Prisma
Turning foresight into a competitive advantage
How I enabled a global company to deliver industry-leading user experiences and meet future challenges.
Summary
At Brandwatch, a global leader in social media intelligence, I recognised our declining user experience as a limitation of our ageing design system and visual expression, stepped in, and set a bold vision to revitalise it. By applying my expertise in design systems and branding, I secured buy-in and led the creation of a future-ready design system and new modern design language, enabling every product team to deliver industry-leading experiences for our users. When a major merger suddenly required rapid unification across the organisation, we were ready with a clear solution and the practical steps to handle it. The new purpose-built design system and language not only elevated the quality of the user experience but also made future integration faster and easier, giving Brandwatch an advantage in a highly competitive market.
Impact
3x faster design & development
90% adoption rate
50% less code
Jump to
Context
Employment
Brandwatch
Industry
Social Media
Role
VP Product Experience, leading hands-on
Duration
18-24 months
Contribution
Product vision & strategy Delivery strategy Design advocacy Team leadership Stakeholder management Design direction Design language Prototyping User testing User interviews Systems architecture Foundational design Component/pattern design Development
Team
Director of Design Engineering Director of Content Design Director of Product Design Product Manager Lead Design Systems Designer Sr. Content Designer Sr. Information Architect Sr. UX Researcher Design Engineering Manager Staff Design Engineer Sr. Design Engineer, 2x Jr. Design Engineer
Stakeholders
CPO SVP Design VP Product VP Engineering VP Brand Product teams, 12+
Prisma
Turning foresight into a competitive advantage
How I enabled a global company to deliver industry-leading user experiences and meet future challenges.
Summary
At Brandwatch, a global leader in social media intelligence, I recognised our declining user experience as a limitation of our ageing design system and visual expression, stepped in, and set a bold vision to revitalise it. By applying my expertise in design systems and branding, I secured buy-in and led the creation of a future-ready design system and new modern design language, enabling every product team to deliver industry-leading experiences for our users. When a major merger suddenly required rapid unification across the organisation, we were ready with a clear solution and the practical steps to handle it. The new purpose-built design system and language not only elevated the quality of the user experience but also made future integration faster and easier, giving Brandwatch an advantage in a highly competitive market.
Impact
3x faster design & development
90% adoption rate
50% less code
Jump to
Context
Employment
Brandwatch
Industry
Social Media
Role
VP Product Experience, leading hands-on
Duration
18-24 months
Contribution
Product vision & strategy Delivery strategy Design advocacy Team leadership Stakeholder management Design direction Design language Prototyping User testing User interviews Systems architecture Foundational design Component/pattern design Development
Team
Director of Design Engineering Director of Content Design Director of Product Design Product Manager Lead Design Systems Designer Sr. Content Designer Sr. Information Architect Sr. UX Researcher Design Engineering Manager Staff Design Engineer Sr. Design Engineer, 2x Jr. Design Engineer
Stakeholders
CPO SVP Design VP Product VP Engineering VP Brand Product teams, 12+
Prisma
Turning foresight into a competitive advantage
How I enabled a global company to deliver industry-leading user experiences and meet future challenges.
Summary
At Brandwatch, a global leader in social media intelligence, I recognised our declining user experience as a limitation of our ageing design system and visual expression, stepped in, and set a bold vision to revitalise it. By applying my expertise in design systems and branding, I secured buy-in and led the creation of a future-ready design system and new modern design language, enabling every product team to deliver industry-leading experiences for our users. When a major merger suddenly required rapid unification across the organisation, we were ready with a clear solution and the practical steps to handle it. The new purpose-built design system and language not only elevated the quality of the user experience but also made future integration faster and easier, giving Brandwatch an advantage in a highly competitive market.
Impact
3x faster design & development
90% adoption rate
50% less code
Jump to
Context
Employment
Brandwatch
Industry
Social Media
Role
VP Product Experience, leading hands-on
Duration
18-24 months
Contribution
Product vision & strategy Delivery strategy Design advocacy Team leadership Stakeholder management Design direction Design language Prototyping User testing User interviews Systems architecture Foundational design Component/pattern design Development
Team
Director of Design Engineering Director of Content Design Director of Product Design Product Manager Lead Design Systems Designer Sr. Content Designer Sr. Information Architect Sr. UX Researcher Design Engineering Manager Staff Design Engineer Sr. Design Engineer, 2x Jr. Design Engineer
Stakeholders
CPO SVP Design VP Product VP Engineering VP Brand Product teams, 12+
Prisma
Turning foresight into a competitive advantage
How I enabled a global company to deliver industry-leading user experiences and meet future challenges.
Summary
At Brandwatch, a global leader in social media intelligence, I recognised our declining user experience as a limitation of our ageing design system and visual expression, stepped in, and set a bold vision to revitalise it. By applying my expertise in design systems and branding, I secured buy-in and led the creation of a future-ready design system and new modern design language, enabling every product team to deliver industry-leading experiences for our users. When a major merger suddenly required rapid unification across the organisation, we were ready with a clear solution and the practical steps to handle it. The new purpose-built design system and language not only elevated the quality of the user experience but also made future integration faster and easier, giving Brandwatch an advantage in a highly competitive market.
Impact
3x faster design & development
90% adoption rate
50% less code
Jump to
Context
Employment
Brandwatch
Industry
Social Media
Role
VP Product Experience, leading hands-on
Duration
18-24 months
Contribution
Product vision & strategy Delivery strategy Design advocacy Team leadership Stakeholder management Design direction Design language Prototyping User testing User interviews Systems architecture Foundational design Component/pattern design Development
Team
Director of Design Engineering Director of Content Design Director of Product Design Product Manager Lead Design Systems Designer Sr. Content Designer Sr. Information Architect Sr. UX Researcher Design Engineering Manager Staff Design Engineer Sr. Design Engineer, 2x Jr. Design Engineer
Stakeholders
CPO SVP Design VP Product VP Engineering VP Brand Product teams, 12+
Prisma
Turning foresight into a competitive advantage
How I enabled a global company to deliver industry-leading user experiences and meet future challenges.
Summary
At Brandwatch, a global leader in social media intelligence, I recognised our declining user experience as a limitation of our ageing design system and visual expression, stepped in, and set a bold vision to revitalise it. By applying my expertise in design systems and branding, I secured buy-in and led the creation of a future-ready design system and new modern design language, enabling every product team to deliver industry-leading experiences for our users. When a major merger suddenly required rapid unification across the organisation, we were ready with a clear solution and the practical steps to handle it. The new purpose-built design system and language not only elevated the quality of the user experience but also made future integration faster and easier, giving Brandwatch an advantage in a highly competitive market.
