Brand identity transformation for the “heart of the internet.”

Reddit — Story

https://www.pentagram.com/work/reddit/story

A colleague and I discussed the relationship between a company's visual identity and their product's “look and feel”.

Does your design systems team own your product's visual language? Do they partner with another team responsible for that? Or something else entirely?

As far as my experience goes, the translation of brand visual identity personality traits is owned by brand designers, who define the look & feel, in collaboration with the product design org.

This doesn't really apply to my current team but what I've seen (in bigger companies) is there's a brand team that's pretty silo'd from everyone else.. When I worked on a growth team I felt like I was in the middle, taking things from the brand side or the product side

Agreed. 
There’s visionaries & overseers. 

Visionaries create the blueprint & steer where the brand is going. 

Overseers are responsible for translating the visionaries’ vision/language into plans of action. They ensure compliance on all projects prior to going live.

I've seen it a couple different ways, and I was curious what others have experienced.

1. Design system team explores, tests, and establishes the visual language (as well as maintain the system).
2. Another team sits between brand & system, and handles explorations & concepts.

🧵 Sure — say a brand team or agency defines the principles behind a visual identity. For example, Pentagram rebranded Reddit using these traits: inherently eclectic, positively different, delightfully absurd, and genuinely candid.(https://www.pentagram.com/work/reddit/story)

If you want people to associate your brand with playfulness, it doesn't matter whether it is communications or product – it needs to be reflected in both.

Those principles are then reflected in the company's product. Color palette, typography, shape, and layout point back to those traits (a typically captured in a design system). But who does the work to translate a brand's principles into a product's visual language?

We don’t own the product’s visual language, as that is the responsibility of the branding team in my company. However, we’ve worked hard to establish a two-way communication process, allowing us to influence its evolution, and communicate to them insights of our customers.

and typically captured in a design system*

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