A method for the design of an unobscured reflective zoom system with three mirrors is described. This method applies the vector aberration theory, which helps designers analyze third-order aberrations for optical systems with decentered and tilted surfaces. As the vector aberration theory presents the variation of third-order aberrations in asymmetric systems through analytic expressions, real ray tracing is unnec-essary. Hence, the design with vector aberration theory is faster, and the analytic expressions are more comprehensive and intuitive. To demonstrate the practicability of the method, a design example is given, which shows that the presented method can guide designers achieve a good unobscured reflective zoom system with three mirrors.