Ink Design System

My journey from an individual contributor to Design Manager at GoodNotes was marked by significant growth and transformation. One of the key aspects I contributed to was the orchestration of Ink Design System. This wasn't just an assembly of design guidelines, but a complete evolution of how the design team at this company operated.

Upon joining GN, I immediately noticed that legacy design files that were hindering our workflow. This is a natural occurence, around the same time many companies had moved from Sketch towards Figma, and some had used external tools like Abstract to try align. I spotted an opportunity to create a robust and cohesive design system that would streamline our workflows across different platforms. And save the designers a bunch of time and headache.

The Ink Design System was born out of this need, and I poured a lot of effort into making it platform-agnostic, ensuring it would honour the unique conventions of iOS, Android, Windows, and the web.

The creation of this system required careful attention to detail, from defining the base colour palette that powered both light and dark themes to the meticulous crafting of the UI Kit. Every element was named with precision, allowing easy toggling between modes in Figma, and was supported by code snippets in Storybook.

What we achieved with the Ink Design System wasn't merely about aesthetics or individual components; it was about laying down a scalable, sustainable design philosophy that would resonate across various platforms. It symbolised a shift in our design approach and allowed the product designers to work more cohesively and efficiently.

This design system laid the foundation for the company's expansion to other platforms beyond Apple's ecosystem, reflecting my belief in the importance of coherent design systems in today's digital world. The team at GoodNotes have built upon and greatly improved some of this groundwork and recently shipped a momentous update to more platforms than ever.