Impact
3x faster design & development
90% adoption rate
50% less code
Jump to
Context
Employment
Brandwatch
Industry
Social Media
Role
VP Product Experience, leading hands-on
Duration
18-24 months
Contribution
Product vision & strategy Delivery strategy Design advocacy Team leadership Stakeholder management Design direction Design language Prototyping User testing User interviews Systems architecture Foundational design Component/pattern design Development
Team
Director of Design Engineering Director of Content Design Director of Product Design Product Manager Lead Design Systems Designer Sr. Content Designer Sr. Information Architect Sr. UX Researcher Design Engineering Manager Staff Design Engineer Sr. Design Engineer, 2x Jr. Design Engineer
Stakeholders
CPO SVP Design VP Product VP Engineering VP Brand Product teams, 12+
Situation
Time to elevate the quality of the user experience
Already before Falcon merged with Brandwatch, it was clear we were no longer living up to our brand promise of having the best user experience in our industry. While competitors like Sprout Social and Sprinklr were pulling ahead through serious commitments in design, our own investment was falling behind. Designers, developers, and product teams struggled to handle increasingly complex use cases and growing demands for accessibility. Something I felt firsthand while directing and supporting my team. This was a growing risk to our business and was amplified by several unfinished integrations from past acquisitions. With both tech and design debt piling up, current systems would soon become a barrier to growth. Sooner or later, rethinking our design system and visual expression would be necessary to keep up. Foreseeing more acquisitions and mergers on the horizon, I knew it was time to act, redesign our design system and visual expression to raise our quality and reclaim an industry-leading user experience.
Challenge
Surpassing competition with a future-ready design system and a modern design language
To achieve this, we needed a design system robust enough to enable every product team across the organisation, as well as a design language that resonated with its time. Several major challenges needed to be overcome, none of which could be resolved by evolving existing systems. Above all, we needed to deliver on our brand promise by reclaiming the best user experience in our industry. This required consistency across all touchpoints, accessibility built in from the start, resilience towards any technical framework, and systems built for scalability to support future growth.
Image of the three design systems powering most of Brandwatch’s products
When assessing these systems, we identified significant differences in design language, system maturity, tooling, and tech stack, none of which could be extended across products. This insight further reinforced the need to create a new shared design system capable of supporting all products.
Equally important was securing real commitment from across the organisation. We had to ensure not only buy-in for the development of a new design system with an all-new visual language, but also adoption by every product team. Without this, there would be no impact.
Action
Acting on early vision
Turning vision into reality began with a comprehensive audit of the existing solutions. Together with other design and engineering leaders, I assessed the current design language, systems, components, patterns, and workflows. My intent was not to seek cosmetic changes or quick fixes, especially since initial findings showed that we could not evolve our current solutions to support the scalability or quality we needed. Instead, to address all major challenges, we had to solve this at the foundational level by developing a new design system with modern systems thinking and technology. To give direction to this effort and ensure every decision supported the outcome envisioned, I created a set of core principles emphasising brand promise, consistency, accessibility, resilience, and scalability. To ensure experiences of the highest quality, I applied my extensive expertise in both design systems and branding, personally investing special care into designing the foundational elements of the new design system and language. My focus was to get typography, colour, and sizing just right to ensure every detail worked together as a whole in every use case and delivered maximum quality and impact for the product teams and their users. From this, I developed an interconnected system of design tokens, defining all their properties to ensure they worked together as a whole, greater than its individual parts. This development enabled me to create a layered style and component library system capable of delivering a flexible, scalable, and consistent experience across all touchpoints, from product to marketing. To push even further, I developed a novel colour system, programatically guaranteeing accessibility, pioneering an approach no one else in our industry had solved before. The system was framework-agnostic and developed as web components to support any technical framework now and in the future. A challenge that my incredibly skilled design engineering director and team were some of the first in the industry to solve. With a strong foundation in place, we rigorously tested the system and language by working closely with every designer, developer, and product team to gather feedback based on real product needs. Using these insights, we iterated and refined the design tokens, styles, and component libraries to ensure they met their needs and aspirations. Involving designers, developers, and product teams as much as we did also proved extremely beneficial when we were ready to release, ensuring a smooth transition and adoption of the new design system and language.
Play
Animation communicating the design systems unification strategy
To illustrate the need for a new tech-agnostic, accessible, and future-proof design system, I created the transition and unification strategy together with my team and presented it to leadership, product directors, and other key stakeholders. This effort helped the entire product organisation understand and prepare for the changes ahead.
Slideshow showing the design token system at the foundation of the new design system
I developed a layered and connected architecture of design tokens that systematically generated styles from core and source tokens. Styles being derived from the same source ensured unified and cohesive product experiences across all platforms and use cases.
Slideshow showing the many areas and styles defined by the design tokens
Through extensive visual explorations, iterations, and user testing with designers and developers, I defined as many styles as possible, using the layered and connected architecture. This ensured all styles were designed to work together as a whole, achieving the system and design language I had envisioned.
Play
Animation presenting the styles and component library system of the new design system
Enabled by the design token architecture, I developed a split yet connected styles and component library system. Components being built with styles derived from the same source allowed libraries to be split into meaningful sets tailored to specific use cases. This ensured flexibility, scalability, and consistent experiences for both product teams and their users across all touchpoints.
A whole,
greater than
its parts
Achieving buy-in and building commitment across the company for a new design system and an all-new visual language began with sharing a clear vision of real, tangible prototypes rooted in deep technical design expertise. With support from my design leadership team, I first developed and presented the vision within the R&D leadership team, demonstrating both the necessity and the opportunity a modern design language and system built on modern system thinking could bring. Their genuine excitement opened the doors for broader discussions and presentations. When presenting to the entire R&D organisation, we were met with enthusiasm and support from product teams, who saw new opportunities for better and more rewarding work in the vision we shared. During this time, the group owning our company announced the acquisition of Brandwatch and the subsequent merger of Falcon and Brandwatch. This event offered the opportunity to present directly to the group CEO, who was notably enthusiastic about the vision. What I had anticipated years before was now a reality. The company urgently needed a unified design system and language to support a growing product portfolio and deliver full integration after the merger. Because we had prepared well in advance, my team and I were ready with answers. The design system quickly became a strategic priority, which was amplified with yet another acquisition soon after.
Slideshow presenting the typographic system of the new design system
I designed a new typographic system capable of supporting both product and marketing, informed by design tokens, derived from the major third scale, and using optically rounded line-heights and sizes so that all text and elements aligned perfectly when composing. This approach ensured clear hierarchy, responsive scaling, precision, and the aesthetic quality I pursued throughout the design language and system.
Play
Video presenting the unique colour system created for the new design system
By incorporating target colour contrast into the design tokens, with carefully tested and selected values, I developed a bespoke colour system that programmatically generated every colour within the system. With explicit colour styles defined by purpose, this system could generate any theme dynamically, fully accessible, guaranteeing contrast concerns were never an issue for product teams or their users.
