• Reusable templates introduced

• Desktop and mobile templates were created for core landing page types

• These provide a shared starting point and reduce the need for page-level re-creation

• Storyblok test pages created

• Test pages now exist for most blocks across landing pages and blog stories

• Teams can copy blocks directly, lowering setup time and reducing configuration errors

•  System Readiness

• Governance framework established

• Component lifecycle states (Active, In Review, Deprecated, Archived) are now defined

• Documentation and mapping requirements for promotion to “Active” are explicitly outlined

• Future refactor work scoped

• A prioritized refactor list exists using the same scoring framework as the Core Library

Key Contributions:

• Nucleus Design System: Collaborated closely with the Lead Product Designer and Growth Engineers to expand and refine Earnest’s Nucleus design system—streamlining component consistency and improving design-to-development handoff.

• Brand Guidelines: Developed and refined the brand creative MVP and guidelines—ensuring consistent application across all channels and stakeholder teams.

• Brand Videos: Produced brand videos that communicated Earnest’s value proposition effectively, increasing engagement and reinforcing brand positioning.

• Conference Booth Design: Designed a branded conference booth that elevated Earnest’s presence at industry events, creating a cohesive and visually compelling experience.

Key Contributions:

• Figma Component Library: Spearheaded the design and oversight of Earnest’s expanded website Figma component library, enhancing scalability and consistency across the product and marketing ecosystem.

• Iconography & Illustration: Designed and expanded Earnest’s iconography and illustration libraries, creating a cohesive visual language across digital and physical touchpoints.

• Blog Redesign: Concepted and designed the blog experience on the Earnest website from the ground up, focusing on improved readability, visual hierarchy, and content discoverability. Leveraged the Nucleus design system to ensure consistency across components, while introducing flexible, scalable templates that balanced brand storytelling with SEO and accessibility best practices.

Other Key Contributions:

• Conference Booth Design: Designed a branded conference booth that elevated Earnest’s presence at industry events, creating a cohesive and visually compelling experience.

• Intranet (Happeo) Design: Led the design of Earnest’s internal Happeo platform, improving usability and internal communication efficiency.

• Paid Social & Email Campaigns: Designed high-converting paid social campaigns and email templates for both Earnest and Navient Refi, driving increased engagement and conversion.

• Direct Mail Campaigns: Created and tested scalable direct mail templates, ensuring visual alignment with the broader brand strategy.

Tools & Skills:

• Figma, Adobe Creative Suite, Motion Tools

• Design Systems, Iconography, Illustration

• Email & Social Campaigns, Direct Mail

• Brand Strategy, Visual Craft, System Thinking

This role showcased my ability to lead large-scale design initiatives, drive alignment across teams, and deliver creative solutions that directly impacted business outcomes.