I love organizing things. I once sorted thousands of trading cards for my husband because I thought it was fun. He thought I was crazy! This love for "thoughtful arranging" spills over into my work life too—I’m always the one volunteering to clean up files, document processes, and compile information.
Herding Digital Cats
So, I was absolutely thrilled when I got the chance to create a Figma library for our site team's custom components. Up until then, any custom components for the card section of the site were made at the designer’s discretion and scattered across a maze of pages and files. This was a far cry from the larger site team's repository, which lived in one central location, had detailed usage documentation, and featured elements that could be easily toggled on or off.
Unexpected Developments
The push for a team library started unexpectedly when we were asked to reimagine some of our key site pages. After weeks of brainstorming and exploring possibilities, we decided to create brand-new custom components to test as part of a bigger redesign. We didn't go into this expecting to make a library, but it made sense—we needed to keep things organized and take detailed notes for our developers on how they should be built and used. In typical Mikaela fashion, I volunteered to lead the initiative and dove headfirst into a crash course on Figma libraries.
...The End?
Once I had the basics down, I shared this knowledge with the team so we could apply it to our new components. I put together a central file, a status sheet, and other useful tools like templates and instructions to keep everything organized. It was so exciting to see the team work through each component—it made our designs feel "official"! This initiative has had a lasting impact on the Brand Creative Card Site team and continues to shape how it operates today.