Access

With your access code you can see all projects and downloads.

By
David Krebs
Field
Design Systems & Design Leadership
Location
Munich, DE
Issue
2026

Design Systems,
Tokens and
Design Logic

I turn design complexity into systems, with the logic, tokens and components that make products consistent, scalable and fast.

01

Design Leadership

  • Teams
  • Merger
  • Organisation

Built a design organisation as Head of Product Design and led twelve designers through two mergers, with full line-management responsibility.

02

Design Systems

  • Tokens
  • Komponenten
  • Governance

Cross-brand token architectures, from Figma into production code. At Telefónica, onboarding a brand went from roughly two months to one or two weeks.

03

Product design

  • Payment
  • Loyalty
  • Retail

Products that shipped: MyWallet for Deutsche Telekom, recognised with the iF Design Award and the German Design Award.

clients & partners
work featured

Recent projects.

29
Cases · 2011–2026
See all projects

Systems beat aesthetics.
Every single time.

Good design is not evident in its visual appearance, but in the underlying structure – in systems that make good decisions apparent, keep complexity manageable and allow for change without compromising stability.

  1. Audit & research
  2. Token architecture
  3. Component system
  4. Documentation
  5. Governance & scale

Token-First Thinking

Designentscheidungen beginnen als Token, benannt, dokumentiert und mit einem Zweck verbunden. Kein Hex-Code, ein semantischer Wert.

Component Contracts

Komponenten sind Interfaces, keine Visuals. Sie haben klare Inputs, vorhersehbare Outputs und dokumentierte Grenzen.

Governance by Default

Ein System, zu dem niemand beitragen kann, ist ein totes System. Prozessdesign ist Teil des Designsystem-Designs.

More on my approach

25+ years of systems thinking.

I have been working at the intersection of design, strategy and engineering for decades, building the systems and teams that launch complex products at scale.

My focus is on design leadership and design systems: I have built design organisations, steered them through mergers and established systems that give teams a common language and pace.

My product background spans the telecoms, retail and automotive sectors, enabling me to drive innovation in an enterprise context across these markets. This shapes how I lead: systems and processes that work for real teams building real products.

25+
Years of experience
12
designers led
2
Mergers navigated
design
Product DesignUX DesignDesign LogicInformation ArchitectureDesign SystemsDesign TokensVisual Design
leadership
Team LeadershipCross-functional CollaborationStakeholder ManagementDesign StrategyMentoring
architecture
Design LogicAI / Agentic SystemsWeb & Native PlatformsComponent ArchitectureDesign × CodeStyle DictionaryStorybookDesign TokensGit
See full CV

Let's build something that scales.