Hyatt Hotels Corporation is a global leader in hospitality with more than 2,200 hotels, resorts, and properties across 40+ brands in 79 countries. Guided by its purpose of caring for customers and their wellbeing within unique and memorable destinations, Hyatt places care at the center of every guest experience, every brand, and every innovation.

Themes translate brand style guides into digital design language. Each theme includes a unique palette of primitive colors, responsive typography scales, customizable assets, and a grayscale spectrum (cool, neutral, or warm) that aligns with brand aesthetics. Semantic tokens, derived from primitive colors, are used to style elements for distinct brand character regardless of theme.

Elements are reusable, React-based components built with accessibility in mind. They are critically examined, researched, designed, and documented, and then implemented with considerations for scalable standards or tiered overrides. Each element supports functional states, keyboard interactions, and both light and dark background variations. Before adding elements to the design system, an audit is completed validating a minimum of three unique use cases across experiences.

Typography supports 25 languages and six character sets, balancing licensed Monotype and Google Fonts with the global Noto family for utility text styles. Each theme includes branded display and heading fonts, ensuring consistency while reflecting each brand’s personality and international reach.

When I joined Hyatt’s design systems team, I was a senior product designer contributing to theme creation and element design. Over the past 2.5 years, I’ve grown into the role of lead designer, where I now oversee the design strategy and execution of Bellhop. My impact has centered on introducing structure, elevating standards, and ensuring adoption across the broader design team.

I translate brand style guides into digital themes, ensuring compliance with WCAG AA contrast requirements and designing complete typography suites. Each theme package is delivered as a Figma kit for the design team and a CSS package for engineering.

When our team transitioned from Sketch, I researched best practices and restructured our libraries for scale. I migrated more than 15 UI kits from Sketch into Figma, then leveraged Figma’s variables, modes, and library features to create 23 entirely new UI kits. Today I manage our growing collection of design libraries, maintaining accuracy and alignment for the 26 designers who use them daily.

I established a responsive type scale for branded heading styles, eliminating inconsistencies and providing clear hierarchy across breakpoints.

I led a full overhaul of Hyatt’s iconography. Updating the library from 180 icons to a modern, international set with consistent stroke weight and improved legibility, I also designed 35 new icons and introduced usability testing to validate recognition. I continue to maintain and expand the library.

To improve clarity and adoption, I earned a technical writing certification and now write usage documentation for all Bellhop components. My writing balances clarity for designers and precision for developers, supporting smooth implementation across teams and platforms.

I prepare design deliverables for development, including spreadsheets of token values, typography specifications, and image assets. I also conduct QA for both themes and components, ensuring accuracy, accessibility, and responsiveness at launch.

Since my time on the team, Bellhop has matured into a more structured, scalable system that supports Hyatt’s growing digital ecosystem. Designers have access to robust, easy-to-use libraries in Figma, developers rely on clear documentation, and brands benefit from consistent, accessible representation online.

The system continues to evolve with new themes, components, and global requirements — and I’ve played a key role in shaping Bellhop into a modern, enterprise-grade design system that enables both creativity and consistency.