Play
Video demonstrating the experience and technology behind the new colour system
In tandem with designing the colour system, I developed the TypeScript library that programmatically generated colours and themes. With flexible input and output methods, it could support any use case across product and marketing while maintaining accessible contrast, hierarchy, and desirable aesthetics. Furthermore, by exposing lightness, contrast, and saturation controls to users, the system could even exceed the highest accessibility requirements, enabling individuals to tailor contrast to their personal needs.
Impact
Enabling excellence at scale
By investing care into getting it right at the foundational level, my team and I developed a design system and language that enabled Brandwatch to deliver best-in-class experiences, drive continued growth, and meet future opportunities and challenges. With a framework-agnostic design system supporting both product and marketing, we ensured the development of cohesive experiences across every touchpoint for both our customers and users. Product teams were now empowered to deliver their best, designing and developing faster than ever, with less overhead, and with industry-leading accessibility built in.
Screenshots of the online documentation for the new design system
As the system matured through testing, interviews, and iterative refinement, I transitioned further development to the Design System team while continuing to provide expertise-driven leadership and deep system knowledge. The team delivered the final UI kit, dev kit, and comprehensive documentation, ensuring every product team could begin developing products using the new design system and language.
Images showcasing the capabilities of the new design language and system
Accompanying the UI kit, dev kit, resources, and guidelines, I created concept designs demonstrating the system’s potential and visual direction. These examples helped designers, developers, and product teams understand how to apply the new design system, align with the new design language, and pursue the level of quality we aimed for going forward.
Image showcasing how the new design language and system extended to marketing
Through close collaboration with the brand and marketing departments, I created concept designs demonstrating how the new design language and system could support and scale across the organisation. When ready, brand and marketing could tap into the new system and help deliver a cohesive experience throughout the whole journey from prospecting client to active user.
Through an ambitious vision, fulfilling our brand promise, and enabling seamless integration of future acquisitions, we helped the company gain a competitive advantage.
3x
Faster design & development
of products.
90%
Adoption rate
among product teams.
50%
Less code
than custom components.
Takeaway
Design systems as strategy
A design system is not just a toolkit, interchangeable technology, or a shortcut to faster production. It is the foundational DNA that defines, shapes, and ultimately makes a product. Too often, companies fail to recognise the difference between a system and a selection of options and only realise the importance of investing in an actual system when the cost has become too high. Looking back, the greatest advantage came from investing in our design system early. When our company suddenly needed to scale, we were ready to deliver at the highest level of quality. By recognising that a unique product requires a unique system to match, we ensured that Brandwatch didn’t just keep up with the market, but was capable of pulling ahead and being ready for what came next.
“His visionary design approach, along with his skill in fostering a collaborative and inclusive work environment, has brought an innovative edge to the quality of our deliverables.”
Aurélie Debeyter
Lead Design Systems Designer
“His meticulous attention to detail, deep understanding of design systems and dedication to customer experience was truly enlightening.”
Christian Morris
VP Brand
Situation
Time to elevate the quality of the user experience
Already before Falcon merged with Brandwatch, it was clear we were no longer living up to our brand promise of having the best user experience in our industry. While competitors like Sprout Social and Sprinklr were pulling ahead through serious commitments in design, our own investment was falling behind. Designers, developers, and product teams struggled to handle increasingly complex use cases and growing demands for accessibility. Something I felt firsthand while directing and supporting my team. This was a growing risk to our business and was amplified by several unfinished integrations from past acquisitions. With both tech and design debt piling up, current systems would soon become a barrier to growth. Sooner or later, rethinking our design system and visual expression would be necessary to keep up. Foreseeing more acquisitions and mergers on the horizon, I knew it was time to act, redesign our design system and visual expression to raise our quality and reclaim an industry-leading user experience.
Challenge
Surpassing competition with a future-ready design system and a modern design language
To achieve this, we needed a design system robust enough to enable every product team across the organisation, as well as a design language that resonated with its time. Several major challenges needed to be overcome, none of which could be resolved by evolving existing systems. Above all, we needed to deliver on our brand promise by reclaiming the best user experience in our industry. This required consistency across all touchpoints, accessibility built in from the start, resilience towards any technical framework, and systems built for scalability to support future growth.
Image of the three design systems powering most of Brandwatch’s products
When assessing these systems, we identified significant differences in design language, system maturity, tooling, and tech stack, none of which could be extended across products. This insight further reinforced the need to create a new shared design system capable of supporting all products.
Equally important was securing real commitment from across the organisation. We had to ensure not only buy-in for the development of a new design system with an all-new visual language, but also adoption by every product team. Without this, there would be no impact.
Action
Acting on early vision
Turning vision into reality began with a comprehensive audit of the existing solutions. Together with other design and engineering leaders, I assessed the current design language, systems, components, patterns, and workflows. My intent was not to seek cosmetic changes or quick fixes, especially since initial findings showed that we could not evolve our current solutions to support the scalability or quality we needed. Instead, to address all major challenges, we had to solve this at the foundational level by developing a new design system with modern systems thinking and technology. To give direction to this effort and ensure every decision supported the outcome envisioned, I created a set of core principles emphasising brand promise, consistency, accessibility, resilience, and scalability. To ensure experiences of the highest quality, I applied my extensive expertise in both design systems and branding, personally investing special care into designing the foundational elements of the new design system and language. My focus was to get typography, colour, and sizing just right to ensure every detail worked together as a whole in every use case and delivered maximum quality and impact for the product teams and their users. From this, I developed an interconnected system of design tokens, defining all their properties to ensure they worked together as a whole, greater than its individual parts. This development enabled me to create a layered style and component library system capable of delivering a flexible, scalable, and consistent experience across all touchpoints, from product to marketing. To push even further, I developed a novel colour system, programatically guaranteeing accessibility, pioneering an approach no one else in our industry had solved before. The system was framework-agnostic and developed as web components to support any technical framework now and in the future. A challenge that my incredibly skilled design engineering director and team were some of the first in the industry to solve. With a strong foundation in place, we rigorously tested the system and language by working closely with every designer, developer, and product team to gather feedback based on real product needs. Using these insights, we iterated and refined the design tokens, styles, and component libraries to ensure they met their needs and aspirations. Involving designers, developers, and product teams as much as we did also proved extremely beneficial when we were ready to release, ensuring a smooth transition and adoption of the new design system and language.
Play
Animation communicating the design systems unification strategy
To illustrate the need for a new tech-agnostic, accessible, and future-proof design system, I created the transition and unification strategy together with my team and presented it to leadership, product directors, and other key stakeholders. This effort helped the entire product organisation understand and prepare for the changes ahead.
Slideshow showing the design token system at the foundation of the new design system
I developed a layered and connected architecture of design tokens that systematically generated styles from core and source tokens. Styles being derived from the same source ensured unified and cohesive product experiences across all platforms and use cases.
