Forget Brand Guidelines, Think Design Systems

Last week I was throwing together my deck for a client meeting. Hating myself because I’d waited until the last minute. (No surprise to anyone who knows me.)  But I felt confident because the client’s product was in a vertical where we really know our stuff. And, this meeting was to kick off talks about creating a design system – something Idean loves to do and excels at. The problem? They wanted us to reuse their existing brand guidelines. I can’t tell you how many hundreds of times I’ve been in this situation over the years. 

Now, branding is super important. And by all means, I want to be in on these strategy meetings early and often. But that’s just the point.

Tricky issues arise when you’re trying to fit your evolving product and UX design into a rigid box … a.k.a. brand guidelines.

Adhering to a strict set of legacy rules is the opposite of user-centric. And these traditionally expensive brand guidelines, a more static set of visual and conceptual elements, are seldom digitally native. Yesterday’s branding often conflicts with apps, websites, and new platforms such as voice.

Let's talk about silos. In many companies, Marketing and Product are separate. Traditional branding efforts are funded by marketing budgets and are very focused on just that: marketing assets, ads, content, and brand. Meanwhile, over in the product silo, design systems are funded by the IT or product management, and not devised to cater to marketing needs. So these systems are often at odds with one another. They’re like two opposing teams. That's when things get lost in translation. You end up with branding color systems that are not accessible for product use, and product identities that are wildly incompatible with the brand of the overall company. (We'll get into this in a minute.)

So here’s my message to CMOs contemplating a rebrand:

Bust out of the silos, and think Design System.

Today, marketing, UX and digital development are intricately intertwined to enable all of your teams to scale across platforms. You can extend a brand identity across the enterprise, actively shape new products and services, and elevate the user experience. It’s about being agile.  (And by the way, we’ve been doing it forever and we’re pretty darn proud: Forrester just featured Idean among the top 6 design systems firms.)

Why design systems? And why now?

It’s time for a new world order, a coming together of marketing and product through a design system – a constantly evolving, living language. We think of it as a brand guideline on steroids, combining UX and UI with the organization’s culture and vision. It’s a toolkit that brings every layer of the organization together – from vision to products, engineering to marketing. We’re not just talking colors and icons and tone, but also code snippets for developers, templates for anyone creating new material, and assets that work across multiple platforms. It enables collaboration and far faster product-to-market cycles.

That's the goal.

?As we showcase in our book, a good example of a successful union is the Swiss-Swedish hardware firm ABB, an industrial heavyweight that makes everything from machinery tools to cool robots and electric car charging stations. They’ve embedded their CommonUX Design System across all interfaces, inside and outside of the company, empowering internal and external teams to create delightful user experiences. The payoff? Faster sales cycles: a direct return on investment. Remember this when you talk to management about budget.

Finally, here’s a case where a brand did clash with the design system. Lyft is an amazing company. Everyone knows their signature hot pink, no? It’s in all their branding and ads, even on the cars themselves, highly recognizable … but guess what? This pink color isn’t really used much in their application – because it scores badly in contrast tests and is not compliant with accessibility standards. Rather, they use a darker violet on the mobile app.

Would Lyft have done things differently if they’d started from a design systems perspective? We think so.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering about that client meeting – I managed to make some great, punchy slides, with the last-minute support of my team. That’s just the way we roll. But I came out of the meeting dreaming of the day when all rebranding campaigns start with the design system. And I reminisced about some of our best work with our best clients, who get it.  

Did you know about the book we wrote with our partner Adobe? It’s called Hack the Design System. 

This topic means a lot to me. I’m excited to share more about how the industry is changing, and I really want to know your views on UX as Brand and Design Systems. Drop me a line or comment below!