Design systems that survive handover

I’m John Harrison. I help financial organisations take control of their design systems.

I audit what’s there, simplify it, and hand ownership back to your team so you can run it without me.

Available from 23rd September 2027

Audits. Simplification. Handovers. Open to the right senior in-house role. Get in touch

Some of the systems I’ve worked on I inherited, some I helped start. The ones in trouble were rarely failing because of the technology. More often, the people who understood them had moved on, leaving documentation that was incomplete, scattered or out of date.

Work

Six systems, and who they were for.

  • UBS 2025-26 (ongoing)

    Design system, AI integration, template architecture

  • Lantern 2025

    Lux 4.0, audit and handover

  • Greystar 2024-25

    Design system and website

  • Bupa Global 2024

    Design system and website

  • T. Rowe Price 2020-24

    Design system across three contracts

  • EON 2020

    App design system

Thinking

Directional spacing tokens

Spacing tokens should tell you what the space is doing, not just how much space there is. Six ways to express spacing instead of a flat scale; the token tells you whether the space is inside a box or between boxes, and which axis it runs on. This page is built with them: press i and hover anything.

TokenAxisInternal / externalCSS property
inset both internal padding
inset-block vertical internal padding-block
inset-inline horizontal internal padding-inline
gap both external gap
gap-block vertical external row-gap
gap-inline horizontal external column-gap