Building the design function
The challenge
Paxful was scaling fast — a growing user base, new markets, an expanding product. Design hadn't kept up. There was no design team, no brand guidelines, and no central direction; the visual identity was fragmented across marketing and the product itself.
I joined as Team Lead to build the design function from zero — the team, the process, and the design direction — and to align it with an aggressive growth roadmap.
What I did
- Built a multidisciplinary design team from scratch, and set the hiring strategy behind it.
- Stood up agile design workflows — scoping, reviews, sprint cycles, backlog grooming.
- Turned business objectives into clear design roadmaps and priorities.
- Owned delivery across product UI/UX, brand identity, and marketing.
- Designed the mobile product hands-on to keep velocity high in the early phase.
The team I built
A compact, multidisciplinary unit covering product, brand, and marketing — with mobile product design led by me:
- Product Designer (Web)
- Brand Designer
- Graphic Designer
- Team Lead / Product Designer (Mobile)
The Product Designer (Web) modernized the core web experience. The Brand Designer defined the visual identity — typography, color, iconography, tone — and aligned existing assets to it. The Graphic Designer produced campaign, social, and event creative on the emerging brand system.
How we worked
I ran a dual track. On one side, ship critical fixes fast — onboarding, payment-flow clarity, and unifying a fragmented UI. On the other, lay the long-term foundation: a scalable design system, brand guidelines, and reusable patterns on a 12–18 month roadmap. Regular checkpoints kept the two in sync and validated direction with user research.
Day to day the team worked in agile sprints — daily standups, sprint reviews, a groomed backlog — embedded with engineering, product, and marketing so design stayed feasible, on time, and grounded in real user needs.
Toolkit
Figma · Sketch · Jira · Trello · Confluence · Agile/Scrum
