The problem
RC Design is a design agency. The designs were custom on every project, but the builds leaned on third-party design frameworks. Each new site started with somebody else's opinions about markup and layout, and the team spent hours bending them to match the design.
I ran the development department, 4 to 5 developers, so those hours were my problem.
The constraint
It had to be WordPress, because that's what clients edited every day. It had to work with the block editor (Gutenberg), which was still young at the time. And the team had to keep shipping client projects while the framework was being built.
What I did
I designed and led the build of an in-house framework on top of Gutenberg.
- Custom blocks built with React and JavaScript, bundled with Webpack.
- ACF for the fields editors needed, so content teams got a clean editing screen.
- The WordPress API wired into every project from day 1.
- Headless builds where a project called for it, with WordPress and GraphQL.
I coded on it daily in PHP, JavaScript and React, alongside the management job, and peer-reviewed what the team added.
How it went
The framework replaced the third-party design frameworks. New projects started from blocks the team already knew, and the team delivered them more efficiently.
Paired with a QA process where one developer on every job acted as peer reviewer, it reduced the hours per project.