about me

Design leader and innovator with over 20 years of experience building digital products, apps and websites in the US, Germany and the UK.

Product innovation

Throughout my career I have continuously explored and championed new conceptual spaces. In 2010 I co-founded Google Fonts, which is now used by more than half of all websites.

While on the Material Design team I introduced Design Tokens to one of the world’s largest design systems, used by Google’s own products.

My work on Google Play Instant Apps (originally Android Instant Apps) broke new ground with how users interact with Android apps and they have been deployed on over a billion active Android devices. A similar concept was later introduced on iOS as "Apple App Clips".

The success of the Google World Wonders Project, for which I led the design and development in 2012, led to the founding of Google Arts & Culture.

Design Systems thinking

My design thinking has always been centered around systems and how to scale them. Material Design Tokens have become a big part of how the Material Design System can be adopted for example.

I’ve also founded and led the design of Google’s design system and framework for marketing websites (“Google Marketing Web Standards”). In 2016 I helped with the refresh of the brand architecture of the Google OneBar (the masthead used in all of Google’s products).

Typography

I co-founded Google Fonts in 2010 as my 20% project and was responsible for the UX and design of the initial launch. Since returning to the team as Design Lead in 2020 I’ve been responsible for managing the development of Google’s brand and platform fonts (Google Sans, Roboto, Noto, etc.), Google’s canonical icon set Material Symbols, our open source font catalog (grown from ~1000 font families to over 1700 since my return).

The new design of the Google Fonts website was recognized with a Webby for Best User Interface 2024, the release of Google Fonts Knowledge was nominated for a Webby Best Visual Design - Function 2023 and the Google Fonts typeface received a Red Dot Design Award for Typeface Design in 2024.

Leadership

I’ve led and managed interdisciplinary and global UX teams of writers, researchers, UX program managers and interaction designers and visual designers of both full-time employees, contractors and vendor agencies for more than a decade.