Slideshow showing the many areas and styles defined by the design tokens
Through extensive visual explorations, iterations, and user testing with designers and developers, I defined as many styles as possible, using the layered and connected architecture. This ensured all styles were designed to work together as a whole, achieving the system and design language I had envisioned.
Play
Animation presenting the styles and component library system of the new design system
Enabled by the design token architecture, I developed a split yet connected styles and component library system. Components being built with styles derived from the same source allowed libraries to be split into meaningful sets tailored to specific use cases. This ensured flexibility, scalability, and consistent experiences for both product teams and their users across all touchpoints.
Achieving buy-in and building commitment across the company for a new design system and an all-new visual language began with sharing a clear vision of real, tangible prototypes rooted in deep technical design expertise. With support from my design leadership team, I first developed and presented the vision within the R&D leadership team, demonstrating both the necessity and the opportunity a modern design language and system built on modern system thinking could bring. Their genuine excitement opened the doors for broader discussions and presentations. When presenting to the entire R&D organisation, we were met with enthusiasm and support from product teams, who saw new opportunities for better and more rewarding work in the vision we shared. During this time, the group owning our company announced the acquisition of Brandwatch and the subsequent merger of Falcon and Brandwatch. This event offered the opportunity to present directly to the group CEO, who was notably enthusiastic about the vision. What I had anticipated years before was now a reality. The company urgently needed a unified design system and language to support a growing product portfolio and deliver full integration after the merger. Because we had prepared well in advance, my team and I were ready with answers. The design system quickly became a strategic priority, which was amplified with yet another acquisition soon after.
Slideshow presenting the typographic system of the new design system
I designed a new typographic system capable of supporting both product and marketing, informed by design tokens, derived from the major third scale, and using optically rounded line-heights and sizes so that all text and elements aligned perfectly when composing. This approach ensured clear hierarchy, responsive scaling, precision, and the aesthetic quality I pursued throughout the design language and system.
Play
Video presenting the unique colour system created for the new design system
By incorporating target colour contrast into the design tokens, with carefully tested and selected values, I developed a bespoke colour system that programmatically generated every colour within the system. With explicit colour styles defined by purpose, this system could generate any theme dynamically, fully accessible, guaranteeing contrast concerns were never an issue for product teams or their users.
Play
Video demonstrating the experience and technology behind the new colour system
In tandem with designing the colour system, I developed the TypeScript library that programmatically generated colours and themes. With flexible input and output methods, it could support any use case across product and marketing while maintaining accessible contrast, hierarchy, and desirable aesthetics. Furthermore, by exposing lightness, contrast, and saturation controls to users, the system could even exceed the highest accessibility requirements, enabling individuals to tailor contrast to their personal needs.
Impact
Enabling excellence at scale
By investing care into getting it right at the foundational level, my team and I developed a design system and language that enabled Brandwatch to deliver best-in-class experiences, drive continued growth, and meet future opportunities and challenges. With a framework-agnostic design system supporting both product and marketing, we ensured the development of cohesive experiences across every touchpoint for both our customers and users. Product teams were now empowered to deliver their best, designing and developing faster than ever, with less overhead, and with industry-leading accessibility built in.
Screenshots of the online documentation for the new design system
As the system matured through testing, interviews, and iterative refinement, I transitioned further development to the Design System team while continuing to provide expertise-driven leadership and deep system knowledge. The team delivered the final UI kit, dev kit, and comprehensive documentation, ensuring every product team could begin developing products using the new design system and language.
Images showcasing the capabilities of the new design language and system
Accompanying the UI kit, dev kit, resources, and guidelines, I created concept designs demonstrating the system’s potential and visual direction. These examples helped designers, developers, and product teams understand how to apply the new design system, align with the new design language, and pursue the level of quality we aimed for going forward.
Image showcasing how the new design language and system extended to marketing
Through close collaboration with the brand and marketing departments, I created concept designs demonstrating how the new design language and system could support and scale across the organisation. When ready, brand and marketing could tap into the new system and help deliver a cohesive experience throughout the whole journey from prospecting client to active user.
Through an ambitious vision, fulfilling our brand promise, and enabling seamless integration of future acquisitions, we helped the company gain a competitive advantage.
3x
Faster design & development
of products.
90%
Adoption rate
among product teams.
50%
Less code
than custom components.
Takeaway
Design systems as strategy
A design system is not just a toolkit, interchangeable technology, or a shortcut to faster production. It is the foundational DNA that defines, shapes, and ultimately makes a product. Too often, companies fail to recognise the difference between a system and a selection of options and only realise the importance of investing in an actual system when the cost has become too high. Looking back, the greatest advantage came from investing in our design system early. When our company suddenly needed to scale, we were ready to deliver at the highest level of quality. By recognising that a unique product requires a unique system to match, we ensured that Brandwatch didn’t just keep up with the market, but was capable of pulling ahead and being ready for what came next.
“His visionary design approach, along with his skill in fostering a collaborative and inclusive work environment, has brought an innovative edge to the quality of our deliverables.”
Aurélie Debeyter
Lead Design Systems Designer
“His meticulous attention to detail, deep understanding of design systems and dedication to customer experience was truly enlightening.”
Christian Morris
VP Brand
Situation
Time to elevate the quality of the user experience
Already before Falcon merged with Brandwatch, it was clear we were no longer living up to our brand promise of having the best user experience in our industry. While competitors like Sprout Social and Sprinklr were pulling ahead through serious commitments in design, our own investment was falling behind. Designers, developers, and product teams struggled to handle increasingly complex use cases and growing demands for accessibility. Something I felt firsthand while directing and supporting my team. This was a growing risk to our business and was amplified by several unfinished integrations from past acquisitions. With both tech and design debt piling up, current systems would soon become a barrier to growth. Sooner or later, rethinking our design system and visual expression would be necessary to keep up. Foreseeing more acquisitions and mergers on the horizon, I knew it was time to act, redesign our design system and visual expression to raise our quality and reclaim an industry-leading user experience.
Challenge
Surpassing competition with a future-ready design system and a modern design language
To achieve this, we needed a design system robust enough to enable every product team across the organisation, as well as a design language that resonated with its time. Several major challenges needed to be overcome, none of which could be resolved by evolving existing systems. Above all, we needed to deliver on our brand promise by reclaiming the best user experience in our industry. This required consistency across all touchpoints, accessibility built in from the start, resilience towards any technical framework, and systems built for scalability to support future growth.
Image of the three design systems powering most of Brandwatch’s products
When assessing these systems, we identified significant differences in design language, system maturity, tooling, and tech stack, none of which could be extended across products. This insight further reinforced the need to create a new shared design system capable of supporting all products.
Equally important was securing real commitment from across the organisation. We had to ensure not only buy-in for the development of a new design system with an all-new visual language, but also adoption by every product team. Without this, there would be no impact.
