Building a Scalable Design System at Axway

Faster builds, better consistency, stronger brand alignment

Introduction

Nothing makes a web designer’s eyes light up faster than the idea of building a brand-new website from scratch. The chance to wipe the slate clean, rethink the architecture, and reimagine the design from top to bottom is the dream.

But the reality? Time, resources, and shifting priorities often mean companies need to take a more practical, iterative path. Instead of starting fresh, you pivot to improving what already exists, one component, one system, one scalable change at a time.

At Axway, this was exactly the case. The opportunity wasn’t to start over. It was to redesign, rebuild, and evolve an existing site into a system that could grow with the brand and scale globally. As part of this work, I authored Axway’s design system guidelines from the ground up, creating a single source of truth for scalable design.

View Design System Documentation

Context & Challenges

Axway is a global B2B company with a complex website ecosystem supporting multiple products and regional audiences. As the sole marketing designer, I was responsible for implementing the evolving brand across the website and contributing to broader branding projects while building a scalable design system. Key challenges included:

Inconsistent builds due to fragmented UI patterns and undocumented design decisions
Lack of a system to support brand evolution at scale
Mobile usability gaps, including a broken navigation menu
Lack of reusable, responsive components, resulting in bloated templates and duplicated code
Mounting design debt from ad hoc requests and one-off visual treatments

My Role

As the sole marketing designer, I led the creation of the design system from the ground up. The system was structured around atomic design principles, with atoms, molecules, and organisms used to ensure modularity and scalability. I built a modular Figma component library using auto layout and nested variants, introduced standardized spacing and typography tokens, and maintained living documentation in ZeroHeight to support cross-functional adoption. I also included usage guidance like recommended character limits to keep layouts scannable across languages and content types.

When building new components, I grounded decisions in UX research, drawing from analytics, user behavior, and competitive analysis. I worked closely with developers to ensure feasibility, gathered requirements from marketers, and built a system designed to support consistency across the site.

Approach

Atomic Design Structure: Utilized atomic design methodology, breaking down components into atoms, molecules, and organisms to streamline design decisions, enhance modularity, and simplify scaling
Component Architecture: Created a flexible component library in Figma, using base components with nested variants and tokenized spacing, colors, and typography. Components were designed to be content-agnostic, responsive, and reusable across templates
UI Pattern Audit: I cataloged all existing UI components across the website, assessing which ones could be updated to align with the new brand styling, and which could be consolidated
Documentation & Guidelines: Created clear usage guidelines in ZeroHeight for developers, internal teams, and agency partners. Included copy limits to support scannable layouts and maintain consistency across different writers
Systems Thinking & Adoption: Approached new requests with a systems lens — prioritizing scalable solutions over one-off builds. Regularly evaluated edge cases and flagged when a new pattern truly required a new component. Encouraged gradual adoption over forced rollout to avoid disruption

Outcome

71% faster page builds, made possible by reusable components and clear guidelines that eliminated last-minute coding needs and minimized low-impact, out-of-workflow requests
Improved consistency and usability across global web properties through standardized components, a redesigned navigation, and mobile fixes. Overhauling the mega menu to better align with user intent led to an 800%+ increase in engagement with key links
Systemized brand alignment, with guidelines that helped internal and external teams apply evolving brand elements accurately
Built a future-ready foundation using tokens, variants, and centralized documentation to support brand updates, new templates, and global scaling. Demonstrated adaptability and speed by quickly spinning up a new website for Axway's parent company, 74software, by rebranding existing components with minimal additional effort

Building a Scalable Design System at Axway

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