Close Brothers

Establishing Trust in Digital: 
A Scalable Design System for Close Brothers

Project overview

Despite a strong heritage and established reputation, Close Brothers’ digital experiences were disjointed and outdated. With no central design system, each business unit presented inconsistent interfaces, confusing users and diluting the brand’s impact online
.

Following a brand refresh, Close Brothers needed their digital presence to catch up. I redesigned a key business unit’s website, creating the foundation for a company-wide design system now driving consistency across all digital products.

Principal UX/UI designer : 
• Interpreting the new brand guidelines
• Auditing and roadmapping existing components
• Building out a modern and distinct design language

Discovery & Audit

A comprehensive audit of existing Close Brothers websites revealed an out dated visual language and an inconsistent component library.

Key inconsistencies were mapped and documented with a full component inventory taken to help roadmap improvements.

An audit of current Close Brothers websites highlighted a list of components needing refinement to meet the new brand direction (drag handles left/right for before and after).

Creating a Unified Visual Language

Findings and approaches taken in the design audit were expanded across a full site design to evaluate the new UI style in context and how it could be applied to live content.



I collaborated with brand and product teams to align on a vision that respected the new brand identity while meeting digital accessibility and usability standards.

Component System & Guidelines

The visual system evolved to soften overly corporate aesthetics—introducing refined typography, balanced whitespace, subtle depth, and thoughtful microinteractions.

The goal was to create a more approachable and credible digital experience without sacrificing brand authority. This included:

• Scalable UI components
• Detailed behavior documentation
• Typography and spacing rules
• Microinteraction guidelines

These assets were centralized into a single source of truth for current and future digital product teams

The outcome

Launched a reimagined business unit site that brought the new brand to life and set the foundation for a scalable design system.

The system has since been adopted across platforms, improving consistency, usability, and speeding up design-to-dev handoff company-wide.