Brand & Systems
Design Leader
based
in San Francisco.
I’m Zandt. I work across brand and design systems, from the strategy down to the details that ship.
About
I pair the craft brands deserve with the rigor systems demand, and the strategy that ties them together.
Fifteen years at Apple, Google, Airbnb, and Meta, working on some of the world’s biggest brands, from Apple’s launch marketing to the Messenger rebrand rollout, and the design systems that keep them consistent across every product.
I’ve built the production design operating model four times: first at Google, then through teams at Airbnb and Messenger, and now within Meta Superintelligence Labs, Meta’s flagship AI division, where I’ve defined the model and paired it with AI tooling I built to run it far more efficiently. Each time I’ve built it as a framework meant to run without me, not a one-off fix, and along the way I’ve written the career framework my discipline levels against.
The road there: nearly four years at Apple producing and localizing product UI for keynotes, the online store, and apple.com; Google, leading the production design team behind Search, Maps, and Identity UX; and Airbnb, back before it went public, redefining the production design team behind the Design Language System and launches like Trips. Then Facebook, later Meta: embedded with Messenger as a consultant through the Messenger 4 redesign, then managing the production design side of the design systems team before choosing to return to the IC track in 2022. I wanted my hands back in the work.
Through rebrands, replatforms, reorgs, and the messy middle where marketing and product collide, what I care about hasn’t changed: identities built with care, and systems that engineers actually trust. The work itself is changing shape, though. AI makes building faster and cheaper; when more gets made by more hands, the system is what keeps every small decision adding up to one product. Design systems are outgrowing the library and becoming guidance, and that’s the future I’m already building toward, at work and in my own tooling.
Outside of work I’m with my family, usually at my kids’ youth sports, with the occasional day trip to Napa. I also love to travel; my favorite recent trip was a month in Japan with them.
Currently open to new roles, and always glad to connect.
Career
Work experience
Meta
- Staff Designer2022 – PresentDesign Systems & Product Creative
- Senior Design Manager2020 – 2022Design Systems
- Design Consultant2018 – 2020Design Systems
Airbnb
- Design Manager2016 – 2018Design Systems & Product Creative
- Design Manager2014 – 2016Production Design
Apple
- Design Lead2012 – 2014Interactive Graphic Production
- Senior Production Designer2011 – 2012Marcom
What I do
Brand, systems, and the teams that ship them
Brand design
Identity and creative that hold up on every surface, guided by strategy.
- Brand strategy
- Brand stewardship
- Visual systems
- Marketing & launch creative
- Cross-functional partnership
- AI product creative
Design systems
The systems and operating models teams build on.
- Design systems, tokens & libraries
- Systems strategy & roadmaps
- Operating models & governance
- Quality standards & adoption
- AI production pipelines
- System documentation
Teams & leadership
The people, practices, and frameworks that make quality repeatable.
- Team building & hiring
- Mentoring & growth
- Discipline & career frameworks
- Design operations
- Critique & review practice
- AI enablement
Principles
The core tenets of my design practice
Frameworks are living products
A system, a ladder, an operating model: each needs an owner, a roadmap, and regular releases. Build it to outlast you, or it dies quietly.
Brand is what ships
Not the deck, not the guidelines PDF. An identity is only real once it survives contact with shipping product.
Quality is a habit
Craft isn’t a final polish pass. It’s how the work gets made from the first artboard.
Automate the busywork, protect the craft
If a task repeats, I figure out how to automate it. Automation buys back the hours that quality actually needs.
Feedback beats oversight
I ask to see work early and often; feedback lands best before decisions harden. Then I stay out of the way.
Look beyond the industry
Art, nature, and architecture are richer reference libraries than any feed. We build experiences for real people living in the real world.
FAQ
Answers to the usual questions
What kind of roles are you looking for?
Design leadership or principal IC; the level and responsibilities matter to me more than the title. I do my best work where brand and design systems meet, with real ownership of an outcome, working closely with product, marketing, and design leadership. I’m drawn to companies that treat design as a discipline, not a service.
What kind of design do you do?
All of it, on purpose. Brand, product, systems, and production have never been separate jobs for me; they’re one practice. Brand work means identity and the marketing and launch creative built for a brand’s biggest moments. Systems work is product design at scale. Every component starts as a real product problem, with flows, states, edge cases, and accessibility to work through, and it has to hold for any team that uses it. And production is what ships all of it, quality intact.
Do you set strategy, or execute it?
Both. I help set the direction, then build the operating models and standards that get a whole org there without me in the room.
How would you describe your leadership style?
Clear direction, high standards, low ego. I set the bar through my own work, give feedback early, and stay out of the way once a team has momentum.
Are you open to remote roles?
I’m based in San Francisco but have worked on-site, hybrid, and fully remote. I can be flexible for the right role.
What tools do you work in?
Figma is home base, with prototyping and motion tools in orbit and enough code to stay close to how things ship. AI is where I’ve gone deepest recently: I build MCP-driven automation, Figma plugins, and self-serve tooling that cut production work down to a fraction of the time, with Claude, Gemini, and ChatGPT in the daily mix. Tools change; I pick whatever gets the team to quality fastest.
What’s your background?
I studied illustration at the Savannah College of Art and Design, which taught me to do the research, gather references, and sketch my way toward an idea rather than wait for a perfect one. That foundation in observation and craft still shapes how I approach identity and systems work today.
Did you design this site?
Yes, and built it. One design system drives every page: the same primitives, mapped to a light theme and a dark theme. One serif for the headlines, served from this site; everything else is set in your device’s own type. No template, no tracking.
Contact
Let’s work together.
Happy to chat about design leadership and principal IC roles where brand, systems, and strategy meet.
zandtvanzandt.com · linkedin.com/in/zandtvanzandt/