Systematicity by Design: Creating a Holistic Design System for Sentier Strategic Resources

Sentier is a research and design agency dedicated to providing organizations with user-centric solutions supported by data. While their business has flourished, their small size has left little time for non-essential upkeep, leading to a design agency without a design system or style guide of its own. To address this lack, I am creating a holistic, tailored design system for Sentier using a variety of UX research and design methods. Through a visual audit of Sentier’s current brand assets, competitive analyses of other agencies’ design systems, style guides, and websites, and interviews with Sentier stakeholders, I am determining what elements would be most beneficial in this new system and how it might best fit into existing employees’ processes. The aim of this design system is to make their lives (and jobs) easier, so elements could range from color, typography, and imagery to templates and merchandise designs to a pattern library: whatever fill their most vital needs. My goal: create a (mostly) Figma-based design system that simplifies and expedites the process of crafting reports, presentations, proposals, and other products while also boosting the cohesiveness, reliability, and impact of the Sentier visual brand identity.