OVERVIEW

I designed Shopify’s theme generation system, now a core part of onboarding, to give new merchants a confident starting point when building their storefronts. The system pairs LLM-driven personalization with a set of carefully designed constraints. Rather than asking merchants to design from scratch, it provides a small number of high-quality starting points that feel complete and credible, and that can be built upon over time.

PROCESS

I worked closely with product, engineering, and leadership to focus the work on first-impression quality over AI novelty. Because the theme editor itself was out of scope, the system was designed to operate within existing constraints while aligning with longer-term platform roadmaps. Early exploration showed that unconstrained generation produced inconsistent and low-quality results. Merchants at this stage valued guidance over flexibility, and were more likely to move forward when presented with a clear, well-designed option.

SYSTEM

The final system combines AI with a curated design framework. Layouts, typography, color systems, and imagery are pre-designed to meet a consistent quality bar, allowing personalization to happen within guardrails rather than at the expense of coherence. Themes are organized by visual style rather than industry, keeping the system broadly applicable. Art-directed image libraries support each style, and the experience is surfaced directly during onboarding at the point of theme selection.

IMPACT

Over time, the work became infrastructure: a reusable design system, a shared quality standard, and a hybrid AI pattern that continues to support onboarding and migration flows.