MailerLite
Lead Product Designer · 2020–Present
TL;DR
- Co-led MailerLite's editor rebuild, replacing several aging, separately-built tools with one unified builder platform that now powers Landing Pages, Forms, and more
- Started and drove MailerLite's core design system, the component infrastructure connecting the product and all editors, as the team and product scaled and AI-generated interfaces made shared infrastructure urgent
- Owned onboarding end to end, from signup through first dashboard arrival, and improved activation
- Shipped MailerLite's first digital products feature, letting users sell products and bookings, sourced from user interviews and a market signal
- Built Brand Center, letting users apply their brand once across newsletters, unsubscribe pages, preference centers, and transactional emails
- Onboarded 4 designers as the team doubled, organized them into domain areas, and introduced a weekly design critique ritual
Editors
Several of MailerLite's builders were separately built on aging tools, inconsistent and increasingly risky to extend. Co-led the rebuild, a unified builder platform, from direction and UX structure through front-end implementation. It launched first as the Landing Page Builder, then expanded to Forms and beyond, one shared foundation instead of a separate tool built from scratch each time. Alongside the editor, designed a starter template library spanning different industries and styles, so users aren't starting from a blank canvas.
Design System
A separate effort from the editor rebuild: the component system that connects MailerLite's core product and every editor. I'm co-leading it with another designer, built on shadcn and Radix, with tokens, icons, and components already live in Storybook.
I kicked it off once the team and product outgrew what ad-hoc patterns could hold together, and it got a lot more urgent once AI-generated interfaces entered the picture. The system has to work for designers, developers, and AI agents alike, not just for someone copying a component in Figma.
Along the way I've been building a Claude Code skill that takes a Figma component and turns it into working Storybook code, so design and implementation stay in sync instead of slowly drifting apart. Still a work in progress, with full adoption as the near-term goal, and eventually a system solid enough that anyone on the team can prototype an on-brand workflow with AI inside its constraints.
Product Work
Onboarding
New users were dropped straight into the full product on day one, seeing everything MailerLite could do before they'd even sent a campaign. I owned the path from signup through a user's first look at the dashboard, rebuilding it around what someone actually needs first instead of everything the product can show them. Activation went up as a result.
Digital Products
Led design on MailerLite's first feature letting users sell products or bookable time directly. It came out of user interviews and a clear market signal, and I took it all the way from an open problem to a shipped 0→1 feature: the flow, the pricing model, how it slots in alongside the rest of the product.
Brand Center
Users with an established brand were re-styling every surface separately: newsletters, unsubscribe pages, transactional emails. Built Brand Center so a user's brand applies everywhere at once.
Custom HTML Editor
Rebuilt the custom HTML editor and added an AI agent alongside the code view. Instead of hand-editing markup, users can ask for what they want (change a background color, add a CTA) and the agent makes the edit directly in the code. Built for people who want full control without writing everything by hand.
Team and Process
As MailerLite pushed toward more "product trio" teams, design headcount doubled. Onboarded 4 new designers, organized the team into dedicated domain areas, and took on reviewing their work directly. Introduced a weekly design critique ritual, a standing space to push work further before it ships.