Action
Acting on early vision
Turning vision into reality began with a comprehensive audit of the existing solutions. Together with other design and engineering leaders, I assessed the current design language, systems, components, patterns, and workflows. My intent was not to seek cosmetic changes or quick fixes, especially since initial findings showed that we could not evolve our current solutions to support the scalability or quality we needed. Instead, to address all major challenges, we had to solve this at the foundational level by developing a new design system with modern systems thinking and technology. To give direction to this effort and ensure every decision supported the outcome envisioned, I created a set of core principles emphasising brand promise, consistency, accessibility, resilience, and scalability. To ensure experiences of the highest quality, I applied my extensive expertise in both design systems and branding, personally investing special care into designing the foundational elements of the new design system and language. My focus was to get typography, colour, and sizing just right to ensure every detail worked together as a whole in every use case and delivered maximum quality and impact for the product teams and their users. From this, I developed an interconnected system of design tokens, defining all their properties to ensure they worked together as a whole, greater than its individual parts. This development enabled me to create a layered style and component library system capable of delivering a flexible, scalable, and consistent experience across all touchpoints, from product to marketing. To push even further, I developed a novel colour system, programatically guaranteeing accessibility, pioneering an approach no one else in our industry had solved before. The system was framework-agnostic and developed as web components to support any technical framework now and in the future. A challenge that my incredibly skilled design engineering director and team were some of the first in the industry to solve. With a strong foundation in place, we rigorously tested the system and language by working closely with every designer, developer, and product team to gather feedback based on real product needs. Using these insights, we iterated and refined the design tokens, styles, and component libraries to ensure they met their needs and aspirations. Involving designers, developers, and product teams as much as we did also proved extremely beneficial when we were ready to release, ensuring a smooth transition and adoption of the new design system and language.
Play
Animation communicating the design systems unification strategy
To illustrate the need for a new tech-agnostic, accessible, and future-proof design system, I created the transition and unification strategy together with my team and presented it to leadership, product directors, and other key stakeholders. This effort helped the entire product organisation understand and prepare for the changes ahead.
Slideshow showing the design token system at the foundation of the new design system
I developed a layered and connected architecture of design tokens that systematically generated styles from core and source tokens. Styles being derived from the same source ensured unified and cohesive product experiences across all platforms and use cases.
Slideshow showing the many areas and styles defined by the design tokens
Through extensive visual explorations, iterations, and user testing with designers and developers, I defined as many styles as possible, using the layered and connected architecture. This ensured all styles were designed to work together as a whole, achieving the system and design language I had envisioned.
Play
Animation presenting the styles and component library system of the new design system
Enabled by the design token architecture, I developed a split yet connected styles and component library system. Components being built with styles derived from the same source allowed libraries to be split into meaningful sets tailored to specific use cases. This ensured flexibility, scalability, and consistent experiences for both product teams and their users across all touchpoints.
A whole,
greater than
its parts
Achieving buy-in and building commitment across the company for a new design system and an all-new visual language began with sharing a clear vision of real, tangible prototypes rooted in deep technical design expertise. With support from my design leadership team, I first developed and presented the vision within the R&D leadership team, demonstrating both the necessity and the opportunity a modern design language and system built on modern system thinking could bring. Their genuine excitement opened the doors for broader discussions and presentations. When presenting to the entire R&D organisation, we were met with enthusiasm and support from product teams, who saw new opportunities for better and more rewarding work in the vision we shared. During this time, the group owning our company announced the acquisition of Brandwatch and the subsequent merger of Falcon and Brandwatch. This event offered the opportunity to present directly to the group CEO, who was notably enthusiastic about the vision. What I had anticipated years before was now a reality. The company urgently needed a unified design system and language to support a growing product portfolio and deliver full integration after the merger. Because we had prepared well in advance, my team and I were ready with answers. The design system quickly became a strategic priority, which was amplified with yet another acquisition soon after.
Slideshow presenting the typographic system of the new design system
I designed a new typographic system capable of supporting both product and marketing, informed by design tokens, derived from the major third scale, and using optically rounded line-heights and sizes so that all text and elements aligned perfectly when composing. This approach ensured clear hierarchy, responsive scaling, precision, and the aesthetic quality I pursued throughout the design language and system.
Play
Video presenting the unique colour system created for the new design system
By incorporating target colour contrast into the design tokens, with carefully tested and selected values, I developed a bespoke colour system that programmatically generated every colour within the system. With explicit colour styles defined by purpose, this system could generate any theme dynamically, fully accessible, guaranteeing contrast concerns were never an issue for product teams or their users.
Play
Video demonstrating the experience and technology behind the new colour system
In tandem with designing the colour system, I developed the TypeScript library that programmatically generated colours and themes. With flexible input and output methods, it could support any use case across product and marketing while maintaining accessible contrast, hierarchy, and desirable aesthetics. Furthermore, by exposing lightness, contrast, and saturation controls to users, the system could even exceed the highest accessibility requirements, enabling individuals to tailor contrast to their personal needs.
Impact
Enabling excellence at scale
By investing care into getting it right at the foundational level, my team and I developed a design system and language that enabled Brandwatch to deliver best-in-class experiences, drive continued growth, and meet future opportunities and challenges. With a framework-agnostic design system supporting both product and marketing, we ensured the development of cohesive experiences across every touchpoint for both our customers and users. Product teams were now empowered to deliver their best, designing and developing faster than ever, with less overhead, and with industry-leading accessibility built in.
Screenshots of the online documentation for the new design system
As the system matured through testing, interviews, and iterative refinement, I transitioned further development to the Design System team while continuing to provide expertise-driven leadership and deep system knowledge. The team delivered the final UI kit, dev kit, and comprehensive documentation, ensuring every product team could begin developing products using the new design system and language.
Images showcasing the capabilities of the new design language and system
Accompanying the UI kit, dev kit, resources, and guidelines, I created concept designs demonstrating the system’s potential and visual direction. These examples helped designers, developers, and product teams understand how to apply the new design system, align with the new design language, and pursue the level of quality we aimed for going forward.
Image showcasing how the new design language and system extended to marketing
Through close collaboration with the brand and marketing departments, I created concept designs demonstrating how the new design language and system could support and scale across the organisation. When ready, brand and marketing could tap into the new system and help deliver a cohesive experience throughout the whole journey from prospecting client to active user.
Through an ambitious vision, fulfilling our brand promise, and enabling seamless integration of future acquisitions, we helped the company gain a competitive advantage.
3x
Faster design & development
of products.
90%
Adoption rate
among product teams.
50%
Less code
than custom components.
Takeaway
Design systems as strategy
A design system is not just a toolkit, interchangeable technology, or a shortcut to faster production. It is the foundational DNA that defines, shapes, and ultimately makes a product. Too often, companies fail to recognise the difference between a system and a selection of options and only realise the importance of investing in an actual system when the cost has become too high. Looking back, the greatest advantage came from investing in our design system early. When our company suddenly needed to scale, we were ready to deliver at the highest level of quality. By recognising that a unique product requires a unique system to match, we ensured that Brandwatch didn’t just keep up with the market, but was capable of pulling ahead and being ready for what came next.
