I built a design system the founder ships with, without me
Instead of designing screens faster, I designed the system that designs the screens.
Zendr is a modular ERP for UK SMEs: billing, inventory, staff and B2B orders. I joined an early-stage, engineering-led team as the only designer.
The system I built is still how the product gets designed, by the founder and AI tools, after I left.
- Product Designer
- Role
- Sole designer · 1 backend, 1 Android, 1 iOS engineer
- Team
- May–Dec 2025
- Timeline
- Still in use
- Status
01 / Context
One designer, five modules, four roles.
The maths was brutal: one designer, five product modules, four user roles (Admin, Merchant, Staff, Sales Rep), and a roadmap that assumed a design team we didn't have.
The bet
So the system had to be structured, documented and semantically consistent enough to stand on its own.
02 / Tokens
Three layers of tokens.
Primitive values are every colour the brand allows. Semantic tokens say what a value is for. Component tokens say where it's used. Change one brand primitive and the light and dark themes update across the entire product: dark mode wasn't a feature, it was a variable swap.
03 / Naming
Named for meaning, not appearance.
background-brand, never green-500. This decision is what later made the system AI-legible: a machine can't guess what green-500 is for, but it can't misuse background-danger.
04 / Components
Assembled, not invented.
More than 400 components in atomic tiers: cards, tables, modals, forms and charts, each with defined states, so new screens are assembled, not invented. Figma-to-code token sync meant design and build never drifted.
05 / After I left
The system kept designing.
I left Zendr in December 2025. They haven't hired a designer since, because they haven't needed one. The founder ships new features by pairing AI tools with the design system: the components, patterns and semantic tokens are structured clearly enough that AI-generated screens come out consistent with everything I built.
06 / Impact
Measured during the pilot rollout.
Measured during pilot rollout, May to Dec 2025.
07 / Takeaway
Measure what happens after you leave.
“I used to think a design system's success metric was adoption. Now I think it's what happens after you leave.”
Start documentation on day one instead of week six. The components were reusable before the reasoning behind them was, and I paid for that gap in review cycles.