Patrick Mullin

I lead design for complex enterprise products, and build the systems underneath them.

I was the only designer on the DoubleClick Ad Exchange and scaled it into a team, then managed Publisher UX for four years through the merger that became Google Ad Manager. The design systems came after that, and they came out of it. Twenty-six years in ad tech, on enterprise and B2B software where the problem is complex and the interface should not be.

Work

  • Ads Design System overview

    Google

    Google's first enterprise design system, delivered two quarters early after the deadline moved six months in.

  • Density and Accessibility overview

    Google

    Breaking a deadlock between data density and accessible click targets.

  • Harbor Design System overview

    The Trade Desk

    The Trade Desk's first design system, from four competing button styles to a single source of truth.

  • Planchet

    Side project

    A design system for an app with one user, run like one with a thousand.

All projects

Career

At The Trade Desk I founded Harbor, their first design system, and led its migration to a new visual language. Before that, fifteen years at Google, where I built the first cross-product design system for Ads and managed the team behind it, up to eleven designers and researchers across the U.S., U.K., and China.

  • Founded Harbor, TTD's first design system, and rebuilt its foundations for Zuma.

  • Fifteen years as a manager and individual contributor focused on enterprise design.

  • Front-end web development and design focused on new feature design and development.

  • Front-end web development and technical support.

Peers

  • “He was my manager at Google, and more recently a peer at The Trade Desk, where my team partnered closely with his as we went through a foundational design system shift. During a major foundational migration, he was hands-on with the feature teams building on top of the system, genuinely trying to understand our specific problems rather than handing down a spec and moving on. That kind of engagement is rare, especially at the pace this work demanded, and it's what got a hard, cross-team shift through without teams like mine feeling stranded.”

    Lauren Haas Principal UX Design Lead, The Trade Desk

  • “Pat is not only highly skilled from both a creative and technical standpoint, but also genuinely invested in his team and in creating a foundation that lasts. The design system he built from the ground up has become essential infrastructure across our entire product organization.”

    Amelia Ruslim Product Design, The Trade Desk

  • “Working with Patrick's team was the best experience I've had working with any design group at Google in my 11+ years doing front-end engineering at Google. If I became CEO of Google tomorrow, I'd put Patrick in charge of Material Design.”

    Jeremy Elbourn Tech Lead for Angular platform

All twelve