“His visionary design approach, along with his skill in fostering a collaborative and inclusive work environment, has brought an innovative edge to the quality of our deliverables.”
Aurélie Debeyter
Lead Design Systems Designer
“His meticulous attention to detail, deep understanding of design systems and dedication to customer experience was truly enlightening.”
Christian Morris
VP Brand
Situation
Time to elevate the quality of the user experience
Already before Falcon merged with Brandwatch, it was clear we were no longer living up to our brand promise of having the best user experience in our industry. While competitors like Sprout Social and Sprinklr were pulling ahead through serious commitments in design, our own investment was falling behind. Designers, developers, and product teams struggled to handle increasingly complex use cases and growing demands for accessibility. Something I felt firsthand while directing and supporting my team. This was a growing risk to our business and was amplified by several unfinished integrations from past acquisitions. With both tech and design debt piling up, current systems would soon become a barrier to growth. Sooner or later, rethinking our design system and visual expression would be necessary to keep up. Foreseeing more acquisitions and mergers on the horizon, I knew it was time to act, redesign our design system and visual expression to raise our quality and reclaim an industry-leading user experience.
Challenge
Surpassing competition with a future-ready design system and a modern design language
To achieve this, we needed a design system robust enough to enable every product team across the organisation, as well as a design language that resonated with its time. Several major challenges needed to be overcome, none of which could be resolved by evolving existing systems. Above all, we needed to deliver on our brand promise by reclaiming the best user experience in our industry. This required consistency across all touchpoints, accessibility built in from the start, resilience towards any technical framework, and systems built for scalability to support future growth.
Image of the three design systems powering most of Brandwatch’s products
When assessing these systems, we identified significant differences in design language, system maturity, tooling, and tech stack, none of which could be extended across products. This insight further reinforced the need to create a new shared design system capable of supporting all products.
Equally important was securing real commitment from across the organisation. We had to ensure not only buy-in for the development of a new design system with an all-new visual language, but also adoption by every product team. Without this, there would be no impact.
Action
Acting on early vision
Turning vision into reality began with a comprehensive audit of the existing solutions. Together with other design and engineering leaders, I assessed the current design language, systems, components, patterns, and workflows. My intent was not to seek cosmetic changes or quick fixes, especially since initial findings showed that we could not evolve our current solutions to support the scalability or quality we needed. Instead, to address all major challenges, we had to solve this at the foundational level by developing a new design system with modern systems thinking and technology. To give direction to this effort and ensure every decision supported the outcome envisioned, I created a set of core principles emphasising brand promise, consistency, accessibility, resilience, and scalability. To ensure experiences of the highest quality, I applied my extensive expertise in both design systems and branding, personally investing special care into designing the foundational elements of the new design system and language. My focus was to get typography, colour, and sizing just right to ensure every detail worked together as a whole in every use case and delivered maximum quality and impact for the product teams and their users. From this, I developed an interconnected system of design tokens, defining all their properties to ensure they worked together as a whole, greater than its individual parts. This development enabled me to create a layered style and component library system capable of delivering a flexible, scalable, and consistent experience across all touchpoints, from product to marketing. To push even further, I developed a novel colour system, programatically guaranteeing accessibility, pioneering an approach no one else in our industry had solved before. The system was framework-agnostic and developed as web components to support any technical framework now and in the future. A challenge that my incredibly skilled design engineering director and team were some of the first in the industry to solve. With a strong foundation in place, we rigorously tested the system and language by working closely with every designer, developer, and product team to gather feedback based on real product needs. Using these insights, we iterated and refined the design tokens, styles, and component libraries to ensure they met their needs and aspirations. Involving designers, developers, and product teams as much as we did also proved extremely beneficial when we were ready to release, ensuring a smooth transition and adoption of the new design system and language.
Play
Animation communicating the design systems unification strategy
To illustrate the need for a new tech-agnostic, accessible, and future-proof design system, I created the transition and unification strategy together with my team and presented it to leadership, product directors, and other key stakeholders. This effort helped the entire product organisation understand and prepare for the changes ahead.
Slideshow showing the design token system at the foundation of the new design system
I developed a layered and connected architecture of design tokens that systematically generated styles from core and source tokens. Styles being derived from the same source ensured unified and cohesive product experiences across all platforms and use cases.
Slideshow showing the many areas and styles defined by the design tokens
Through extensive visual explorations, iterations, and user testing with designers and developers, I defined as many styles as possible, using the layered and connected architecture. This ensured all styles were designed to work together as a whole, achieving the system and design language I had envisioned.
Play
Animation presenting the styles and component library system of the new design system
Enabled by the design token architecture, I developed a split yet connected styles and component library system. Components being built with styles derived from the same source allowed libraries to be split into meaningful sets tailored to specific use cases. This ensured flexibility, scalability, and consistent experiences for both product teams and their users across all touchpoints.
A whole,
greater than
its parts
Achieving buy-in and building commitment across the company for a new design system and an all-new visual language began with sharing a clear vision of real, tangible prototypes rooted in deep technical design expertise. With support from my design leadership team, I first developed and presented the vision within the R&D leadership team, demonstrating both the necessity and the opportunity a modern design language and system built on modern system thinking could bring. Their genuine excitement opened the doors for broader discussions and presentations. When presenting to the entire R&D organisation, we were met with enthusiasm and support from product teams, who saw new opportunities for better and more rewarding work in the vision we shared. During this time, the group owning our company announced the acquisition of Brandwatch and the subsequent merger of Falcon and Brandwatch. This event offered the opportunity to present directly to the group CEO, who was notably enthusiastic about the vision. What I had anticipated years before was now a reality. The company urgently needed a unified design system and language to support a growing product portfolio and deliver full integration after the merger. Because we had prepared well in advance, my team and I were ready with answers. The design system quickly became a strategic priority, which was amplified with yet another acquisition soon after.
Slideshow presenting the typographic system of the new design system
I designed a new typographic system capable of supporting both product and marketing, informed by design tokens, derived from the major third scale, and using optically rounded line-heights and sizes so that all text and elements aligned perfectly when composing. This approach ensured clear hierarchy, responsive scaling, precision, and the aesthetic quality I pursued throughout the design language and system.
Play
Video presenting the unique colour system created for the new design system
By incorporating target colour contrast into the design tokens, with carefully tested and selected values, I developed a bespoke colour system that programmatically generated every colour within the system. With explicit colour styles defined by purpose, this system could generate any theme dynamically, fully accessible, guaranteeing contrast concerns were never an issue for product teams or their users.
