Four years after completing The Austin Stone’s comprehensive rebrand, we returned to extend that brand foundation into a modern digital experience. The 2019 brand system had proven durable for print and environmental applications, but the organization’s web presence had evolved separately—functional, but lacking the visual coherence and intentionality of the brand standards we’d established.
As Design Team Manager and Lead Designer, I led the development of a complete UX/UI design language that would bring the digital experience into alignment with the broader brand while addressing the unique challenges of mobile-first, accessible design.
Building on Established Foundation
The advantage of extending an existing brand system is clarity of constraints. We weren’t making aesthetic decisions from scratch—the color palette, typography hierarchy, and visual grammar already existed. Our task was translation: how do these brand principles manifest in interactive digital contexts?
We began by auditing the existing digital presence against the brand standards. Where did they align? Where had they drifted? What worked well despite inconsistency, and what caused friction? This audit revealed opportunities and pitfalls, helping us prioritize where investment would yield the greatest returns.
User Research for Digital Context
Print brand standards don’t anticipate mobile viewports, touch targets, or screen reader compatibility. We conducted fresh user research focused specifically on digital interactions: how members accessed information, what devices they used, where they encountered friction, and what mental models they brought to the organization’s digital tools.
Surveys, interviews, and contextual inquiries revealed a heavily mobile user base accessing the site in brief sessions—often during services or immediately after, looking for specific information. This shaped our mobile-first approach: primary use cases needed to work flawlessly on phones, with desktop experiences expanding rather than fundamentally changing the interaction model.
A Cohesive Design Language
We developed a comprehensive UX/UI system covering every aspect of the digital experience. Brand colors translated into an accessible palette with sufficient contrast ratios and clear semantic meaning—what colors indicate interactive elements, what colors signal status or feedback. Neutral tones provided the scaffolding for content without competing with brand expression.
Typography specifications addressed the practical differences between print and screen: adjusted sizing for device contexts, line heights optimized for reading on backlit displays, weight variations for establishing hierarchy in constrained spaces. The brand’s typographic personality persisted while adapting to technical requirements.
Component Architecture
Beyond colors and type, we built a library of UI components that could be composed consistently across the organization’s various digital touchpoints. Buttons, form elements, cards, navigation patterns—each component specified in multiple states (default, hover, focus, active, disabled) with responsive behavior documented.
This systematic approach served multiple goals. It accelerated development by providing clear specifications. It ensured accessibility by building WCAG compliance into component definitions rather than retrofitting. And it created consistency that reinforced brand recognition across different applications and platforms.
Cross-Department Implementation
A design system only matters if people use it. We collaborated closely with developers, content creators, and marketing specialists to ensure the new standards could be practically implemented across all digital platforms—the main website, internal tools, email communications, and partner-facing resources.
This collaboration surfaced implementation challenges early. Some beautiful design choices proved technically expensive; we adjusted. Some developer concerns revealed edge cases we hadn’t considered; we expanded the system. The final result reflected both design aspiration and engineering pragmatism.
We provided training and documentation to help various sub-organizations adopt the new standards. Brand consistency across a large organization requires more than guidelines—it requires accessible resources, clear examples, and ongoing support for the people doing the implementation work.
Results and Ongoing Impact
The refreshed UX/UI design standards launched across the organization’s digital presence, most visibly at austinstone.org. Reception has been positive from both internal stakeholders and external users, with the design system now serving as the foundation for all digital work across the organization.
More importantly, the systematic approach has proven sustainable. New digital initiatives can leverage existing components and patterns rather than inventing from scratch. Brand consistency is maintained by default rather than requiring constant policing. The investment in a coherent design language continues to pay dividends years after initial implementation.
In collaboration with The Austin Stone design team