Ford

From Catalog to Commerce

Building the design system and platform that set a new standard for how the world's most recognized automotive brands show up online.

— Summary

Mission

Transform Ford.com into a fluid commerce platform where research, configuration, financing, and ownership live in one continuous story—supported by an enterprise design system capable of scaling across the globe.

The Win

Established and delivered the Ford Design System for Web — a global governance framework now stewarded in-house — launched the next-generation Ford.com, and earned the #1 Automotive Mass-Market Website ranking from J.D. Power—proving that a legacy OEM can deliver the seamless e-commerce ease of a modern tech brand.

— Challenge

Consistency at the Speed of a Global Brand

Ford.com was already one of the world's busiest automotive destinations — roughly 12 million visitors a month. The problem wasn't traffic. It was that the site didn't behave like the brand it represented, and behind it, a global organization of teams spanning dozens of markets was making independent creative decisions without a shared language to align them. Without a governing design system, fragmentation compounded with every new market, product line, and platform update. 

Meanwhile the site itself was functioning as a catalog when it needed to function as a commerce platform — one where research, configuration, financing, and ownership could live as a single continuous story. The challenge wasn't designing a better website. It was building the infrastructure that would make every Ford digital experience — present and future — coherent, scalable, and unmistakably Ford.

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— Execution

Architecture Before Aesthetics

The work unfolded across two phases and two institutions — but was driven by a single continuous creative vision. What started at VML as a design system brief became something larger — a creative vision Ford trusted enough to bring in-house. As the Experience Design Director and Group Creative Director who established the Ford Design System at VML, I continued its evolution inside Ford — directing the launch of the next-generation Ford.com and earning the J.D. Power #1 ranking that followed.

Ford Design System

Established the foundational design language for Ford's global digital presence — typography, color, motion, component architecture, and interaction patterns — built to scale across markets, sub-brands, and product lines. The system wasn't a style guide. It was a living creative infrastructure designed to be stewarded, evolved, and enforced across the organization. Ford later brought the system in-house, hiring me to continue its development and expansion.

1

Future of Ford.com

Directed the creative for Ford's next-generation web platform — reimagining the site as a fluid commerce experience where discovery, configuration, financing, and ownership converge. Using the Explorer as the flagship proving ground, visual hierarchy was designed to guide the eye from hero imagery straight to action — build, price, reserve. Navigation, spec comparison, and checkout were compressed into the fewest possible clicks. Content was rewritten to feel like guidance, not pressure.

2

Motion-to-Code Pipeline

Pioneered an AI-powered pipeline that converts motion design directly into production-ready code — collapsing the gap between creative direction and engineering implementation, and establishing a new standard for how Ford's design and development teams work together.

3

Global Governance Framework

Produced the documentation, guidelines, and governance model that allowed international teams to execute within the system with total consistency — ensuring the design language traveled across geographies and sub-brands without losing its integrity.

4

The system wasn't a style guide. It was a living creative infrastructure — built to be stewarded, evolved, and enforced at global scale.

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— Impact

Scale Without Compromise

The launch proved that complex, enterprise-level infrastructure and premium, consumer-facing design are not mutually exclusive — they are entirely dependent on one another.

Design Consistency

Deployed the Ford Design System as the single source of truth for the brand's global digital presence — permanently eliminating design fragmentation across markets, sub-brands, and product lines.

Consistent Experiences

Unified the customer experience across thousands of touch points, ensuring that whether a user is in North America or Europe, the digital interaction is unmistakably Ford.

Time to Market

Accelerated global time to market for new digital products — empowering engineering teams with a standardized, production-ready motion-to-code pipeline that fundamentally changed the relationship between creative direction and engineering execution.

The Currency of Confidence

The payoff of this ecosystem is larger than immediate conversion lift. Every interaction now earns the modern consumer's most valuable currency: confidence.

In 2025, J.D. Power ranked Ford.com the #1 Automotive Mass-Market Website — citing clarity of navigation, richness of content, and overall shopper satisfaction.

Created a durable governance infrastructure now scaling across every Ford sub-brand worldwide — with connected-service upsells, ownership dashboards, and the once-separate home, checkout, and service portals continuing to merge into a single serialized narrative: research, buy, own, upgrade, repeat.

  • Andrew McClellan
    | Senior UX Manager & Group Creative Director

    Laura Robertson
    | UX Manager & Creative Director

    Jordan Sharp
    | UX Manager & Creative Director

    John Long
    | Senior Motion Designer

    Limin He
    | Senior UX Designer

    John MacRitchie
    | Senior Copywriter

    Sravan Kollapudi
    | Senior Software Engineer

    Derek Estrada
    | Software Engineer

    Lavish Jain
    | Engineering Manager

    Safa Al-Kassab
    | Product Manager, Discover & Shop

    And a longer list of many more talented people

Next

VML (WPP) + Ford