It’s my last week at the University of Edinburgh, a quiet time to reflect.

The Change Advisory Board (CAB) helps bring requests, changes and improvements into the Design System. In September, we processed our first Requests for Change through the CAB, approving accessibility changes that had been submitted by another team. This allowed us to put into practice our process for maintaining and updating what is contained within the […]

Make things open: it makes things better. We really like this design principle from gov.uk. We use it a lot, especially when it comes to iterating upon our beta Design System.

Multibranding – representing the University brand alongside partner brands to accurately reflect partnerships without compromising our own integrity  – is a design challenge shared across the University. The aesthetics aspect of multibranding is particularly important to get right. As part of the Design System project, we are planning a two-part community event aimed at developing […]

Representing brands of University partners to accurately reflect collaborations whilst ensuring integrity of the University brand is a complex, widespread issue. As part of the Design System project, I ran a session where University staff came together to work on the governance aspect of multibranding by collectively structuring a checklist. 

The University of Edinburgh Inclusive Language Guide has now been published. The guide focuses on editorial guidance that avoids bias and conveys respect.

We created behavioural personas to help us understand staff needs at the University of Edinburgh. We recently used these to help inform content decisions about the developing Design System.

The University of Edinburgh Design System   If you have not heard about the University of Edinburgh Design System then now is the time. With the creation of the new Web Publishing Platform comes an opportunity to evolve our Pattern Library (currently known as EdGEL) and create a one-stop-shop where you can easily reach for […]

The Gov.uk Design System is internationally recognised as an example of design system best practice. The first Gov.uk Design System Day offered a valuable opportunity to learn how the system is run behind the scenes, and to apply this to the University Design System project. Read more about the project in the blog by Stratos […]

Human-centred Design System We are creating a human-centred, user-focused Design System for a community of over 50,000 people. Our challenge is to design and iterate upon a resource that helps our large, highly devolved estate to achieve coherence, for a population the size of a small town. The University Design System: a journey that has […]