Taco Bell
role
Principle Product Designer
agency
BASIC/DEPT®
project engagement
2026
the ask
We teamed up with Yum Brands to drive Taco Bell UK's evolution of auditing and maintaining a global brand spread across 3 different design systems. Through several years of in-house & agency work, Taco Bell was left with inconsistent and competing design components, typography, and implementation.
my responsibilities
· Audit, Research, & Documentation
· Design Systems (Adapting & Maintaining)
· Figma Variables & Components
· Brand Direction
· Responsive & Adaptive Visual Design
· Inclusivity & Accessibility
creative team
Design System Lead: Erica Gallo
Senior Product Designers: Shea Michals & Francisco Lauge
We conducted a large-scale audit across Taco Bell’s US and UK digital ecosystems, reviewing both marketing websites and mobile app experiences across each region.
The challenge was that every platform evolved in their own manor, leaving experiences altered from website to the apps, and even the apps varied depending on the global market.
To make the work manageable, we broke the audit into core user flows including Sign Up, Loyalty, Menu, Cart, and Checkout, allowing us to compare experiences side-by-side across platforms.
From there, we analyzed each experience at the atomic level, auditing the atoms, molecules, and organisms that made up the broader system. We documented each element from typography, color, spacing, border radius and more to identify the UI decisions that shaped brand recognition and consistency. The process required an high level of detail, helping us identify where patterns aligned, where they drifted apart, and where entirely different approaches had emerged over time.
Once the component inventory was fully documented, we mapped everything against Yum Brands’ shared brand benchmark, the Helium Design Design. This allowed us to evaluate what already existed within the system, what could remain consistent, and what net-new components or patterns needed to be introduced. The end result created a clearer roadmap toward unifying multiple fragmented systems into a more scalable and cohesive design foundation.
Due to the confidential nature of the internal design systems, I’m limited in what I can publicly share, but the work unanimously gave our client partners their first clear view into the full scale perspective of their design libraries, ultimately helping align teams around a more unified direction for their global presence.
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