Mike__ Abbink
Executive Director Of Design, Foundation, Global Design
Austin, Texas, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolMike Abbink is an experienced design executive now leading Global Design Foundation at General Motors, with a career spanning brand identity, typeface creation, digital design systems, and experiential work since the mid-1990s. He led the creation and global adoption of IBM Plex and steered the redesign and expansion of the Carbon Design System, efforts recognized by awards and museum acquisition. His background includes senior creative roles at IBM, MoMA, Apple, Wolff Olins, and co-founding Method, giving him rare fluency across product, retail, editorial, and type design. Known for pitching and naming Plex and assembling diverse international teams to deliver multi‑script type families, he blends conceptual vision with rigorous systems thinking. Based in Austin, he pares institutional scale with craft-level attention to typography and visual language—skills that helped GE Inspira and IBM Plex become core brand assets. His trajectory reflects both hands-on creative authorship and strategic leadership in embedding design systems across global organizations.
7 years of coding experience
15 years of employment as a software developer
BFA, Graphic Design and Packaging, BFA, Graphic Design and Packaging at Art Center College of DesignBFA, Fine Art, BFA, Fine Art at Lander University
English, Dutch
Github Skills (62)
javascript10
fonts10
typeface10
carbon-design-system10
gatsby-theme10
gatsbyjs10
plex10
react10
gatsby10
google-fonts10
figma9
trend9
sketch9
lit9
d3js9
Programming languages (6)
Github contributions (5)
mjabbink/carbon-website
Dec 2023 - Jul 2024
The website for the Carbon Design System.
Contributions:6 pushes in 7 months
mjabbink/design-language-website
Jul 2024 - Jul 2024
IBM Design Language website
Contributions:1 push in 1 day
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