Design

We're back in color exploration land. Finally digging into Decent's full color system to balance out the supporting UI colors, rebuild our color ramps, and build better guidelines on color usage in our brand guidelines (brand.decentdao.org).

A product design system expert once told me that it was impossible to manage a brand identity system and a product UI system from the same design system because their needs were so different. 

I respectfully disagreed with that line of thinking. 

It is true that marketing graphics and product interfaces have vastly different requirements, but they both contribute to the overall brand and thus should be unified by a shared system.

A well-built identity system accommodates the brand across all of its touch points, not just the ones visual or product designers know how to maintain. It should enable creativity and provide flexibility with enough guidance to constrain to the medium. The medium informs the message.

As designers, we always need to consider how to connect the business goals to its outputs. We need unified systems that create bridges across business functions, not silos.