Hello! My name is Steven Mills! I am a staff product designer located in the Charlotte, NC area specializing in building, scaling, and leading multi-product design systems.
My creative career started in photography — working for multiple studios assisting on photoshoots, editing images, and designing marketing materials and products for customers. I eventually started to work for myself as a freelance photographer covering multiple areas from weddings, portraits, food & editorial, all the way to humanitarian work. I was fortunate enough to be featured in multiple regional publications, travel to Ethiopia and Cambodia for projects, and have one of my photos featured in a gallery in Tokyo. During my time as a photographer, I was accepted into the Chico Review — which is a photography retreat to learn from the best and have your portfolio reviewed. I was also awarded a scholarship with Momenta Workshops.
Soon after my run with freelance photography, I started to pursue graphic design. At this time I was primarily working with print, and I decided to enroll in a Full Stack Engineering bootcamp through Bloc (currently known as Thinkful). This is where I started to build up my knowledge of designing and building for digital experiences. This bootcamp gave me what I needed to land my first full-time job with a creative agency, where I was working on partnership experiences and branding. It was within this role that I started to discover brand guides and design systems, working closely with our lead designer to port the brand guide I built into the design system.
Following this role I then went on to my next, which is where I am currently, Red Ventures. Here I truly found my niche within the creative industry, building design systems. Within my first few weeks of the role, I started building out a UI kit for the partnership I was a part of, ADT Security. Having built this and collaborated with engineering and analysts, we created a usable design system that allowed us to work more efficiently, reduce handoff issues, and launch experiences without a hitch.
The learnings from this team I would then take on to start teaching other designers and engineers about using design systems, building for other teams I was a part of. This eventually led to the project I'm most proud of: a multi-brand design system for our vertical.
Throughout all of my experiences, I have been through plenty of ups and downs as a creative, fought off imposter syndrome, multiple rounds of burnout, and held odd jobs to make ends meet. However, this journey I have been on has given me all the experience needed to now be a design leader.
I have mostly been sharing my professional life — but my personal life is still very connected. As any creative person can attest, it's hard to separate work and life. I still enjoy working on side projects that inspire me — from photography, painting, and experimental digital art. I am a colorblind creative, so a lot of my work gets inspired by shadows and highlights, patterns and grids, glitches and grain.
When I do escape the creative side of life — you can mostly find me spending time with my wife and three daughters. Watching movies, playing chess, and anything outdoors — mountain biking, trail running (I have completed 2 50k ultramarathons), and camping.
Thanks for taking the time to get to know me! If you'd like to connect, please reach out! I love getting to meet people with similar interests and talking shop!
