Migrating 50+ brand sites to a new and improved design system in just 6 months

Our client, a leading global pharmaceutical organisation, needed to rapidly migrate more than 50 brand sites to their new Design System in order to create a more consistent and user-friendly digital customer experience for their HCPs. Having worked with them for a number of years and previously managed and developed the design system, they turned to Graphite to lead on the project.

We took an agile approach, breaking the brands up into smaller groups to be tackled in individual sprints. Close relationships were also established with the client’s in-house development teams, with two-way communication from an early stage, to ensure the new designs could be smoothly implemented.

By bringing these brand sites in line with the rest of our client’s digital portfolio, we have created a more consistent brand identity across touch points for HCPs, and improved the overall user experience. It will also enable all brands to benefit from future evolvements to the Design System, including new feature additions. 

What do we mean by a Design System?

A Design System is a living library of reusable visual styles, principles, rules, and components that are applied consistently across your digital tools. These systems encapsulate business, customer and regulatory requirements, as well as accessibility and UX (user experience) best practices.

Design Systems allow you to create solutions that are scalable and can be seamlessly rolled out across multiple digital platforms or products. They’ll help your team connect every part of your product or service, across all markets where you have a presence, allowing you to grow and maintain a global ecosystem of digital products with brand consistency.

Read more about Design Systems and how they can help you.

The goal of the project was to migrate more than 50 North American brand sites that had been built using different approaches, and in some cases without a design system at all. This fragmentation created inconsistency for HCPs and inefficiencies for internal teams.

Each brand needed to retain its own identity, while still aligning to a single design system. This required the creation of individual brand palettes and customised homepage templates, alongside close collaboration with brand teams and developers to apply the system consistently and compliantly across every site.

Given the scale of the work, efficiency was critical. We assembled a dedicated cross-functional team of designers and project managers who worked closely with the client’s project lead.

Brands were grouped into manageable sprints, typically covering five to six sites at a time. Each sprint began with a kick-off involving senior stakeholders to understand brand-specific requirements and constraints. This allowed us to apply a repeatable process while tailoring solutions where needed.

Our approach balanced structure with flexibility, evolving as the programme progressed and incorporating learnings from earlier sprints to continually improve delivery.

Strong alignment between design and development teams was a key factor in the success of the rollout. We engaged with the client’s in-house developers early in each sprint, sharing prototype designs in advance to surface constraints and resolve challenges collaboratively.

These conversations helped align teams around the purpose of the design system and ensured that implementation decisions supported long-term reuse, consistency, and efficiency across the portfolio.

With all North American brand sites now migrated, the organisation has a single source of truth for design, supported by clear documentation and shared standards. This creates greater clarity for internal teams and a more intuitive, consistent experience for HCPs.

Just as importantly, every brand is now positioned to benefit from future design system enhancements, ensuring the platform can continue to evolve without rework or fragmentation. The result is a more joined-up digital ecosystem that supports trust, usability, and long-term scalability.