GAP Design System
Boasting a robust design system for an iconic brand
I was brought on as a Design System Designer in February 2024 for Gap’s family of brands: Old Navy, Athleta, Banana Republic and Gap to create a cohesive and scalable design system with each brand in mind. In addition, we strived to enable designers and developers to work more efficiently using a single source of truth library to tell their stories.
Upon joining the design system team, I stepped into a pivotal moment for the company's digital strategy. Gap needed a brand new system to serve the needs of our end users; customers, designers and devlopers in a cohesive manner. The initial version of the design system, built by a third-party agency, was being sunsetted. This presented my team with the opportunity to build a new, in-house design system from scratch—one tailored specifically to the scale and complexity of Gap's family of brands.
To maximize our impact and prove the system's value early on, we strategically partnered with the Buy Path team. This team governs the most critical, revenue-generating part of the user journey. By focusing on components for the shopping bag, checkout, and promotions, we could ensure our first release would enhance the most vital user flows. We worked directly with lead product managers to audit this journey, define the scope of our MVP, and establish a Q1 2024 delivery timeline for engineering.
After a month-long sprint designing and building the initial Buy Path components, we achieved our first major milestone. However, this process served as a crucial proof-of-concept that revealed a deeper architectural challenge: for the system to truly scale across Gap Inc., a component built for one brand couldn't simply be re-skinned for another. True scalability had to be built into the system's foundation.
This key insight led to a strategic pivot. We took a deliberate step back to re-architect our approach, shifting from a single-brand focus to a multi-brand foundation that would support the entire portfolio (Gap, Old Navy, Banana Republic, and Athleta) from the outset.