Play
Video demonstrating the experience and technology behind the new colour system
In tandem with designing the colour system, I developed the TypeScript library that programmatically generated colours and themes. With flexible input and output methods, it could support any use case across product and marketing while maintaining accessible contrast, hierarchy, and desirable aesthetics. Furthermore, by exposing lightness, contrast, and saturation controls to users, the system could even exceed the highest accessibility requirements, enabling individuals to tailor contrast to their personal needs.
Impact
Enabling excellence at scale
By investing care into getting it right at the foundational level, my team and I developed a design system and language that enabled Brandwatch to deliver best-in-class experiences, drive continued growth, and meet future opportunities and challenges. With a framework-agnostic design system supporting both product and marketing, we ensured the development of cohesive experiences across every touchpoint for both our customers and users. Product teams were now empowered to deliver their best, designing and developing faster than ever, with less overhead, and with industry-leading accessibility built in.
Screenshots of the online documentation for the new design system
As the system matured through testing, interviews, and iterative refinement, I transitioned further development to the Design System team while continuing to provide expertise-driven leadership and deep system knowledge. The team delivered the final UI kit, dev kit, and comprehensive documentation, ensuring every product team could begin developing products using the new design system and language.
Images showcasing the capabilities of the new design language and system
Accompanying the UI kit, dev kit, resources, and guidelines, I created concept designs demonstrating the system’s potential and visual direction. These examples helped designers, developers, and product teams understand how to apply the new design system, align with the new design language, and pursue the level of quality we aimed for going forward.
Image showcasing how the new design language and system extended to marketing
Through close collaboration with the brand and marketing departments, I created concept designs demonstrating how the new design language and system could support and scale across the organisation. When ready, brand and marketing could tap into the new system and help deliver a cohesive experience throughout the whole journey from prospecting client to active user.
Through an ambitious vision, fulfilling our brand promise, and enabling seamless integration of future acquisitions, we helped the company gain a competitive advantage.
3x
Faster design & development
of products.
90%
Adoption rate
among product teams.
50%
Less code
than custom components.
Takeaway
Design systems as strategy
A design system is not just a toolkit, interchangeable technology, or a shortcut to faster production. It is the foundational DNA that defines, shapes, and ultimately makes a product. Too often, companies fail to recognise the difference between a system and a selection of options and only realise the importance of investing in an actual system when the cost has become too high. Looking back, the greatest advantage came from investing in our design system early. When our company suddenly needed to scale, we were ready to deliver at the highest level of quality. By recognising that a unique product requires a unique system to match, we ensured that Brandwatch didn’t just keep up with the market, but was capable of pulling ahead and being ready for what came next.
“His visionary design approach, along with his skill in fostering a collaborative and inclusive work environment, has brought an innovative edge to the quality of our deliverables.”
Aurélie Debeyter
Lead Design Systems Designer
“His meticulous attention to detail, deep understanding of design systems and dedication to customer experience was truly enlightening.”
Christian Morris
VP Brand
Situation
Time to elevate the quality of the user experience
Already before Falcon merged with Brandwatch, it was clear we were no longer living up to our brand promise of having the best user experience in our industry. While competitors like Sprout Social and Sprinklr were pulling ahead through serious commitments in design, our own investment was falling behind. Designers, developers, and product teams struggled to handle increasingly complex use cases and growing demands for accessibility. Something I felt firsthand while directing and supporting my team. This was a growing risk to our business and was amplified by several unfinished integrations from past acquisitions. With both tech and design debt piling up, current systems would soon become a barrier to growth. Sooner or later, rethinking our design system and visual expression would be necessary to keep up. Foreseeing more acquisitions and mergers on the horizon, I knew it was time to act, redesign our design system and visual expression to raise our quality and reclaim an industry-leading user experience.
Challenge
Surpassing competition with a future-ready design system and a modern design language
To achieve this, we needed a design system robust enough to enable every product team across the organisation, as well as a design language that resonated with its time. Several major challenges needed to be overcome, none of which could be resolved by evolving existing systems. Above all, we needed to deliver on our brand promise by reclaiming the best user experience in our industry. This required consistency across all touchpoints, accessibility built in from the start, resilience towards any technical framework, and systems built for scalability to support future growth.
Image of the three design systems powering most of Brandwatch’s products
When assessing these systems, we identified significant differences in design language, system maturity, tooling, and tech stack, none of which could be extended across products. This insight further reinforced the need to create a new shared design system capable of supporting all products.
Equally important was securing real commitment from across the organisation. We had to ensure not only buy-in for the development of a new design system with an all-new visual language, but also adoption by every product team. Without this, there would be no impact.
Action
Acting on early vision
Turning vision into reality began with a comprehensive audit of the existing solutions. Together with other design and engineering leaders, I assessed the current design language, systems, components, patterns, and workflows. My intent was not to seek cosmetic changes or quick fixes, especially since initial findings showed that we could not evolve our current solutions to support the scalability or quality we needed. Instead, to address all major challenges, we had to solve this at the foundational level by developing a new design system with modern systems thinking and technology. To give direction to this effort and ensure every decision supported the outcome envisioned, I created a set of core principles emphasising brand promise, consistency, accessibility, resilience, and scalability. To ensure experiences of the highest quality, I applied my extensive expertise in both design systems and branding, personally investing special care into designing the foundational elements of the new design system and language. My focus was to get typography, colour, and sizing just right to ensure every detail worked together as a whole in every use case and delivered maximum quality and impact for the product teams and their users. From this, I developed an interconnected system of design tokens, defining all their properties to ensure they worked together as a whole, greater than its individual parts. This development enabled me to create a layered style and component library system capable of delivering a flexible, scalable, and consistent experience across all touchpoints, from product to marketing. To push even further, I developed a novel colour system, programatically guaranteeing accessibility, pioneering an approach no one else in our industry had solved before. The system was framework-agnostic and developed as web components to support any technical framework now and in the future. A challenge that my incredibly skilled design engineering director and team were some of the first in the industry to solve. With a strong foundation in place, we rigorously tested the system and language by working closely with every designer, developer, and product team to gather feedback based on real product needs. Using these insights, we iterated and refined the design tokens, styles, and component libraries to ensure they met their needs and aspirations. Involving designers, developers, and product teams as much as we did also proved extremely beneficial when we were ready to release, ensuring a smooth transition and adoption of the new design system and language.
Play
Animation communicating the design systems unification strategy
To illustrate the need for a new tech-agnostic, accessible, and future-proof design system, I created the transition and unification strategy together with my team and presented it to leadership, product directors, and other key stakeholders. This effort helped the entire product organisation understand and prepare for the changes ahead.
Slideshow showing the design token system at the foundation of the new design system
I developed a layered and connected architecture of design tokens that systematically generated styles from core and source tokens. Styles being derived from the same source ensured unified and cohesive product experiences across all platforms and use cases.
Slideshow showing the many areas and styles defined by the design tokens
Through extensive visual explorations, iterations, and user testing with designers and developers, I defined as many styles as possible, using the layered and connected architecture. This ensured all styles were designed to work together as a whole, achieving the system and design language I had envisioned.
