CVS Shop Website Redesign
CVS.com had years of inconsistency from acquisitions. I led the type system, the icon system, the component library, and the overall design direction. The approach was composable primitives rather than page-specific components, so teams could assemble what they needed.
Typography & Icons
I designed a type system with a rational scale and a grid-based icon and illustration system using CVS brand red. Each icon was constructed on a consistent grid, so a 16px icon and a 48px icon read as the same family. No one-off sizing decisions. The type scale and icon grid became the foundation everything else was built on.
The Problem
CVS sits at an unusual intersection: pharmacy and general retailer. That means the platform serves a wider range of intent than most e-commerce sites. Over time, the shop grew through acquisitions rather than deliberate system thinking, producing fractured type scales, inconsistent icons, and components built independently rather than from shared parts. Because CVS.com is a live platform with real customer volume, fixing it required discipline: I couldn’t redesign from scratch. I had to build shared parts that made every downstream page more consistent without breaking what was live.
The Work
Instead of designing a “homepage hero” or a “category card,” I built the type scale, icon grid, and spacing system so any team could assemble what they needed. Starting with the typographic framework meant every downstream component inherited consistency rather than having to engineer it in later. The icon system followed the same principle: one grid, one palette, no case-by-case adjustment.
Components & Templates
The component library covered homepage modules, product pages, and category navigation. Each piece was built to work across desktop and mobile from the start, preventing the usual pattern of designing desktop first and adapting after the fact.
What I Learned
The biggest lesson was restraint. On a live platform, the instinct is to redesign everything. Not breaking what shipped forced better thinking: build the smallest possible shared parts, and let consistency propagate through adoption rather than mandates. The teams that picked up the system fastest were the ones who felt the pain of the old fragmentation most. It removed decisions they were tired of making.