About
Chris Griffin is a design systems architect in Los Angeles who designs and codes.
About Me
I started out building websites with a pirated version of Photoshop, writing mangled HTML & CSS in Notepad on my Windows 98 PC, and uploading my wonderful creations to GeoCities. When this website stuff turned into a paying job, the web standards movement was picking up steam, and I became fascinated with building websites using semantic HTML and CSS. I’ve worked as a product designer and a front-end engineer. Design systems combine the two.
I’m still a self-learner and still tinkering, mostly with tokens, components and the tooling between design and code. Please see my résumé for more details.
Process
The work happens between the design file and the codebase.
- + AUDIT
Measure first
I score what exists before I propose anything new.
- + TOKENS
Tokens as an API
Three tiers of design decisions, shared across design and code.
- + PARITY
One vocabulary
Figma and code share the same names and scales.
- + CONTRACTS
Enforced contracts
A component that drifts from its spec never ships.
- + OWNERSHIP
Someone owns it
An owner and a clear intake keep it from sprawling.
- + AI
AI with a merge gate
AI is only as good as the system I build for it.
Colophon
Designed in Figma and built with Next.js and React, largely with Claude Code. Netlify does the hosting. It’s overkill for a personal site, and a personal site is the best place to experiment.