Play
Animation presenting the styles and component library system of the new design system
Enabled by the design token architecture, I developed a split yet connected styles and component library system. Components being built with styles derived from the same source allowed libraries to be split into meaningful sets tailored to specific use cases. This ensured flexibility, scalability, and consistent experiences for both product teams and their users across all touchpoints.
A whole,
greater than
its parts
Achieving buy-in and building commitment across the company for a new design system and an all-new visual language began with sharing a clear vision of real, tangible prototypes rooted in deep technical design expertise. With support from my design leadership team, I first developed and presented the vision within the R&D leadership team, demonstrating both the necessity and the opportunity a modern design language and system built on modern system thinking could bring. Their genuine excitement opened the doors for broader discussions and presentations. When presenting to the entire R&D organisation, we were met with enthusiasm and support from product teams, who saw new opportunities for better and more rewarding work in the vision we shared. During this time, the group owning our company announced the acquisition of Brandwatch and the subsequent merger of Falcon and Brandwatch. This event offered the opportunity to present directly to the group CEO, who was notably enthusiastic about the vision. What I had anticipated years before was now a reality. The company urgently needed a unified design system and language to support a growing product portfolio and deliver full integration after the merger. Because we had prepared well in advance, my team and I were ready with answers. The design system quickly became a strategic priority, which was amplified with yet another acquisition soon after.
Slideshow presenting the typographic system of the new design system
I designed a new typographic system capable of supporting both product and marketing, informed by design tokens, derived from the major third scale, and using optically rounded line-heights and sizes so that all text and elements aligned perfectly when composing. This approach ensured clear hierarchy, responsive scaling, precision, and the aesthetic quality I pursued throughout the design language and system.
Play
Video presenting the unique colour system created for the new design system
By incorporating target colour contrast into the design tokens, with carefully tested and selected values, I developed a bespoke colour system that programmatically generated every colour within the system. With explicit colour styles defined by purpose, this system could generate any theme dynamically, fully accessible, guaranteeing contrast concerns were never an issue for product teams or their users.
Play
Video demonstrating the experience and technology behind the new colour system
In tandem with designing the colour system, I developed the TypeScript library that programmatically generated colours and themes. With flexible input and output methods, it could support any use case across product and marketing while maintaining accessible contrast, hierarchy, and desirable aesthetics. Furthermore, by exposing lightness, contrast, and saturation controls to users, the system could even exceed the highest accessibility requirements, enabling individuals to tailor contrast to their personal needs.
Impact
Enabling excellence at scale
By investing care into getting it right at the foundational level, my team and I developed a design system and language that enabled Brandwatch to deliver best-in-class experiences, drive continued growth, and meet future opportunities and challenges. With a framework-agnostic design system supporting both product and marketing, we ensured the development of cohesive experiences across every touchpoint for both our customers and users. Product teams were now empowered to deliver their best, designing and developing faster than ever, with less overhead, and with industry-leading accessibility built in.
Screenshots of the online documentation for the new design system
As the system matured through testing, interviews, and iterative refinement, I transitioned further development to the Design System team while continuing to provide expertise-driven leadership and deep system knowledge. The team delivered the final UI kit, dev kit, and comprehensive documentation, ensuring every product team could begin developing products using the new design system and language.
Images showcasing the capabilities of the new design language and system
Accompanying the UI kit, dev kit, resources, and guidelines, I created concept designs demonstrating the system’s potential and visual direction. These examples helped designers, developers, and product teams understand how to apply the new design system, align with the new design language, and pursue the level of quality we aimed for going forward.
Image showcasing how the new design language and system extended to marketing
Through close collaboration with the brand and marketing departments, I created concept designs demonstrating how the new design language and system could support and scale across the organisation. When ready, brand and marketing could tap into the new system and help deliver a cohesive experience throughout the whole journey from prospecting client to active user.
Through an ambitious vision, fulfilling our brand promise, and enabling seamless integration of future acquisitions, we helped the company gain a competitive advantage.
3x
Faster design & development
of products.
90%
Adoption rate
among product teams.
50%
Less code
than custom components.
Takeaway
Design systems as strategy
A design system is not just a toolkit, interchangeable technology, or a shortcut to faster production. It is the foundational DNA that defines, shapes, and ultimately makes a product. Too often, companies fail to recognise the difference between a system and a selection of options and only realise the importance of investing in an actual system when the cost has become too high. Looking back, the greatest advantage came from investing in our design system early. When our company suddenly needed to scale, we were ready to deliver at the highest level of quality. By recognising that a unique product requires a unique system to match, we ensured that Brandwatch didn’t just keep up with the market, but was capable of pulling ahead and being ready for what came next.
“His visionary design approach, along with his skill in fostering a collaborative and inclusive work environment, has brought an innovative edge to the quality of our deliverables.”
Aurélie Debeyter
Lead Design Systems Designer
“His meticulous attention to detail, deep understanding of design systems and dedication to customer experience was truly enlightening.”
Christian Morris
VP Brand
Explore
Up next
About
Learn about my expertise-driven leadership, career journey, cross-disciplinary skills, and the design values that guide my work.
Explore
Up next
About
Learn about my expertise-driven leadership, career journey, cross-disciplinary skills, and the design values that guide my work.
Explore
Up next
About
Learn about my expertise-driven leadership, career journey, cross-disciplinary skills, and the design values that guide my work.
Explore
Up next
About
Learn about my expertise-driven leadership, career journey, cross-disciplinary skills, and the design values that guide my work.
Explore
Up next
About
Learn about my expertise-driven leadership, career journey, cross-disciplinary skills, and the design values that guide my work.
Contact
Let’s connect
I enjoy working with companies that want to push boundaries and create outstanding digital experiences. If you're looking to drive results through design and think I might be a fit for your company or have ideas you would like to discuss, please reach out to connect.
jesper@jesperbentzen.com
Contact
Let’s connect
I enjoy working with companies that want to push boundaries and create outstanding digital experiences. If you're looking to drive results through design and think I might be a fit for your company or have ideas you would like to discuss, please reach out to connect.
jesper@jesperbentzen.com
Contact
Let’s connect
I enjoy working with companies that want to push boundaries and create outstanding digital experiences. If you're looking to drive results through design and think I might be a fit for your company or have ideas you would like to discuss, please reach out to connect.
jesper@jesperbentzen.com
Contact
Let’s connect
I enjoy working with companies that want to push boundaries and create outstanding digital experiences. If you're looking to drive results through design and think I might be a fit for your company or have ideas you would like to discuss, please reach out to connect.
jesper@jesperbentzen.com
Contact
Let’s connect
I enjoy working with companies that want to push boundaries and create outstanding digital experiences. If you're looking to drive results through design and think I might be a fit for your company or have ideas you would like to discuss, please reach out to connect.
jesper@jesperbentzen.com