Animation of an event template being customized through its properties panel in Figma

Role

Designer

Focus

Design Systems, Templating

Scope

Implemented

Platform

Digital, Video

Design Systems & Workflow Management

Across both editorial and brand teams, I’ve created and contributed to scalable design systems to help teams produce high-volume work with greater consistency and efficiency. My work has included social design systems and templates for The New York Times and its subscription brands, as well as graphics systems for video.

Bringing Latham’s Social Design Workflow Into Figma

At Latham & Watkins, I am currently leading a migration from Canva to Figma to address limitations in editing and managing social graphics at scale. Our team needed stronger template guardrails and a shared workspace with our existing digital graphics.

As the lead designer, I defined the approach, built reusable social card components, and created a design system using variables and text styles. I also organized the shared library, developed the social team’s workflow, and lead training for designers and non-designers.

Throughout the ongoing migration, social editors are testing the templates and providing feedback. Their input guides improvements to both the designs and the workflow, with the goal of streamlining content creation while maintaining visual consistency. It's still a work in progress.

Screenshots of a social design system: color-coded team workspaces, asset libraries and an event template with its editable properties

An Instagram Template System for a New Podcast Franchise

At The New York Times, I built a reusable template system for the Instagram launch of The Interview, it's new marquee podcast franchise. We used audience data to shape our approach and content strategy, and I worked with the editor to program content.

I designed the reusable components and built the Figma library, translating our editorial approach into templates for the franchise’s Instagram presence.

Elsewhere at The Times, I worked with our subscription brands to oversee content published on our core news channels, and help guide their social visual strategy.

Diagram of a card system showing quote and dialogue card templates with their layout and color options

The goal for each system is the same: create enough structure to build a recognizable visual language, while leaving enough flexibility to respond to changing editorial and business needs.

Along the way, I’ve introduced and trained dozens of designers and non-designers in Figma and best workflow practices. I configure templates to be accessible for non-designers to easily make edits and toggle from one layout to another. The challenge is to build enough flexibility into the templates to accommodate any content form, while maintaining guardrails for consistency.

The Athletic's video template package, showing title cards, a scoreboard template with team colors and its editing panel

I’ve also developed graphics systems for video that are configured as mogrts so that video editors can easily utilize the templates directly in Premiere.

Latham video graphics package showing safe margins, title graphics, lower thirds, full-screen chapter titles, on-screen text and inset layouts

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