Case studyDesign system · CMS optimization

One design system. Every brand in sync.

Simplifying an 80+ brand ecosystem with a unified, scalable design system.

Client
Endeavor Business Media, 80+ B2B brands
Services
UX research, design systems, CMS optimization
Scope
80+ brands across aviation, healthcare, digital infrastructure
Model
Subscription, long-term partnership
The challenge

A fragmented ecosystem that couldn't scale.

Endeavor Business Media is a major B2B media organisation with 80+ brands across aviation, healthcare, digital infrastructure and more. Their digital ecosystem struggled with outdated design, fragmented workflows, and poor mobile performance — and it was hard to scale anything across so many brands.

  • 01Outdated, inconsistent UX across 80+ sites.
  • 02Inefficient Aspire CMS with 100+ disconnected components.
  • 03Cluttered mobile experience with no industry-specific UX standards.
  • 04Multiple teams fighting for the same page real estate.
Before
Before we came in: the legacy experience, outdated and inconsistent across their 80+ brand sites.
The approach

A modular system, built in three steps.

We partnered through our subscription model on a long-term UX transformation: unifying 80+ brands with a modular design system, improving team workflows, testing and improving mobile usability, and introducing industry-tailored best practices — all backed by reusable templates that made implementation faster.

Step 01

UX research

Benchmarked leading publishers across verticals, identified best practices for newsletters and ad placements, and ran stakeholder interviews to align UX with business goals.

Step 02

Ecosystem audit

Mapped recurring components and templates across all 80+ sites, grouped them with Atomic Design principles, and ensured compatibility with the existing Aspire CMS.

Step 03

Design system

A tokenized system with consistent type, colour and spacing, mobile-optimised accessible components, and documented interactive examples for designers, developers and managers.

After
After: one modular, tokenized system every brand now builds from.
Team-wide execution

Content zones that ended the turf war.

To stop Marketing, Audience Engagement and Editorial from competing over limited real estate, we introduced reusable, CMS-safe templates with clearly marked content zones, so everyone knew what they owned. We focused on high-impact areas — home, article layouts, newsletter placements, subscription prompts — making them mobile-first and ad-friendly without hurting the reading experience.

The impact

One living system for 80+ brands.

80+
Brands now launch from a single system instead of custom builds.
100+ → 1
One-off components replaced by a tokenized set, cutting layout debates and dev rework.
Ongoing
A living system and process Endeavor keeps evolving as new brands and layouts appear.
For product managers

What this project proves about systems.

Design once, scale everywhere

A tokenized system makes every new brand a configuration problem, not a net-new design project.

Make the CMS a constraint, not an excuse

Working within the CMS's limits forced tighter components that actually sped up implementation.

Protect the page from politics

Codified content zones keep Ads, Editorial and Growth aligned, so UX isn't renegotiated every sprint.

Next projectZero to an award-winning MVP. →

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