Vertex Design System

Vertex had eight products and eight subtly different ideas of what a button was. The cost wasn't just aesthetic — every team was rebuilding the same things, slightly wrong, forever.

The challenge

Unifying eight live products is less a design problem than a logistics one. The system had to be good enough that teams wanted to adopt it, and pragmatic enough that they could migrate without stopping the roadmap.

The approach

I built the system as a product, with its users — the other engineers — at the centre.

• Tokens as the source of truth. One set of design decisions, generated into every platform, so a change propagates everywhere.
• Components that earn trust. Accessible, documented, and tested — boring in the best way.
• Tooling that keeps it honest. Automated checks and a living docs site so the system can't quietly rot.

It gave every team a single, trustworthy source of truth — and made our UI feel like one company again.

The outcome

UI build time dropped 60%, eight products now speak one visual language, and the system became the default way the org ships interface work. The best compliment: teams stopped asking whether to use it.