Rebranding and rebuilding a design system for creatives

We wanted to address three core problems.

1. Subscriptions had plateaued
   Active subscriptions had stopped growing through 2023, with surveys revealing poor customer perceptions of Envato content as well as the brand in general. Our design looked dated, it made people question the quality of content we were selling, with some users even assuming Envato was a scam or fake product.
2. The existing design system was struggling
   The existing design system was struggling with both technical and design debt, accumulated as the system had evolved from a first release back in 2016. This included a difficulty in adapting to new features, accessibility issues, poor use of visual space and many technical issues slowing down feature releases.
3. Stalled decisions and future-proofing
   The working group had achieved significant buy-in from leadership, but were struggling to make major progress on brand and product design decisions. We wanted to start work on product design and implementation, but with many opinions on brand positioning, needed to set ourselves up to flex the product design depending on the exact direction the brand went.

1. UI Audit and competitor analysis
   I undertook an audit of the current platform, including products that the system would likely stretch to include later, to determine: needs, core flows, shared components and where effort should be focused. I combined this with competitor analysis and mood-boards to help set a shared idea of product design direction.
   
2. Recurring decision centric meetings
   I ran regular meetings with the core group of stakeholders with the primary purpose of making decisions on styling, components and direction, and documenting these decisions to reduce back-and-forth.‍
3. Foundation design system and critical path
   Initial design work focused on the critical path (search, preview, download) and the tokens and styles needed to support this. I also worked closely with engineering to determine the best approach especially regarding tokens and styles, settling on a primitive + semantic token approach that would enable a more shared language between design and engineering. As well as setting us up to flex the design to suit future brand direction and enable features like dark-mode in the future.‍
4. Pairing with product designers
   Once we had achieved further buy-in from leadership with an initial direction, scope and significant support from engineering and well as marketing and other stakeholders, we brought on additional product designers (many thanks to Sean, Yuji, Ann, Adam and Danny) as the project progressed to get it done, build team ownership and polish the bits that needed polish.

1. Return to growth following release
   The rebrand attracted attention within the design community, resonated well with our users and made the site more pleasant to use. This resulted in a return to growth for the business (this trend began before changed to marketing spend).
2. Positive reception from users and design sites
   Surveys following release highlighted a very positive reception, site and brand was also featured on a range of design blogs attracting traffic and attention.‍
3. Ability to roll out dark mode in a sprint
   ‍The semantic colour system we developed enabled us to add dark mode a year later with minimal work, about a week of developer and designer time.

This was also a pivotal moment in Envato's culture. Making very obvious the impact that design can have and starting a shift to a more product-led approach rather than one traditionally dominated by engineering.