Document the digital reformation of The Australian Financial Review

The Financial Review is the daily habit of successful people — knowledgeable, influential and without peer. The design system plays a crucial role in achieving seamless digital experiences, acting as documentation of a shared vocabulary for The Australian Financial Review's design patterns and ensuring visual consistency across all digital touchpoints. With an emphasis on efficiency and consistency, the modular framework offers clear reference points for designers and developers alike, facilitating the creation of engaging product experiences.

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Design for everyone,
not just designers.

Design systems are not just a shared language between products and platforms but for streamlined conversations between teams — benefiting everyone.

Establishing a cohesive and scalable design system requires collaboration, a deep understanding of the brand's values, user needs, and technical constraints. Then, maintaining and evolving it requires ongoing effort and investment.

To address these challenges, we rallied to prioritise the design system development as a strategic initiative — investing the time and tools, fostering a culture of design system adoption and governance.

03

Audit

To gain clarity on how to modernise a brand with heritage.

The Financial Review is a brand with over 70 years of history — with that comes an audience of loyal readers, from those at the start of their career to the top of the corporate ladder. To modernise without detriment, we needed to understand what brand elements make the Financial Review what it is.

Conducting an audit of existing design assets, including brand guidelines, typography, color palettes, and UI components. We identified areas of inconsistency and inefficiency — helping us move forward, knowing what to carry into the future, and what to leave behind.

04

Verbal Identity

Established a voice, for an established brand.

Alongside visual language, design principles are foundational to cohesive design systems. They are an expression of a shared vision, describing the tone of voice we reflect in our designs. With some refinement to our existing core principles, we had strong pillars to reflect on brand identity decisions.

Our newsroom connects the decisions makers, the visionaries and the ambitious minds of our society.

01

We set Australia's business agenda

We are the daily habit of successful and busy people.

02

Time is our most valuable asset

Status matters

03

We are sophisticated and without peer.

05

Atomise

Create a system built for flexibility, scalability and adaptation.

We created an intelligent and functional component system reflective of the Financial Review’s status. With dedicated colour palettes — a core primary and separate data visualisation palette — scalable typography, grid systems, and storytelling elements, teams of all facets of the business were enabled to quickly produce streamlined assets for any platform, both digital and print.

Adopting a design system early on in the redesign strategy allowed us to focus on reusability and ease of scalability from the get go. Having a clear structured nature for anyone to understand, access, use and edit when needed.

Use a little
Use alot
Use it all

For developers, the design system has provided a source of truth to reference when building code based component libraries.

For project managers, it has ensured all products and services have a consistent tone of voice. Providing clear guidelines and standards, helping avoid confusion and miscommunication with external teams and stakeholders.

For marketing, it has been an easily sharable resource to maintain a consistent brand identity across all touchpoints. Providing ease of access to approved assets, color schemes, and typography — ensuring the creation of cohesive and effective marketing campaigns.